Beckman Institute            University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign              University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Aszgard: Easier PC-Cluster-Based Virtual Reality

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Aszgard is a sort of portable-operating-system-on-a-stick for writing PC-cluster-based virtual reality programs using Syzygy. Syzygy is quite powerful, but a bit difficult to install and configure. The goal of the Aszgard project is to make these tasks as easy as possible.

Syzygy runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS X; however, Aszgard is currently Windows-only. That's because it's based on Movable Python, a non-free but very inexpensive Windows-specific distribution of the Python programming language. Note that you have to buy your own copy unless you're working with someone here in the Integrated Systems Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (we have a site license). It costs about $10 US as of this writing (Jan. '07). The "Movable" part means that it can be put anywhere on your hard drive, and the whole installation can be moved around at will without breaking anything. The fact that Aszgard is built around Movable Python makes it completely portable, i.e. you can move it around from one computer or another or even run it off a removable drive (which is not too bad if you're programming in Python, but we don't recommend compiling C++ programs on a flash drive unless you need serious navel-contemplation time).

The way it works is, you start up one of the two provided command-shell shortcuts. This runs a script in Movable Python that sets up all the required environment variables and paths based on Aszgard's location and then opens the shell. Compiling the Syzygy libraries can be accomplished by typing in two commands.

Note that although Movable Python can go anywhere, Syzygy may be happier in locations where there are no spaces in the path. For example, if you need to put in the "My Documents" folder you should use the Windows "subst" command to create a logical drive for the Aszgard directory.

Aszgard includes almost everything you need for Syzygy development:

  • Syzygy.
  • Almost of the external dependencies required for Syzygy C++ development (there aren't any for Python development).
  • The MinGW GNU C++ compiler.
  • Two text editors, SciTE and Vim.
  • Some very useful utilities.
  • A number of useful Python modules (besides the ones that come with Movable Python)
  • Choice of the Movable Python IPython shell (recommended) or the Unix-like MSYS shell
  • Some additional documentation, including a copy of Syzygy Python Programming, a book in progress.

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