VENTUS

Virtual Environment for Teamwork and ad-hoc Collaboration between Companies and heterogeneous User Groups

The aim of the VENTUS project is to develop a flexible and cost-effective system for the exchange and interactive visualization of 3D data and to publish it as an open source application. The visualization is made possible with head-mounted displays from various manufacturers as well as standard screens. To support collaboration, various interaction techniques such as pointing, gestures and the creation of annotations, 3D-sketching and CAD-models were implemented. The exchange of extensive model data between collaboration partners is simple and efficient. The system is geared towards business and product development processes in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

While VENTUS can be downloaded and used as a complete application, VENTUS is also meant to be used as a framework for future developments in VR. For this, features in VENTUS were made available as separate Unity packages, which can be imported into any other project.

Getting Started

The newest version of the application can be downloaded for windows from Releases. Alternatively the source code can also be downloaded or cloned from Github. The downloaded project can then be opened with a supported Unity Editor version (2022.3.28+ as of 01.07.24) and built to a desired platform. The application starts in desktop-mode by default. VR-mode can be started from the taskbar once a supported HMD is connected and activated through an OpenXR runtime (SteamVR or Meta Quest Link is recommended).

VENTUS comes with six example library CAD-models, but allows importing of STEP- and GLTF-models using the file explorer. The model importer can be easily extended if other types of CAD-models are desired. Most features, like the file explorer, can be imported as Unity packages from the CENTIS Github.

User Documentation

In the wiki you can find documentation about using the VENTUS project and all its feautures. You can find the documentation at User Documentation. These features are also explained within the VENTUS application itself as part of the help menu, where you can find both explanations and tutorial videos showcasing the implemented features.

Developer Documentation

In the wiki you can find documentation about cloning and extending the VENTUS Unity project. You can find the documentation at Developer Documentation. The developer documentation also explains which features are provided as separate packages and where to find them.