Installation and Getting Started

FlyVR is developed and tested on Ubuntu 12.04 on the amd64 architecture using NVIDIA graphics.

Installation

As the root user, in the bash command-line in Ubuntu 12.04, run this script. (Also, you can download the latest version of this script from here.) From the command line, this should work:

curl -sL https://raw.github.com/strawlab/flyvr/master/docs/install-flyvr.sh | sudo bash

Getting Started

Testing the basic installation

Once FlyVR is installed, you should be able to run a quick demo by typing:

# setup ROS environment variables
source /opt/ros/ros-flyvr.hydro/setup.bash

# launch the demo
roslaunch flyvr demo_display_server.launch

If that opens a graphics window showing a 3D scene, FlyVR is installed and running properly.

Configuring a new display

The most important part of FlyVR is the Display Server. This is the program that draws on a single display. If you need multiple physical displays, you will run multiple display servers. (A single display server can drive multiple virtual displays, as explained in the glossary.) We need to tell the Display Server about your display.

FlyVR uses ROS to handle configuration. To bootstrap a new system, begin by copying a default configuration file into a new location:

roscd flyvr/config cp rosparamconfig.yaml my_display.yaml

Edit this new my_display.yaml to reflect your display. Much of this YAML file should be self-explanatory. On initial setup, the most critical information is the contents of the display: key are the X windows parameters displayNum and screenNum and the window geometry parameters x, y, width, height, and windowDecoration. FlyVR does not switch your graphics mode, so set these values such that the display server will completely utilize your display.

You can test your new configuration by creating a new ROS launch file which will load these parameters.

roscd flyvr/launch cp demo_display_server.launch my_test.launch

Edit this new my_test.launch file and change the name of the configuration .yaml file to refer to the file you created above. Now, run this new launch file:

roslaunch flyvr my_test.launch

The displayed window should now have the properties you specified in my_display.yaml.

Running the pinhole calibration wizard

(To be continued...)