Overview

Geomagic® OpenHaptics® Toolkit

Add 3D Touch™ Navigation and Haptics to Your Applications

Create a compelling user experience for your customers: Enable users to go beyond working with a 2D mouse in your applications, to interacting with and manipulating o    bjects in a realistic intuitive way. Allow users to feel objects in a virtual 3D scene, making skills easier to learn. Give your customers true 3D navigation and direct interaction in a way that makes them more productive and adds a “wow” factor to your application.

Open Haptics
The OpenHaptics® Developer Edition enables software developers to add haptics and true 3D navigation to a broad range of applications including 3D design and modeling, medical, games, entertainment, visualization, and simulation. This haptics toolkit is patterned after the OpenGL® API making it familiar to graphics programmers and facilitating integration with OpenGL applications. Using the OpenHaptics toolkit, developers can leverage existing OpenGL code for specifying geometry and supplement it with OpenHaptics commands to simulate haptic material properties such as friction and stiffness.

The extensible architecture enables developers to add functionality to support new types of shapes. It is also designed to integrate third-party libraries such as physics/dynamics and collision detection engines. The OpenHaptics toolkit supports the range of 3D Systems PHANTOM® devices, from the low-cost Touch 3D Stylus device to the larger PHANTOM Premium devices. The OpenHaptics toolkit supports Microsoft® Windows® 7 and 8, and Linux®.

Features
Features in OpenHaptics v3.0

• Linux support, including support for 7 DOF option, pinch grips, and customized grips - OpenHaptics now provides support and installers for most of the common Linux distros such as the latest versions of OpenSuse, Fedora, and Ubuntu. RPM, DEBIAN and TGZ packages are provided for easy installation across various linux distros. Use OpenHaptics to develop Linux applications that require 7DOF positional sensing. Utilize Sensable's interchangeable snap-on end effectors or design your own custom grip for 6DOF Phantoms.
 • Windows 7 support - Use OpenHaptics on the latest computers running Windows 7, or continue running XP.
 • Depth of penetration - Continuously monitor the depth of penetration from the surface contact point, and set different force parameters accordingly. Ideal for simulations, such as an epidural injection, that mimic the feel of a needle passing through different layers of tissue.
 • Support for standard 3D model file formats - Load 3D models with textures in a single command.
 • Support for 3DS, OBJ, STL, and PLY eliminates the need to convert 3D models to special formats prior to programming.
 • Adjust torque parameters on 6DOF devices - Make individual adjustments to the torque parameters for pitch, roll, and yaw on the gimbal.
 • New demos and source code examples - Jump-start your application development with new demos and examples that show you how to:
 1. Integrate QuickHaptics with lower-levels of OpenHaptics; Use haptics to place a medical tool in the correct position;
 2. Define your own force model;
 3. Set different material properties depending on depth of penetration.

OpenHaptics v3.0 is available for Microsoft Windows 32-bit and 64-bit XP and Vista, as well as for Linux.

See the System Requirements for more information.

The OpenHaptics toolkit supports the range of supported Sensable PHANTOM devices from the low-cost Phantom Omni device to the larger Phantom Premiums and Premium 6DOF devices.

OpenHaptics v3.0 for win32 and x64 Windows 7, Vista and XP

Hardware

 • Dual Xeon® Pentium® IV 2.4 GHz or better processor or higher
 • 512 MB free disk space
 • 2 GB RAM
 • Depending on PHANTOM model: Parallel Port (EPPMode port built into the motherboard or an Axxon parallel adapter card is recommended) or FireWire 1394a* or a 10/100Mbps compatible Ethernet adapter
 
Laptop Computers

 • Interfaces have not been fully tested on laptop computers
 • In general, PCMCIA cards seem to retain connectivity better than Express cards
 • Please make sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions and use the most up-to-date driver for whichever card is chosen
 • Software: Windows® XP-32 (SP3), XP-64 (SP2), Vista-32 (SP2), Vista-64 (SP2) or Windows 7, (win32 or x64)
 • Compilers: Microsoft® Visual C++ 2005 (SP2) or Visual C++; 2008 or Visual C++ 2010
 • May require recompiling HDU and HLU Utility libraries
 • Drivers: PHANTOM Device Driver v5.1.7 or above
 • One of the supported PHANTOM haptic devices. Please note that PCI-based PHANTOM Premium devices are not supported.
 • PHANTOM Omni (FireWire IEEE 1394a)*
 • PHANTOM Desktop (Parallel Port or LAN port)
 • PHANTOM Premium 1.0, 1.5, 1.5 High Force, 3.0 (Parallel Port or LAN port)
 • PHANTOM Premium 1.5/6DOF, 1.5HF/6DOF, 3.0/6DOF (Parallel Port)
 • NOTE: the PHANTOM Communication Converter (PCC) is available for Parallel Port devices to be used with a FireWire interface.
 
OpenHaptics v3.0 for Linux

Hardware

• Dual Xeon® Pentium® IV 2.4 GHz or better processor or higher. To interface with the Sensable Desktop or Premium devices, EPP mode parallel-port built into the motherboard is required.
• 512 MB disk space and 2 GB RAM.
 
Software

 • Ubuntu 11.1 and Fedora 16 (or later)
 • Kernel 3.3.0 or higher
 • Mesa-OpenGL® with GLX interface to the X Window System®. Make sure that "glxgears" runs on your system
 • GLUT-OpenGL Utility Toolkit
 • MesaGLw-Mesa Widget Library. Requires the Motif bindings (built with ./configure --enable-motif)
 • FreeType2-Portable font engine (http://www.freetype.org)
 • Compilers: gcc 4.x
 • Drivers: PHANTOM Device Drivers v 4.3-2* or above
 
 * To find kernel version type "uname -r" at the terminal. For additional questions please check the online documents at the Developer Support Center (http://dsc.sensable.com) or post questions to the developer forums.

One of the Supported PHANTOM Models.

 • PHANTOM Omni (FireWire IEEE 1394a)*
 • PHANTOM Desktop (Parallel Port)
 • PHANTOM Premium 1.0, 1.5, 3.0 (Parallel Port)
 • PHANTOM Premium 1.5/6DOF, 3.0/6DOF (Parallel Port)
 
 Please note that the following configurations are NOT Supported:

 • High Force PHANTOM Premium devices
 • PHANTOM Communication Converter
 • Dual PHANTOM Configurations
 • PCI-based PHANTOM Premium devices
 
 Available for Download at Sensable's Developer Support Center (DSC)

* The PHANTOM Omni device is IEEE 1394a compliant. However, Sensable is aware of customers that have experienced performance difficulties with their PHANTOM devices when using controller cards with certain IEEE 1394a chipset or driver combinations. In these cases, it may be necessary to update or change the 1394 controller card driver or to try a separate add-on 1394 controller card.

Proper operation and control of the Haptic Servo Loop requires sufficient "real-time" performance of the host computer. Under Windows, to measure the system latency on your computer, please use the DPC Latency Checker, available at TheSyCon website. If the red bars appear regularly more often than every 5-7 seconds, please consider updating your BIOS, chipset firmware, system devices or other device drivers.

Such a low-level system update may also be in order in cases where the FireWire or Parallel communication with the PHANTOM device hangs or is inconsistent or intermittent; or when the whole operating system has been upgraded - from XP to Windows 7 for example.

Open Haptics Developer Forum
Check out our developer forum for the Open Haptics SDK here.