OpenHaptics Academic Edition (OHAE) FAQs

If you cannot find the answers in the FAQs please visit the Developer Support Center.

• What is the OpenHaptics Academic Edition (OHAE)?
• Is a node-locked license key required for OHAE?
• Is there a functional difference between OHAE and the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit?
• Are the OpenHaptics toolkit and OHAE guaranteed to have the same functionality in the future?
• Does OHAE come with Developer Support Center (DSC) access?
• Does OpenHaptics Academic Edition come with access to SensAble technical support by phone or email?
• What is a qualified academic institution?
• If an academic institution bought the OpenHaptics toolkit recently, and they're eligible to download OHAE, can they get a refund on the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit they purchased?
• Is OHAE available for Linux® and Mac OS® X?
• What if a commercial customer is using OHAE?
• What if there is a company that is a spin off from a university. Can that company use OHAE?
• What if a commercial venture is writing OpenHaptics code for a university. Does the commercial entity have to get a deployment agreement from SensAble, or can they just deploy on OHAE?
• Does OHAE mean that the cost of the PHANTOM Omni Developer Kit for universities is the cost of the commercial PHANTOM Omni Developer Kit minus the cost of the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit?
• Can I buy a PHANTOM Omni without the OpenHaptics toolkit for less than the usual PHANTOM Omni Developer Kit price?
• Can a university distribute the OpenHaptics DLLs (hd.dll and hl.dll) from OHAE for a software project that is being distributed?
• What PHANTOM devices work with OHAE?
• Suppose a user writes an application for OHAE and then wants to run it on a commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit, or vice-versa. Will this work?

What is the OpenHaptics™ Academic Edition (OHAE)?
The OpenHaptics Academic Edition (OHAE) is a version of the OpenHaptics toolkit. OHAE is available for download, free of charge, from the SensAble Developer Support Center (DSC). OHAE is only available for people from qualified academic institutions. OHAE is not available to everyone.

Is a node-locked license key required for OHAE?
No. There are no license keys for OHAE. This enables OHAE to be used in lab and classroom environments where PHANTOM® devices are moving from computer to computer.

Is there a functional difference between OHAE and the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit?
No. Currently there is no difference in the functionality of OHAE vs. the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit, other than that OHAE does not require a license key.

Are the OpenHaptics toolkit and OHAE guaranteed to have the same functionality in the future?
No. Although at this point OHAE and the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit are functionally equivalent, there is no guarantee that this will continue to be the case in the future.

Does OHAE come with Developer Support Center (DSC) access?
Yes. A registered user of OHAE will have access the DSC for 1 year. At the end of that year, the user can register again to download OHAE and for another year of DSC access if they are still associated with a qualified academic institution.

Does OpenHaptics Academic Edition come with access to SensAble technical support by phone or email?
No. If a user wants phone or email support, they will have to buy a maintenance contract.

What is a qualified academic institution?
To be eligible to download OHAE, users must be affiliated with an educational institution that has purchased products from SensAble Technologies, Inc. If a new academic institution wants OHAE, they must first buy a SensAble product such as the PHANTOM Omni Developer Kit or a PHANTOM device

If an academic institution bought the OpenHaptics toolkit recently, and they're eligible to download OHAE, can they get a refund on the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit they purchased?
No.

Is OHAE available for Linux® and Mac OS® X?
Yes. OHAE is available for OS X and for supported distributions of Linux. OHAE for OS X is only supported on the PowerPC processor. OS X support is not available for Intel processors. We support Red Hat Fedora Core 1, 2, 3, and 4, and Suse 9.1 through 9.3, with experimental support for Suse 9.4.

What if a commercial customer is using OHAE?
That is a violation of the software license.

What if there is a company that is a spin off from a university. Can that company use OHAE?
No. Commercial organizations may not use OHAE. That is a violation of the software license. Commercial organizations must use the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit.

What if a commercial venture is writing OpenHaptics code for a university? Does the commercial entity have to get a deployment agreement from SensAble, or can they just deploy on OHAE?
Commercial organizations deploying an application, whether to a university or to another commercial organization, must get a deployment agreement from SensAble.

Does OHAE mean that the cost of the PHANTOM Omni Developer Kit for universities is the cost of the commercial PHANTOM Omni Developer Kit minus the cost of the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit?
No. The educational pricing for the PHANTOM Omni Developer Kit applies in this case.

Can I buy a PHANTOM Omni without the OpenHaptics toolkit for less than the usual PHANTOM Omni Developer Kit price?
No. PHANTOM Omni devices are only sold with the following SensAble products: FreeForm Modeling system, ClayTools system, or the PHANTOM Omni Developer Kit.

Can a university distribute the OpenHaptics DLLs (hd.dll and hl.dll) from OHAE for a software project that is being distributed?
No. The OHAE license does not allow distribution of the DLLs. The recipient of the OHAE-based application will have to register and download their own copy of OHAE.

What PHANTOM devices work with OHAE?
OHAE currently supports the same set of PHANTOM devices as the commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit. It is possible that at some point in the future there will be a PHANTOM device that is not supported by OHAE, but there are no plans for such a device at this time.

Suppose a user writes an application for OHAE and then wants to run it on a commercial version of the OpenHaptics toolkit, or vice-versa. Will this work?
Currently, yes. You can run an application written with OHAE on a system with a commercial development kit version of the OpenHaptics toolkit with no changes to your executable. Similarly, you can run an application written with a commercial version of the OpenHaptics development kit on a system with OHAE installed without changing your program. However, this is no guarantee of compatibility between future versions of OHAE and the commercial OpenHaptics toolkit. Nor is there a guarantee of compatibility between different releases of OHAE.

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