Page Contents

Prerequisites: Hardware and Operating System

Hardware

• You need a physical computer platform. Virtual Machine setup is not possible.

• At least 32 GB RAM, higher is better

• At least 50 GB disk (SSD or NVMe setup is better)

• Token system requires to keep 1 USB port (USB-3 is not mandatory)

• amd64 (x86_64) family CPU:

  • both AMD and Intel are OK (higher frequency is better), please check compatibility of recent AMD CPU with Linux

• NVIDIA Graphics card with more than 8 GB of VIDEO RAM

• Network access through Ethernet

Because 4DV-Software depends on many Ubuntu standard packages, we highly recommend to dedicate a whole computer platform to its use.

Internet access

Once installed, 4DV-Software can run standalone, but Internet access is required for the following uses:

• GPS ephemeris system, to fetch data on public servers

• GIS based environment generation, to fetch data on public servers, from the desired URLs

• Software update, usually to get Linux packages from official Ubuntu package repositories

• For licensing reasons, please note your computer will have to be synchronized to the Internet frequently (usually every month) to be in sync with the world time from a public Internet time-server. If the token system complains about time desynchronization, it’s then mandatory to connect to the Internet to retrieve a valid time, and your programs will not be able to run until that. Note Internet time is only required when a synchronization event occurs, once this is finished, Internet is not required any more to run the programs.

Operating system: Ubuntu 24.04

It’s important to keep a backup of the following 4DV-Software related directories.

• You can follow this guide for a 24.04 Setup: https://phoenixnap.com/kb/install-ubuntu-24-04, use desktop version of Ubuntu, if the computer platform is not dedicated to leave your office, we strongly recommend to not use disk encryption.

Prerequisites: Software

The following points are required to make 4DV-Software operate correctly:

Setup ROS 2 jazzy:

• ROS jazzy is required to run ROS interfaces
  Please refer to: https://docs.ros.org/en/jazzy/Installation/Ubuntu-Install-Debs.html

  • We recommend skipping the Set locale section

  • You must set up ros-jazzy-desktop

Setup ROS special packages:

• After ROS 2 jazzy has been installed

• For complete message compatibility, you must set up the following ROS packages:

Setup NVIDIA drivers: the preferred way is to simply use:

• In section Additional drivers, check one device version with [proprietary + tested], then when done, you must reboot to apply driver change

• With very recent NVIDIA devices, or on specific laptops configurations, we recommend to set up latest drivers from NVIDIA website: https://www.nvidia.fr/Download/index.aspx?lang=en

• You must reboot after NVIDIA drivers setup to load them.

Install or Upgrade 4DV-Software programs

Please check that you have an Internet connection available on your computer.

Login to a graphical session, retrieve our distribution tarball, then extract it:

Go into unpacked directory:

4DV-Software requires official packages from public Ubuntu repositories. To prevent any problem, the following configuration must be verified before running prerequisites.sh:

Please start the Ubuntu update manager (admin password required):

In the «Ubuntu software» panel, please check the items highlighted in the following snapshot:

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Then, in the Updates panel, please set the following item :

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Then, in the Other Software panel, please check the following item :

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Once done, you can quit the manager.

You can then run prerequisites.sh, to install the required packages:

Then, install 4dv-software programs:

Please note, install.sh will stop token-server if running, so it’s recommended to save your work in 4DV tools and close them.

Please note, install.sh will replace your existing install if you already have a previous version of 4DV-Software.

At the end of the process, install.sh will ask you to run 4DV-TOKEN MANAGER. It’s better to use ‘y’ to finish specific setup when you’re installing 4DV-TOKEN MANAGER for the first time.

Post-install instructions

Gnome Session Flashback

You must regenerate your scenarios with 4DV-EDITOR before re-running simulations.

Please note, 4DV-SIMULATOR on first run will ask you to finish specific configurations (sudo password is required).

If you had CustomPlugins or CustomProtocols, you’ll have to rebuild them all to link with the newly installed libraries, and prevent any binary incompatibility.

If you didn’t set it up already, we recommend using gnome-session-flashback desktop:

Please change the desktop environment by clicking to the «settings» button at Ubuntu login page:

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CPUFreq indicator

If you didn’t set it up already, we recommend using indicator-cpufreq to switch your CPU to performance governor, thus giving maximum speed to programs and improving simulator real time status:

Then you can set up performance governor like this:

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Specific devices setup

CAN Device

To set up a CAN interface, please follow this guide:

https://wiki.rdu.im/_pages/Application-Notes/Software/can-bus-in-linux.html

https://elinux.org/Bringing_CAN_interface_up

Blackmagic devices

To operate Blackmagic devices, you must set up the BlackMagic Desktop Video Linux driver from Blackmagic website, compatible with your current kernel.

Report a problem in 4DV tools

Bug reports

If you encounter crashes when using a program, bug-report system will generate bugreport4d-.zip files in /tmp directory. You can send these files to our teams (Please contact us by e-mail: support@4d-virtualiz.com), they can give us much information of what happened so a bugfix can be done easier.

Please note /tmp directory is removed when computer platform is shutdown.

Problem: what to do?

You can take a screenshot with Ubuntu tools easily, then send us the problem. You can also set up kazam software to make a video of an issue use case, so we can identify quickly your problem.

Licence initialization or upgrade

From 22.01, 4DV-Software comes with a USB dongle licence system. You must have one with tokens to use 4DV-programs. USB dongles are delivered as a separate package. At arrival, USB dongles will not contain any token. You must initialize the dongle with the following procedure:

1. Plug the USB key labelled “Main Key”

2. Run token-manager with the command: $4DV_INSTALL/bin/secu/token-manager

3. Then follow these steps:

   1. Stop the server if it’s running

   2. Click “Update tokens”

   3. Click “Prepare update” : the procedure will generate a .4dvtokm FILE

   4. Send the generated FILE.4dvtokm to 4D-Virtualiz at support@4d-virtualiz.com

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Then restart the server and your upgraded tokens will be available!

You can find additional information about USB dongle system (licence sharing between computers and token reservation) with the “Help” entry of 4DV-TOKEN MANAGER program.