Data visualisation

The OpenViBE platform comes with a number of integrated visualisation plugins that cover a whole range of visualisation paradigms. 2D plugins are drawn using the Gtk library, while 3D visualisation is possible thanks to the 3D API of the OpenViBE Kernel. This API hides implementation details, making it possible to switch rendering libraries if necessary. The Ogre 3D library is currently used for 3D rendering.

3D visualisation

In addition to 2D visualisation plugins, the OpenViBE platform also offers 3D visualisation possibilities to provide different, more realistic brain activity visualisation plugins. The OpenViBE API includes basic 3D scene management methods so that plugins may load and manipulate simple 3D scenes within the OpenViBE application context. The 3D API made available to plugins is independent of the underlying 3D rendering library (Ogre3D), which can therefore be replaced if need be (or additional rendering libraries may be added). To know more about this, see the following documentation :

• 3D API for visualisation manager information
• The Visualisation Context for explanations on the visualisation context available for plugins
• http://www.ogre3d.com for information on Ogre3D, the 3D rendering library used by the OpenViBE kernel to handle 3D scenes.

Other visualisation paradigms using external applications

One of the goals of the OpenViBE platform is to offer the means to combine virtual reality (VR) and novel visualisation approaches with BCI and neurofeedback experiments. To that end, in addition to the built-in visualisation plugins offered by the platform, it is possible to develop external visualisation applications. In such cases, the OpenViBE platform may be seen as an interaction device used to control external VR applications. This is possible thanks to the VRML communication protocol supported by OpenViBE.