Interfacing with your C code

The provided C SDK / API is not as well integrated as it could be. We had to modify one of the provided SDK include (.h) files in order for it to compile under a W32 console application environment. The original API files depend on some Microsoft MFC components, which caused integration problems with our own code. The API should be more general and allow easy compilation with no Microsoft specific dependencies. This could be an annoyance to some developers. Luckily, the SDK sources are distributed with the VHand, making it easier to fix such problems if encountered.

Software drivers

This is probably the point that showed to be the most deceiving during our tests. The software drivers provided by the manufacturer showed instability signs such as causing other running applications to crash. Unfortunately, we were unable to find the cause of this instability. The manufacturer was informed of this situation and is actively working on fixing these issues. At the time of this writing, no driver update is available on the manufacturer's web site while they did inform us that they were planning on making an update available as soon as possible. No release date was available as we spoke to them.

The update rate performance issues noted during our tests seems to be tightly linked with the current software driver implementation. We performed many tests using concrete VR applications and noted significant performance problems occurring in circumstances where the host computer CPU usage was high. The VHand flexion data would start to lag up to a point where it was almost non responsive. From what it looked like, the serial port data buffering management seemed to be at cause.

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