MAVERIK – the Manchester Virtual Environment Interface Kernel

In an earlier workshop paper [HMWH95], we set out a number of issues we regarded as important in VR system design. Some of these were investigated in the AVIARY system [WHH+93, SW94], and work on these is continuing. In 1993 we began a collaborative project with CADCentre Ltd in Cambridge, to explore the potential of VR systems for the design of very large-scale process plants – structures such as oil refineries, North Sea oil rigs, chemical plants, and power generation plant. Preliminary results from this work have been reported elsewhere [HM94]. An early finding was that these models were so complicated that neither AVIARY, nor typical off-the-shelf or public-domain VR systems, would be capable of handling them with anything approaching an acceptable frame rate. We therefore began to consider a design for a new system to address such problems, and to provide us with a framework for research into a variety of VR issues.