- Software in This Repository
- License
- Support & Mailing Lists
- Getting Binaries and Automated Installation
- Getting the Source Code
- Building COVISE and OpenCOVER
- Building Documentation
- Invoking COVISE
- Source Code Organization
COVISE, the collaborative visualization and simulation environment, is a modular distributed visualization system. As its focus is on visualization of scientific data in virtual environments, it comprises the VR renderer OpenCOVER. COVISE development is headed by HLRS. It is portable to Windows and UNIX. We do regular builds on x86_64 Windows, Linux and macOS.
Also included in this repository are OddLOT, an OpenDRIVE editor, as well as vrmlExp, a VRML97 and X3D exporter for Autodesk 3ds Max.
If not stated otherwise, the source code in this repository is licensed under the LGPL v2.1.
See lgpl-2.1.txt for details.
As a user of COVISE, you might get answers to your questions on the covise-users mailing list. Please direct any questions related to installing/building/using COVISE there.
You can receive notifications of changes to COVISE on the covise-commits list.
If you need OddLOT only, please have a look at https://github.com/hbanzhaf/docker_covise.
There is a Homebrew formula for COVISE. If you have it on your system, then you can simply
brew install hlrs-vis/tap/covise
This will install COVISE, OpenCOVER, and OddLOT with all their dependencies.
Windows binaries, which include COVISE, OpenCOVER and OddLOT, can be found on the COVISE download page. A separate installer for the VRML exporter vrmlExp is also available on the same webpage.
Getting COVISE is as easy as
git clone https://github.com/hlrs-vis/covise.git --recursive
Update your existing copy to the current version by
git pull -r
git submodule sync --recursive
git submodule update --init --recursive # update submodules to latest required version
cd covise
git pull -r #-r requests a rebase of your changes to avoid trivial branching
git submodule update --init --recursive # update submodules to latest required version
The script scripts/install-deps.sh will help you to install the dependencies
provided by your Linux distribution (Debian/Ubuntu and RHEL/CentOS).
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C++ compiler: C++11
On Windows, we currently use Visual Studio 2022 (VC17). GCC 5.3 and newer should work.
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CMake: 3.1 or newer is required, but currently we suggest CMake 3.7 or newer
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XercesC:
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Qt: Qt 5 or 6 is required by the graphical user interface. Not everything, most importantly OddLOT, works with Qt 6 yet.
For Qt5, you need the following modules:
Qt5CoreQt5NetworkQt5XmlQt5WidgetsQt5OpenGLQt5WebKitQt5WebKitWidgetsQt5GuiQt5SvgQt5PrintSupportQt5UiToolsQt5ScriptQt5ScriptTools
On Ubuntu 14.04, you should be able to install the required packages with this command:
sudo apt-get install qttools5-dev qtscript5-dev libqt5scripttools5 libqt5svg5-dev libqt5opengl5-dev libqt5webkit5-dev -
Boost: 1.52 and newer should work, following boost libraries are required:
chronodate-timefilesystemiostreamslocaleprogram-optionsregexserializationsystemthreadWhen any of these are missing, you will only get a generic message, that "Boost" is missing. Thus beware! Ubuntu 14.04:sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev
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Python: Python 3 is required for the GUI vr-prepare and for the scripting interface
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GLEW: Used for OpenGL extension handling in Virvo (direct volume rendering) and OpenCOVER
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OpenSceneGraph: 3.2 or newer is required, 3.4 or newer highly recommended for the VR and desktop renderer OpenCOVER
- JPEG Turbo
- VTK Version 6 or newer is required.
- Flex and Bison Lexer/Parser generators, required to build VRML plugin.
dependencies on Redhat8: dnf -y install xerces-c dnf -y install xerces-c-devel
dnf -y install glibc-static
dnf -y install libXi-devel dnf -y install glibc-utils
dnf -y install glut dnf -y install glut-devel dnf -y install boost dnf -y install boost-devel
dnf -y install cmake
dnf -y install cmake3
dnf -y install qt5-qttools-devel dnf -y install qt5-qtscript-devel dnf -y install qt5-qtsvg-devel dnf -y install qt5-qttools-static dnf -y install glew-devel dnf -y install libtiff-devel dnf -y install qt5-qtquickcontrols dnf -y install qt5-qtdeclarative-devel dnf -y install qt5-qtlocation qt5-qtlocation-devel
dnf -y install boost-chrono dnf -y install boost-date-time dnf -y install boost-filesystem dnf -y install boost-iostreams dnf -y install boost-locale dnf -y install boost-program-options dnf -y install boost-regex dnf -y install boost-serialization dnf -y install boost-system dnf -y install boost-thread dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install qt5-qttools-static dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install libGLEW dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install glew-devel
dnf install http://repo.okay.com.mx/centos/8/x86_64/release/okay-release-1-1.noarch.rpm dnf install gcc-gfortran dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install libstdc++-static dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install boost-static dnf install python3-pyqt5-sip dnf install fuse-devel
CMake will show lists of met and unmet optional and required dependencies. You should check those and install additional prerequisites as needed.
