1. Introduction

Initial Text.

The Phantom is an interaction device mostly used in VR environments. In addition to serving as a tracker, it also supports haptic force feedback, enabling the user to feel surfaces and structures in a virtual environment. The driver has been developed by Zdenek Kabelac at the HCI-Lab (University of Brno, Czech Republic) out of the need for a realtime OS environment. Sensable's own drivers support MS Windows NT / 2000 and IRIX only. This document should be able to help you if you think about getting your linux box to run a PHANToM. It is as of now not intended to be a complete programming reference.

Please be sure to refer to the phantom RTLinux driver website at http://decibel.fi.muni.cz/phantom/ for future versions of the driver and this document.

1.1 Copyright

Copyright is a source of much and continuous debate on the LDP mailing list. For more in depth information please consult the Manifesto at the LinuxDoc site. The purpose of having a license is to allow appropriate distribution. You can use any license that meets the Manifesto. What follows is a boilerplate licence.

Copyright (c) 2001 by Zdenek Kabelac, Jan Wurster.

Please freely copy and distribute (sell or give away) this document in any format. It's requested that corrections and/or comments be forwarded to the document maintainer. You may create a derivative work and distribute it provided that you:

• Send your derivative work (in the most suitable format such as sgml) to the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) or the like for posting on the Internet. If not the LDP, then let the LDP know where it is available.
• License the derivative work with this same license or use GPL. Include a copyright notice and at least a pointer to the license used.
• Give due credit to previous authors and major contributors.

If you're considering making a derived work other than a translation, it's requested that you discuss your plans with the current maintainer.

1.2 Disclaimer

Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely at your own risk.

All copyrights are owned by their owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before major installation and backups at regular intervals.

1.3 News

Some documentation info has been released in a miniHowto on the phantom.

Get it from the phantom driver website: phantom drivers & documentation

Also, the latest version of this howto might be available there in a number of formats:

• HTML.
• plain ASCII text.
• SGML source.

1.4 Credits

This documentation was created in the process of getting the phantom at the VRCC of the Fraunhofer Institute, Stuttgart VRCC to run. There are several people without this wouldn't have been possible:

kabi (at) i.am for continuous eMail support .)

1.5 Translations

Sorry, no translations as of yet ...

• German Translation by someone (at) somewhere.de
• Swedish Translation by someone (at) somewhere.se
• French Translation by someone (at) somewhere.fr
• Chinese Translation by someone (at) somewhere.cn
• Italian Translation by someone (at) somewhere.it

Any comments or suggestions can be mailed to our mail addresses: jan.wurster@syrophenium.de kabi@i.am