Problems with DsRenderer.ax

I would recommend that you do ARToolKit development on Linux. There are many hassles one can face while compiling and trying to build ARToolKit for Windows. I couldn't find a V4L driver for my cheap camera and hence I was stuck with no option but to develop on Windows.

For those of you who are stuck with Windows like me, I suggest you use MS VC++ 2005 or later. VC++ 6.0 has some known bugs with class templates. Once you build and try to run your first AR application you are most likely to get an error like:

"Could not find DsRenderer runtime" or sorts.

ARToolKit depends on DSVideoLib 0.0.8 or higher for video related functions that internally call the VFW or V4L driver. To solve this problem you have to register the DsRenderer.ax as a service. Just open command prompt as administrator, navigate to

C:\Windows\System32\

then type Regsvr32 "path\DsRenderer.ax"

where path is the absolute path to where you contain the file DsRenderer.ax. If you cant find it anywhere, then you are most likely to find it in the "bin" folder of ARToolKit 2.65 version.

Once the service is successfully registered you can run your application smoothly.