COVISE is set up to automatically search for third party libraries in subdirectories of a directory pointed to by the environment variable EXTERNLIBS. You should install e.g. OpenSceneGraph into $EXTERNLIBS/openscenegraph, and it will be discovered during the build process.
cd covise
source .covise.sh #set environment variables
make #invoke cmake followed by make
This command sequence sets environment variables necessary while building
COVISE, invokes cmake for the COVISE project, and builds COVISE with
OpenCOVER.
After an initial build, it is possible to invoke make from within
subdirectories of covise/src.
No installation is required: you can use COVISE directly from the build tree.
cd covise
source .covise.sh #set environment variables
COVISE_CMAKE_OPTIONS=-DCOVISE_BUILD_ONLY_COVER=ON make #invoke cmake with provided options followed by make
cd covise
source .covise.sh #set environment variables
COVISE_CMAKE_OPTIONS=-DCOVISE_BUILD_ONLY_ODDLOT=ON make #invoke cmake with provided options followed by make
Also on Windows, you should work from a command prompt:
REM set COVISEDIR to location of your COVISE checkout
set COVISEDIR=c:/src/covise
REM set EXTERNLIBS to correct location of all your dependancies
set EXTERNLIBSROOT=c:\src\externlibs
cd %COVISEDIR%
REM call winenv.bat with appropriate archsuffix for debug or release (tamarau for Visual Studio 2012 and zebu for 2015)
call %COVISEDIR%\winenv.bat zebuopt
mkdir build.covise
cd build.covise
cmake-gui ..
REM open Visual Studio - either directly or with the button from CMake GUI
devenv
To create a permanent link to a covise command prompt edit and execute Scripts/installCoviseCommandPrompt.bat
This is an experimental alternative to Visual Studio. You need VS Code with the C/C++ Extension Pack and the CMake Tools expansions installed. You also need the MSVC compiler (with ATL support) and one of the supported generators (Ninja, Visual Studio). An additional dependency is https://github.com/nlohmann/json which should be installed like COVISE's other dependencies in the EXTERNLIBS directory. To configure and build COVISE:
open the COVISE directory with VS Code
use the command palette (ctrl + shift + p) -> Tasks: Run Task -> Configure COVISE
fill in requested information
select a compiler via the CMake extension (button in the bottom bar or via the command pallete -> CMake: Select a Kit)
run CMake with a build configuration (button in the bottom bar or via the command pallete -> CMake: Configure)
build (button in the bottom bar or via the command pallete -> CMake: Build)
After this setup VS Code's default integrated terminal is configured to load the environment required to work with COVISE.
Additionally debug configurations to launch COVISE and OpenCOVIER or to attach to a process are provided under VS Code's debug section. InteliSense should be enabled if you are using a generator that can export compile commands (Ninja).
You can influence which parts of COVISE are built by editing CMake settings in
${COVISEDIR}/${ARCHSUFFIX}/build.covise/CMakeCache.txt.
This might help you work around build problems.
cd ${COVISEDIR}/${ARCHSUFFIX}/build.covise
ccmake ../..
COVISE_BUILD_ONLY_COVER: build only the OpenCOVER VR/desktop renderer without the COVISE visualization pipelineCOVISE_BUILD_ONLY_ODDLOT: build only the road editor OddLOTCOVISE_BUILD_DRIVINGSIM: enable the driving simulator components of OpenCOVERCOVISE_USE_VIRVO: disable support for direct volume renderingCOVISE_USE_CUDA: disable use of CUDACOVISE_CPU_ARCH: set optimization for the CPU in your computer
After changing any of these settings, you have to restart the build process.
You can also provide initial CMake options by adding them to the environment COVISE_CMAKE_OPTIONS before calling make.
COVISE retrieves documentation from the web server at HLRS. But you also can build the documentation locally. You need the following tools:
- pdflatex
- latex2html
- doxygen
- graphviz
- epstopdf
Then you can:
cd ${COVISEDIR}/doc
make
Add .../covise/bin to your PATH.
covise
COVISE can be used without installation, provided you take the same steps as for building:
REM set COVISEDIR to location of your COVISE checkout
set COVISEDIR=c:/src/covise
REM set EXTERNLIBS to correct location of all your dependancies
set EXTERNLIBSROOT=c:\src\externlibs
cd %COVISEDIR%
REM call winenv.bat with appropriate archsuffix for debug or release (tamarau for Visual Studio 2012 and zebu for 2015 Update 3, 2017 or 2019)
call %COVISEDIR%\winenv.bat zebuopt
covise
opencover
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cmake: cmake files -
doc: documentation and tools for creating documentation -
config: configuration examples -
scripts: support scripts for building COVISE -
share: architecture independent files: textures, shaders, example data, ... -
src: source code-
src/3rdparty: 3rd party source code -
src/tools: various programs related to building or using COVISE -
src/kernel: COVISE core libraries -
src/sys: COVISE core executables -
src/module: COVISE visualization modules (algorithms) -
src/OpenCOVER: VR renderer with its plug-ins -
src/oddlot: OpenDRIVE road editor OddLOT
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