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Hank HOWTO - Running the Simulator

Quick Info

In the bin/iris4d directory of the hank-sim code, type the following:

./master

A motif window will pop-up.

This will start the simulation running. Make sure you've started the steering wheel process if you plan on using the steering wheel to drive the subject vehicle.

Once the simulator starts, press Z. This will center you at (0,0,0). From there you should see some greenish looking texture grass, with a bluish sky over the horizon. If you don't see this, exit from the simulator and try again (the simulator probably core dumped).

Once the simulator is running there are currently many options that you can use to trigger various modes for the visual process. Here are the basic ones that you will probably want to know:

  • D - drive mode
  • F - fly mode
  • T - trackball mode
  • c - toggle between objects
  • C - toggle between objects (reverse order)
Note: to see a listing of all available options, press SHIFT-/ in the simulator's main screen (the full screen display). This will cause a listing of the various options to be printed to stdout on the window from which you started the simulator.

To leave the simulator, hit ESC, and then type CTL-C in the window from which the simulator was started.

System Resources and the Hank Simulator

Interprocess Communication Resources

The simulator uses shared memory and semaphores to provide quick data access between the various processes. If the simulator crashes unexpectedly these resources may be left on the system. In order to check whether or not you're using any of these resources, type the command:

ipcs

This will return to you a listing of any interprocess communication resources currently being held. If you see any under your userid, you can remove them with the command:

ipcrm [-m SharedMemId] | [-s SemaphoreId] | [-q MessageQueueId]

Here's a shell script which will remove ALL of your shared memory, message queues, and semaphores. Download It

Runaway Processes

The simulator currently uses seven processes to do the necessary work. Sometimes, due to an unexpected crash of the system, these processes may be left around. Periodically, you may want to check the process listings and try to determine if you have any rogue processes on the machine.

Here are the names of the proceses currently used under the simulator: (There are really seven processes, but three of them exist under the sgi_visual process).

  • master
  • dynamics
  • scenario
  • driver_io
  • sgi_visual

Just to warn you... in the old versions equal and prior to release 1.0, the processes were forked off in a slightly poor manner and thus, when you look at the process listing, you may see processes that don't resemble the true names of the simulator processes. You may want to use ps -el to see these processes rather than say ps -elf due to the way the processes are listed.

If you want to scan the processes on an SGI, here's a simple command that can be used to view the process listing according to largest size process.

ps -elf | grep -v "SZ:RSS" | sort +9 -r

Similarly, if you only want to see the top 10 items,

ps -elf | grep -v "SZ:RSS" | sort +9 -r | head -n 10

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Please send comments or questions to The Hank Group
Copyright 1996 - The University of Iowa : Department of Computer Science