Abstract

Considerable time and effort is often required of the vision scientist to go from an idea about visual function to actually collecting data that answers the question. The process can include acquiring expensive hardware and writing software to generate the desired stimuli. In many cases the hardware is to expensive or existing tools lack the flexibility to adequately address the question. We have been designing a flexible tool/platform that simplifies the process of software design and functions on inexpensive video hardware. The platform includes an object oriented visual programming language with many built-in features to simplify the coding tasks common to most vision experiments. The system has multiple levels of user interaction, higher levels providing an abstract visual language for rapid development and lower levels that ensure complete flexibility in the design of experiments. This structure maximizes ease of use yet retains flexibility. To keep the system within the budget of the majority of vision researchers we have elected to develop a generic system which uses off-the-shelf graphics components.

© 1997 Optical Society of America