Hi! I’m a student working on a project for CERI labs. They have a couple of VR scenes setup in ParaView using OpenVR and SteamVR. We have been asked to implement haptic feedback into the controllers during the scenes. One branch of research discovered that SteamVR has an API that should have tools for what we need. I have never worked with an API before, so forgive me if I sound naive here. That said, does anyone know how to access the SteamVR API from a ParaView script? The script would have to run during an animation.
Hi @wgharper,
I guess @mwestphal or @tgalland can have some inputs regarding OpenVR 
Do you mean OpenVR or OpenXR ? SteamVR implements both and both should be usable in this context.
I have never worked with an API before, so forgive me if I sound naive here.
Its just a C++ library with a clearly defined and documented interface
That said, does anyone know how to access the SteamVR API from a ParaView script?
You can’t. ParaView has a XRInterface plugin that can be accessed through the UI but there is no python bindings.
Even if they were, you would not be able to access OpenVR or OpenXR from python anyway.
If I understand well, you are looking to add haptic feedback to interaction in VR in ParaView.
This is a great project but not a small one, and it should be done in the XR interaction layer in VTK, using C++.
Best of luck, we can help guide you if needed.
Thank you, this has allowed us to finally move past this idea and focus on more productive areas of development.
Thank you for replying to my question! In regards to the XR interaction layer in VTK, we’re aware of both XRInterface (and how it is basically OpenVR+XR) and VTK, but we don’t have much understanding of how to interact with either. It seems like XR is responsible for communication from the VR hardware to the rendered scene, but we were also told that the capability for sending information from the scene to the hardware hasn’t been formally established and would require some work on our end. VTK we know less about and will be doing research here next. Any information on where to start would be very useful. We’ve had plugins like CAVE Integration suggested but don’t really know what to do with it (even installing it has been problematic apparently). If you know of any open-source projects that I can get access to that implement some kind of interactive VR experience with ParaView, that would probably help us out a lot. In any case, thanks again for your response!
Hi @wgharper,
I don’t know if you’ve seen these blog posts already, but I’ll link them in case. This one [1] shows interaction basics of HMD-based VR in ParaView, while this earlier one [2] has some information on how to get up and running (including getting hardware, installing steamvr, etc).
Regarding the CAVEInteraction plugin, there shouldn’t be anything to install, as all recent downloadable paraview binaries have it built in by default. But you need a tracking system (e.g. [3]) with at least one controller (and ideally stereo glasses) to get much out of it.
Hope it helps,
Scott
[1] https://www.kitware.com/navigation-basics-in-virtual-reality-with-paraview/
[2] https://www.kitware.com/taking-paraview-into-virtual-reality/
[3] https://ar-tracking.com/en/product-program/dtrack
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