Prerequisites for Building VR-Forces Applications and Plugins

Before you can build an example or a custom application, you must install the software that VR-Forces depends on and you must configure some environment variables, so that our example project files can find these prerequisites.

You must do the following:

1. Install the version of VR-Link used to build your version of VR-Forces. A VR-Forces developer's license includes a VR-Link developer's license. (VR-Link is not installed with VR-Forces. You must run a separate installer.)
2. Set the environment variable MAK_VRLDIR to the full path to the VR-Link installation (for example, C:\MAK\vrlink5.8).
3. If you are building for HLA, install a supported RTI. We recommend using the MAK High Performance RTI, but RTIs from other vendors are supported as well, as long as they comply with the appropriate versions of the HLA Standards. A VR-Forces license does not include a license for the MAK RTI. However, the MAK RTI allows you to run federations of up to two federates without requiring a license. You can download the MAK RTI at: https://www.mak.com/support/bonus-material.

4. If you are using VC 15 (also known as Visual Studio 2017 or toolset 14.1), you must install the matching Windows SDK version. If you do not, you will get a warning when you try to build the examples.

If you install an RTI, set the environment variable MAK_RTIDIR to the full path to the RTI installation (for example, C:\MAK\makRti4.6).

Once you have installed the required software and set up your environment variables, you will need to make sure your VR-Forces application or plugin project is correctly configured to successfully build. You should do the following:

1. The VR-Forces and VR-Link include directories should be added to your project's Additional Include Directories. If you installed an RTI, this include directory should also be added to the Additional Include Directories.
2. The VR-Forces and VR-Link lib or lib64 directories should be added to your project's Additional Library Directories. If you installed an RTI, this lib directory should also be added to the Additional Library Directories list.
3. You should refer to the example VR-Forces plugins and applications for a list of Additional Dependencies your project will need.

4. You should refer to the example VR-Forces plugins and applications for a list of Preprocessor Definitions your project will need.

Note

The VR-Forces example project files look for RTI header files in a directory called "include" directly under $(MAK_RTIDIR), and look for RTI link libraries in a directory called "lib" directly under $(MAK_RTIDIR). If you are using an RTI that does not follow that directory-naming convention, you may need to change the project settings in order for the build system to find your RTI headers and libraries. Please reference the existing VR-Forces example plugins and applications for additional dependencies, compiler flags and libraries needed for your project.