3.2.2
VEOS
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VEOS, the Virtual Environment Operating Shell, was built primarily by graduate students at the University of Washington, following my design guidance. It incorporated advanced features, including:

–– support of multiple participants
–– autonomous objects with their own agendas
–– support for many types of input devices
–– dynamic linking of input streams to world behavior
–– distributed processing and data fusion.

The VEOS kernel is written in C on top of UNIX and TCP/IP.

papers/essays
virtual reality
what is VR?
∆ veos
software tools
interface/body
development
projects
philosophy
cultural
The kernel provides message passing communications, database, and distributed process management. In general, VEOS can be used for prototyping distributed and parallel applications that incorporate a diversity of i/o devices. VEOS is entity-based, supporting objects, each with the capabilities of an operating system.

The following pages describe the architecture and functioning of VEOS in depth. This information is also included as part of the documentation package for the VEOS code.

WHAT IS VEOS? –– VEOS Project overview and descriptions.

DESIGN –– Design goals and preliminary architectural choices.

STUDENT PAPERS AND THESES –– Geoff Coco lead the implementation team, and incorporated his experiences in a Master's thesis, as did several other students.

KERNEL DOCUMENTATION –– Details of the kernel implementation, including SHELL (the system framework), TALK (the communications manager), and NANCY (the pattern-directed database).

ENTITIES AND VIRTUAL BODY DOCUMENTATION –– Details of FERN (the entity specification and modeling package), Mercury (the virtual body user interface), and Imager (the customized display driver).