Easier PC-Cluster-Based Virtual Reality
Download Aszgard (243 MB, zipped).
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 Windows-specific distribution of the Python_ programming language.
News: Movable Python is now open source (as of Spring ‘09) and is included in the Aszgard download.
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 to 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 three provided command-shell
.bat files; there’s one for IPython, one for
MSYS, and one for a plain old Windows command prompt.
The .bat script runs a Movable Python script that sets up all
the required environment variables and paths based on Aszgard’s current location
and then opens the shell. Compiling the Syzygy libraries and demos is then
simply accomplished by typing (\ instead of / for the Windows command prompt, of course):
cd szg/build
make demo
Note that although Movable Python can be unzipped anywhere, Syzygy may be happier
in locations where there are no spaces in the path, so if you put it somewhere
under your “My Documents” folder you should probably consider using the Windows
subst command to map “My Documents” to e.g. “M:” (open a command prompt and
type help subst).
Aszgard includes almost everything you need for Syzygy development:
- The Syzygy sources.
- Compiled versions of the Syzygy server, utilities, and Python bindings, so if you only want to program in Python there’s no need to compile anything.
- Most of the optional external dependencies for Syzygy C++ development (the ones we can distribute), and the one library (PyOpenGL) needed for Python programming.
- The MinGW GNU C++ compiler and linker.
- Choice of the Movable Python IPython shell, the Unix-like Msys shell, or a vanilla Windows command prompt, with the appropriate environment variables set correctly on each.
- Three general-purpose text editors, SciTE, Vim, and the Jasspa MicroEmacs.
- Some very useful utilities. Besides all the Unix stuff in MinGW/Msys (grep, tar, and
all that), there’s:
- WinMerge, a fantastically useful program for merging different versions of files and directories;
- The commandline version of 7-Zip, for compressing and decompressing various kinds of archives;
- lbrisar’s Command line tools, including among other things Windows versions of the ‘ps’ and ‘kill’ commands.
- Movable Python includes lots of modules that aren’t in the Python standard library.
Aszgard supplements that with an additional set, most importantly:
- PyOpenGL (needed by Syzygy);
- ElementTree for XML parsing;
- And more. Look in the “pylibs” directory.
- Some additional documentation, including a copy of Syzygy Python Programming, an e-book in progress.