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Features and Capabilities

Voxmap PointShell^TM differs from more traditional surface-based algorithms in its real-time nature and memory efficiency. In the Boeing environment, we have found it to be considerably faster than other methods. Here are some of the features that set VPS apart from its competition:

• Speed, accuracy, and memory usage can be balanced to suit the circumstances.
• The constancy of calculation speed is essential for haptic applications.
• VPS uses much less memory than traditional collision detection methods.
• VPS is scalable to very complex scenes.
• In an object motion scenario, VPS speed is independent of amount and complexity of surrounding geometry.
• Since VPS is volume based, it can detect an object wholly contained in another object, something a surface-to-surface intersection method won't detect.

Voxmap PointShell^TM is a library of software components suitable for integration into new or existing applications of large-scale CAD design visualization and virtual reality. VPS implements Boeing proprietary algorithms that can dramatically boost an application's performance for certain common time-critical operations. The typical VPS customer is an application vendor with a staff of programmers who can master and integrate VPS source code into their applications with only a modest amount of introduction and training.

VPS is organized into the following modules:

• The basic module contains the voxelizing engine, which translates triangles into voxels. This module also does the basic collision-detection and proximity computation.
• The swept-volume module constructs a faceted solid model that encloses every point of space touched by the solid moving object.
• The force-generation module calculates forces associated with the detected collisions.

VPS is a library of portable C++ functions with an elaborately documented API. It is fully compatible with Windows, Linux, IRIX, HP, AIX, and Sun Solaris.

Contact our Boeing representative for more details.