Overview

Gamebryo is a 3rd party proprietary rendering engine by Emergent Game Technologies and is provided as binary-only with the Virtual Human Toolkit. The Gamebryo rendering engine itself cannot be modified, but future releases of the toolkit will contain source art and exporters so that new art assets, like characters or backgrounds, can be developed for Gamebryo. The toolkit also contains an open source renderer, Ogre.

Users

Launching Gamebryo

In the Launcher, click the Launch button in the Renderer row (click the Advanced button if you don't see any rows). Be sure to have the Engine parameter set to 'Gamebryo'. A small option screen pops up allowing you to select several graphical settings. The most important ones are:

• Resolution. The higher the resolution, the better the graphics look, but the slower they are.
• Full Screen. By default, Gamebryo starts up as a window. Check if you want the renderer to be full screen.
• Do not show this dialog again. Click this avoid seeing the screen the next time you load Gamebryo. It will use the default settings, or the settings you have saved. In order to have the settings window reappear, delete '\core\vhtoolkitGB\AppSettings.ini'.
• Save settings. Saves the current settings for the next time Gamebryo loads.
• Multisampling (under Advanced). Multisampling smooths hard edges so that individual pixels are less noticeable. The higher the multisampling, the better the graphics look, but the slower they'll be.

Once you're happy with your settings, click OK. Gamebryo should now continue loading.

Navigating in Gamebryo

You can use the W,A,S and D keys to move the camera around. Hit J to toggle mouse look; this allows you to use the mouse to change the direction the camera is facing.

Increasing Framerate

The biggest impact on the framerate is likely dynamic shadows. You can turn this off by hitting the '-' (minus) key. In addition, you can also reduce the graphical options as described above. Finally, you could run Gamebryo full screen on one machine, and all the other components on another.

All Key Commands

• W, move forward
• A, strafe left
• S, move backward
• D, strafe right
• J, toggle mouse look
• X, move the camera to the origins of the coordinate system
• Z, toggle debug information
• -, toggle dynamic shadows

Developers

Message API

Receiving:

• vrAllCall
• vrKillComponent
• PlaySound

Sending:

• vrComponent
• vrProcEnd

Known Issues

• Dynamic shadows in Gamebryo on a nVidia GeForce 7300 GT cause the entire screen to flicker. Dynamic shadows can be disabled with the '-' (minus) key.
• Using the USB hub in the Apple Cinema monitor causes Gamebryo to freeze at start up. Do not plug in the USB cable of the monitor in the computer.

FAQ

See Main FAQ for frequently asked questions regarding the installer. Please use the Google Groups emailing list for unlisted questions.