Portability

We are currently supporting 5 different operating systems (Windows NT, Linux, Iris and Solaris) with three different C++ compilers (Visual C++, g++ and Irix CC). In particular, the support of both Unix and Windows environments imposes strong constraints on the choice of the API for the 3D graphics and user interface API. Rather than relying on a high level 3D graphics API such as Open Inventor, we have chosen to directly use OpenGL in order to have a complete control of the platform portability.