The Vision Egg 1.0 is a free, open source software library for producing visual stimuli for use in vision research experiments.

Website: www.visionegg.org

= What is the Vision Egg? =

The Vision Egg is based on OpenGL, enabling hardware-accelerated drawing on Windows, Mac OS X, linux, and other operating systems. It is capable of generating many stimuli in realtime, enabling closed-loop and gaze-contingent experiments. The library can utilize 3D projection geometry so that wide-field stimuli such as sinusoidal gratings or panoramic images may be specified in angular units and appropriately distorted for flat or other displays. The library comes with numerous demonstration programs which provide a 'hands-on' way to learn its capabilities. The Vision Egg is written in the Python computer language utilizing several third party modules, all of which are free, open source software. Additional software is available, such as a Python implementation of the popular QUEST Bayesian adaptive psychometric method by Watson and Pelli and Pylink, an interface for the EyeLink eyetrackers from SR Research.

= What is new in this release? =

Release 1.0 comes after 2 years of beta-testing by laboratories around the world. Since the release of version 0.9.9, the following changes have been made:

• Major enhancements to the ephys server/GUI code to use normal (or slightly modified) demo scripts in this environment were done by Imran Ali and Lachlan Dowd in the lab of David O'Carroll at the University of Adelaide.
• An initial patch for stereo support sent by Yuichi Sakano and Kevin J. MacKenzie at York University.
• Parallel port enhancements by Hubertus Becker, University of Tübingen.
• Arrow and FilledCircle stimuli by Hubertus Becker, University of Tübingen.
• DaqKeyboard and ResponseControl by Hubertus Becker, University of Tübingen.
• Full screen anti-aliasing support (FSAA) by Mark Halko, Boston University.
• Various patches by Tony Arkles (University of Saskatchewan), including a suggestion to separate camera motions from the GL_PROJECTION matrix and put them in the GL_MODELVIEW matrix, where they belong.
• Patch for VISIONEGG_SYSTEM_DIR by Nick Knouf, MIT.
• Added win32_vretrace.WaitForRetrace() (but it's not used for much, yet)
• Enhancements to EPhys Server/GUI sequencer
• Added 'lat-long rectangle' to available 3D masking windows
• Moved controller.CONSTANTS into FlowControl module namespace
• Numerous bugfixes

For further information, or to download the Vision Egg, visit www.visionegg.org