SDK Overview

The Eye-Sys SDK (Software Development Kit) is available for fully-featured custom Eye-Sys object development. Eye-Sys' open and extensible architecture allows for new functionality to be added to Eye-Sys without rebuilding the application. Developers can chose between using C++ and .NET for plug-in development (all of the standard plug-ins that ship with Eye-Sys were created in C++ using the SDK). The SDK includes:

• Base classes to facilitate creation of the four types of Eye-Sys objects: Input, Manipulation, Display Object, and Display System.
  
  
• Visual Studio 2005 AppWizards for creating C++-based objects of each type (requires Visual Studio 2005; any version above “Express”).
  
  
• Managed interfaces for use in developing plug-ins using .NET-based languages like C#, VB, and C++.NET. C# Item Templates are provided for rapid plug-in development using these interfaces.
  
  
• C++ support classes and functions that facilitate vector & matrix operations, fast geometry rendering, texture loading, expression evaluation, and more.
  
  
• Detailed SDK user and reference manual, including C++ and .NET tutorials.
  

Support

Support for SDK users is provided in the Eye-Sys forum by the developers of the Eye-Sys SDK.

Because of Eye-Sys' open architecture, there are numerous ways of adding new capability to Eye-Sys without using the SDK:

• Global scripts
  Using JavaScript, custom scripts can be written in Eye-Sys that have access to nearly all of the application's functionality. Global scripts are often used to create or modify existing systems.
  
  
• Script objects
  Similar to the global JavaScript support, Script objects are like any other object in Eye-Sys – they can be interconnected, copied, etc. Users control their behavior using embedded scripts that act on a set of user-defined properties that can be connected to other nodes in the scene. Script objects are often used to implement custom input and manipulation functionality.
  
  
• COM interface
  Eye-Sys provides a set of built-in COM interfaces which can be used to access nearly all available functionality of the application. These interfaces are utilized by the different scripting options Eye-Sys provides as well as any external applications (like Matlab/Simulink) that need to communicate with Eye-Sys.
  
  
• XML '.esp' files
  Eye-Sys project files (the files that define any particular visualization system, loaded and saved by Eye-Sys) are in XML. Because of this open format programs can be written to generate project files that may be too complex to generate by hand.