The VVL - virtual vision lab - is a educational tool to assist in
	teaching various aspects of robotics/computer vision. It was
	developed as a joint project between Columbia University,
	Lehigh University, Georgia Institute of Technology and funded
	by NSF Combined Research and Curriculuum Development Program,
	Award Number 9315517. Currently it compiles/run only on
	Silicon Graphic workstations equipped with GL/Mentor running
	IRIX 5.3. For a detailed description of the program please see
	the accompanying postscript file: VVL_DOC.{ps,txt} and the
	masters' thesis describing the system vvl.masters.ps
  
Package Contents:
	README - this file
        contents.html - html file that overviews the interactive tutorials
	VVL_DOC.{txt,ps} - an explanation of the capabilities of VVL
	vvl/obj/sgi -  directory containing compilable sources and executables

Installations Options:
	There are two ways to use the system - 
		i) executable only
               ii) compilable source
	The two options have different system requirements and different
	installation procedures. In either case all original source
	code is supplied.

Executable Only:
    System Requirements:
	SGI workstation with Netscape (version 1.1N or greater) installed 
                at /usr/local/bin/netscape OR an environment variable 
		NETSCAPE should be set to the location of the Netscape 
		on your system.
	IRIX 5.3 or greater
	7.4M diskspace - (during instalation 15M are used)

    Installation/Getting Started Instructions:
	1. Move to the "work" directory:
		% cd vvl/obj/sgi
	2. Run the program:
		% vvl

Compilable Source:
    System Requirements:
	SGI workstation equiped with GL, Inventor and Netscape(version 1.1N 
		or greater).
	IRIX 5.3 or greater
	10.5M diskspace - (during instalation 15M are used)
	Xmt Library - available through O'Reilly & Associates:
		"Motif Tools: Streamlined GUI Design and Programming with 
		 the Xmt Library" ISBN 1-56592-044-9  1994
	Xpm Library available by FTP from ftp.x.org  It is public domain
		software. Most likely this is already installed on your 
		system.

    Installation/Getting Started Instructions:

	1. Move to the "work" directory:
		% cd vvl/obj/sgi
	2. Alter the Makefile to specify system specific files:
		LIBDIR, INCDIR, and NETSCAPE
	   These three variables are at the top of the Makefile.
	   LIBDIR should be set to the location of libXmt.a and libXpm.a	
	   INCDIR should be set to the location of directory containing 
                  xpm.h and Xmt include directory
	   NETSCAPE should be set to the path to the system netscape executable.
	3. Build the system:
	   	% make 
	4. Run the program:
		% vvl

    Disk Space Saving Techniques for Multiple Users:
	If many people on your site are going to be compiling and running
	the system, substantial savings can be achieved by having only one
	copy of the help documentation(doc directory), real world image 
	data(real-data dir), vvl system include files (include directory) 
	and system library(lib/sgi directory). These four directories are 
	specified with relative paths in the Makefile as DOCDIR, DATADIR,
	LOCAL_INCDIR, and LOCAL_LIBDIR, respectively. 

Contact/More Info:
	allen@cs.columbia.edu