There are as many ways of creating visual stimuli as there are vision
experimenters. Here I have listed all current solutions that I know
of. If you know of others, let me (astraw@users.sourceforge.net)
know.
At a first instance, check out Hans Strasburger's "Software for
visual psychophysics" webpage, which has much more coverage than
this page. I have here mainly limited listings to projects that
appear to be under active development or support.
The PsychToolbox is a great, free program that uses Matlab to display
stimuli. Historically it is a Mac OS Classic application, but now a
Windows port is available. A native OpenGL Mac OS X version is on its
way. (Source code is available but not open source according to the
Open Source Initiative.)
PsyScript is a Macintosh program for generating stimuli. Free, open
source (GNU Public License). Uses AppleScript and a language based on
ECL (experiment control language).
Psyscope (classic Mac OS) users will be pleased to note Psyscope X,
is being ported to Mac OS X under the GNU GPL.
Presentation Free (for now) Windows based stimulus generation. Uses
DirectX.
WinVis web-based and Matlab based stimulus generation programs.
VSG uses proprietary hardware and software to generate stimuli. It
lacks any hardware-accelerated 3D features.
OpenRT and OpenRT-3D OpenGL stimulus generation. Free, open
source.
PsychoPy uses python and OpenGL together. Free, open source.
PXLab a collection of Java classes for running psychological
experiments. Free.
