WorldViz (Vizard)
By Amedeo Alberio and Kevin Dackow
Description
A software intended to allow you to "build once, deploy everywhere." It claims "Universal VR hardware connectivity supports all HMDs, 3D displays, motion trackers, gloves, and input devices." It has been used for experimentation and research at Stanford, it appears to be less used for commercial reasons.
Tutorial for Hello World (Windows)
Recommended System Requirements
According to a Vizard dev: "While nearly any recently purchased desktop and most laptops more than meet the requirements, here are the absolute minimums needed to run Vizard:"
Window XP SP3 or above
Pentium processor at 1 GHz or higher (Recommended: Dual Core 2 GHz or higher)
OpenGL compatible graphics card (Recommended: nVidia GeForce 6 series with 128 MB or greater)
1 GB RAM (Recommended: 2 GB RAM or greater)
400 MB hard drive space
Metrics
Accessibility: The estimated time for someone to get it up and running
Beginner: No coding or graphics experience | 5+ hours
Intermediate: Some coding or graphics experience |2 hours
Advanced: Both coding and graphics experience | 1 hours
Expert: A lot of experience with computer graphics | 1 hours
Power: The engine's power - i.e. how much one can do with this
High: It is extremely good to get a really quick VR environment up and running quickly. It interacts very easily with all the most common VR Hardware which makes running your 3D environemnt in VR really easy.
Usage: Evaluation of software's use for the following purposes
Art - Since it is a great prototyping tool (given the development speed) it could be used by artist to quickly create their ideas in VR without much overhead
Game design - Could be used to create games, but doesn't have the maturity of Unity
Science - Useful to create 3d environment to conduct behavioural tests (This is how it is used in many research labs)
Summary:
Vizard was easy to pick up, and worked relatively quickly in VR.