OpenSceneGraph/NEWS

OSG News (most significant items from ChangeLog)
================================================

July 2002 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.0.tar.gz

    >>> OpenSceneGraph goes beta - Multitexturing, Occlusion Culling, Particles and much more added!

    This release marks the beginning of the beta phase of the OpenSceneGraph
    development, which means that all the major core features are now
    in the scene graph, and 1.0 is not far away.  Its performance, features 
    and portability already compares very favorably to other scene graphs, 
    both comerical and open source.  

    Multi-texturing support added to osg::StateSet, osg::Geometry, osg::State
    and txp loader.
    
    New osg::Geometry classes which supersedes the old Performer style osg::GeoSet,
    support multi-texturing, and uses sharable osg::Arrays which use
    std::vector<> for data storage and manipulation.

    Shadow volume occlusion culling adding to the core OSG, developed as a
    collobaration between Mike Connell and Robert Osfield. Our implementation
    uses convex planer occluders, with support for holes to allow larger
    and more effective occluders to be used. The approach is software 
    based so it 100% portable, and by culling during the cull traversal 
    both CPU and GPU loads are significantly reduced, making it an extremely 
    powerful feature for large scale urban and indoor visulisation. 

    osgParticle developed by Marco Jez adds support for a range of particle
    effects.
    
    osgGA (Gui Abstraction) library written by Neil Salter adds classes for 
    adapting different GUI toolkits to work with a standard set of manipulators for
    modifying the scene, such as camera and state manipulators.
    
    Support has been added to the plugin architecture to facilitate the
    development of NodeKits - add on libraries which can used directly
    in your code, or loaded indirectly when loading from file.  The 
    later allows you to load a .osg file with text or particle effects
    in them,the plugin architecture automatically loads the required 
    library which supports these features.

    A range of new demos have been as code examples, and to demonstrate
    the range of features that OpenSceneGraph delivers:

        osgoccluder  - demonstrates ocllusion culling, and has a mode
                       which allows the users to interactively create
                       their own convex planer occluders.
        osghud       - how to mix head up display with 3d views.
        osgparticle  - shows the new osgParticle node kit in action.                
        osgprerender - pre renders and scene then textures the result onto
                       an animated flag.
        osgcallback  - examples of the full range of callbacks that you
                       can use to add dynamic behaviors to your scene graph.
        osglight     - a simple example of how to set up spot and position
                       lights in the scene.
        osgclip      - illustrates how to add clip planes to you scene.
        osggeometry  - examples of the different ways to set up primitives
                       and vertex/color/normal and texture attributes in
                       the new osg::Geometry class.
        osgmultitexture - a simple example which adds a spherical reflection
                        map to a whole scene using the second texture unit
                        if one exists.
        
    osg::Drawable::PrimtiveFunctor has also been added to allow querrying 
    of primitive data with Drawables subclasses without requiring knowledge 
    of the types of Drawable subclasses that exists.  This decoupling makes
    it a very powerful and flexible utility.


26th April 2002 - OpenSceneGraph-0.8.45.tar.gz

    >>> Support added for Solaris, texture cube mapping & muliple projections.
   
    The OpenSceneGraph now has a new Makefile system which supports all Unix
    compilation including the new addition to the family - Solaris!  

    OpenSceneGraph welcomes Solaris to the list of supported platforms.  This
    release puts all of the OpenSceneGraph functionality at the fingertips of
    Sun Microsystem's customers and developers.  Solaris users can now have
    the benefit of a high performance scene graph for visual simulation, 
    virtual reality, scientific visualization, CAD, and architectural 
    walk-throughs.  Many thanks to Sun for providing resources for the port.
    
    Additional html documentation has been added to the distribution to 
    make it easier to get an understanding of scene graph technology and
    the project itself and how to make use of it.  

    Support has also been added for OpenGL's texture cube mapping which
    is ideal for accurate environmental reflections and much more.
    
    The scene graph has been extended to allow multiple projection (via
    the new osg::Projection node) and viewports within one scene graphs, 
    this makes it much easier to set up head up displays, and we have 
    an example to demonstrate how easy it is - osghud.
    
    The osgUtil::CullVisitor and osgUtil::SceneView has been revamped 
    removing the dependency on osg::Camera, which is now simply an
    option for SceneView rather than a requirement.  This allows users
    to set the camera entirely with the scene graph or create their own
    camera classes and use them with SceneView.  The existing osg::Camera
    has also been simplified as support for setting projection and
    modelview matrices have been moved out to the cull traversal.
    
    Several sets of node callbacks have been added, including a Cull 
    NodeCallback on each Node, ComputeTransformCallback on Transform
    Nodes, EvaluateLODCallback on LOD nodes, ComputeBillboardCallback
    on Billboard nodes.  These make it my easier to customize the 
    scene graphs behavior at runtime.
    
    osg::Image::readPixels() and support for writing .bmp files has been
    added which has made it easy to add screen capture the any OpenSceneGraph
    application.  This feature is demonstrated in the scene graph viewer
    which comes with the distribution - just press 'O' to output a screenshot.
    
    Finally, include/osg/MemoryManager has been added which overrides new
    and delete for debug builds. The override new and delete track allocations
    and deallocations, ensure they are matched, checked for memory under and
    overruns, and outputs a memleaks.log file on the results of executing
    your applications.  This help track down a number of memory leaks and
    unmatched new and deletes within the OpenSceneGraph and should make
    it easier to do with users applications as well.
    
    All in all, the OpenSceneGraph is now more portable, easier to 
    customize, cleaner and more robust.  Beta release and 1.0 is now not 
    far away!
    

24th February 2002 - osg-0.8.44.tar.gz

    >>> Support added for Mac OSX, Cygwin and MinGW, and new TerraPage loader.
    
    The major item for this release is the completion of the Mac OSX port,
    thanks to Phil Atkin and others for making this happen.
    
    Also added to support for Cygwin and MinGW builds which gives Windows
    users a free and robust alternative to the Visual C++, which we
    have Norman Vine to thank.
    
    Funtionality wise there has been a great deal of work behind the scenes
    putting in place a flexible and extensible framework for handling 
    transform nodes, users can now extend the osg::Transform node through
    subclassing or via callbacks.  This work will underpin future work
    on moving camera setup into the scene graph, and environmental effects
    such as cloud layers, ground planes, stars and earth sky implementations
    which are planned for the next release.
    
    Callbacks and virtual methods have also been added to the osg::LOD & 
    osg::Billboard to allow users to customize their behavior.  Draw 
    callbacks have also been added to allow customization of osg::Drawables
    at runtime.
    
    The Open Flight .flt loader has undergone a number of improvements
    including support for instancing and billboards.
    
    New TerraPage (.txp) loader and OpenDX writer (.dx) plugins have been added.
    
    Support for the clone operation on osg::Object's has been expanded
    to allow cloneType() - a simple clone an blank object of the same type,
    and clone(CopyOp&) where CopyOp is a functor which allows users to
    specify the deep copy vs shallow copying of object data.
    

2nd January 2002 - osg-0.8.43.tar.gz

    >>> Support for TrueType text, Stereo out of the box, and much more.
    
    Since the last release the OSG has moved to CVS based developments so
    many users will have seen gradual increments in functionality and changes
    to the API. Whereas a the leap from 0.8.42 to 0.8.43 is actually quite
    significant is likely to require code changes as several significant parts
    of the API have evolved to a more mature state.
    
    The most significant new functionality is the addition of the osgText
    library which provides support for true type font rendering, as textured,
    polygonal, pixmap, bitmap and 3D fonts.
    
    We now have new osg::Matrix implementation which cleans up its interface.
    Also all angular paramters are now based on radians rather than degrees
    as before (and as in Performer), this has been done to be more consistent
    with the basic trignometric functions and standard maths conventions.
    
    Scene graph optimization has been added which can boost performance
    on some database by as much as an order of magnititude, this is 
    particularily noticable in .flt based databases.  Display list performance
    has also been boosted on NVidia based machines thanks to changing the
    compilation and execution of display list into two seperate operations.
    
    App callbacks are now supported on all Nodes, and there now a proper 
    app traversal which can be used to animate the scene.
    
    Stereo support has been added into the osgUtil::SceneView which allows
    quad buffered/anaglyphic stereo to enabled easily for almost all OSG
    applications without code modifications - simple set environmental
    variable or pass in appropriate arguments and your app will render in
    stereo!

    src/Demos/osgcluster has been added to demonstrate how easy it is
    to set up a graphics cluster across a standard networked PC's.

    There have been many minor code changes to fix bugs and address 
    performance bottlenecks or to improve extensibility was, representing
    a significant step towards API maturity and a beta release which is 
    now not far away.


9th August 2001 - osg-0.8.42.tar.gz

    >>> New osgWX library for integration of OSG with wxWindows apps.

    This release sees a relatively minor number of enhancements over
    0.8.41, the most significant being the new osgWX library and wxsgv
    demo written by Ben Discoe.
    
    Also from Brede Johansen in this release is the improvements in support for older
    .flt (Open Flight) files such versions 12 & 13.  Previously only version
    15.6 files had been tested and developed to. 
    
    Last but by no means least, several bug fixes related to view frustum
    culling have been made.


25th July 2001 - osg-0.8.41.tar.gz

    >>> Support added for multi-pass and multi-stage rendering including Impostors. 

    The key feature developed is a highly flexible framework for multi-pass and
    multi-stage rendering techniques.  Unlike most scene graphs and games
    engines the OSG has as dynamic framework which automatically configures 
    itself at runtime.

    Building ontop of the new framework's multi-stage rendering capabilities,
    support for Impostors (hirachical image caching) has been integrated into
    the core scene graph  library making extremely easy to take advantage of
    this advanced rendering techinque - normally only seen in research papers.
    Check out osgimpostor demo to see how easy it is to add osg::Impostor 
    nodes to your own models. Impostors are particularily effective are 
    reducing scene complexity whilest minimizing the visual impact, making it
    ideal for scenes with large numbers of complex objects such as a city
    scene, or a dense forest.
    
    Taking advantage of the new framework's multi-pass rendering capabilities
    is osgreflect demo which illustrates how to achieve planar relfections
    using the stencil buffer and multi-pass rendering.
    
    The cool thing about both the osgreflect and osgimpostor demos is that
    there is no hardwiring to achieve the results, the scene graph stores
    all the information neccessary to specify the number and type of rendering
    passes, and the framework handles the rest behind the scenes.  This also
    makes it very easy to add these advanced rendering techinques to your
    own applications as everything is cleanly encapsulated with 
    osgUtil::SceneView.

    New loaders have been added to support .lwo (Light Wave), .obj 
    (Alias Wavefront) and .dw (Design Workshop) 3D file formats making it 
    even easier to compose your own worlds from models sourced from the
    web or your own.
    
    osg::Camera has been totally revamped and now supports asymetric
    and othographics projections in addition to the symetrical perspective
    projections.

    And finally, support for texture subloading has been added to osg::Texture
    and osg::Image.  This allows textures to be updated dynamically, and
    has already been used for mpeg video playback!   


19th May 2001 - osg-0.8.40.tar.gz

    >>> Project lead, Robert Osfield, makes full-time commitment to OSG.

    This is the first full release since project lead, Robert Osfield, made
    a move to pursue the OSG's development full-time.  This commitment has
    been made to bring the API rapidly towards maturity, and to provide 
    high quality support and consultancy services.  Please contact
    robert@openscenegraph.com if you have any queries.

    This release marks a significant step forward in the maturity of the 
    API, with several major changes to the library in the areas of state
    handling, database support, and portability.

    To improve the extensibility of the OSG's handling of OpenGL state,
    new classes have been introduced to replace the previous hardwired
    state handling classes.  The new classes also allow improved state
    sorting and lazy state updating which boosts both cull traversal
    and particularly draw traversal performance. 

    To improve the modularity, interopability and conceptual clarity the
    support classes for database loading have been moved from the core
    osg library into their own osgDB library.  Support for the .osg
    ASCII native database format and the .rgb reader has moved into its own
    osgPlugins library to further the cleanliness of the core library.

    Support has be added for multiple OpenGL context's and hence multi-pipe 
    systems such as sgi's Onyx2, allowing each context to have its own 
    display list and texture objects.

    The culler and rendering support in osgUtil has also been improved, and
    significantly speeded up for complex models.

    Also just in, thanks to Randall Hopper for adding support for FreeBSD :-)

    
23rd March 2001 - osg-0.8.39.tar.gz

    >>> Port of OSG to MacOS underway

    The first steps towards support of MacOS have been taken by Bryan Woods,
    adding Metrowerks project files and adding support for MacOS into the
    core scene graph.  Work still in progress so assistance welcome to 
    complete the task.

    Other major developments have been the addition of two new base classes
    osg::StateAttribute and osg::Drawable which are designed to allow greater
    extensibility of OpenGL state management and primitives.


17th Feburary 2001 - osg-0.8.38.tar.gz

    >>> New 3DS loader added

    The OpenSceneGraph now supports the 3DS file format. This makes
    available a huge range of potential models. Check out
    http://www.3dcafe.com or http://www.3drocketfuel.com for some juice.

10th Feburary 2001 - osg_src-0.8-37.tar.gz

    >>> Texture compression now supported

    The OpenSceneGraph now provides support for ARB and S3TC texture
    compression. This allows more textures to be loaded onto graphics
    card memory, resulting in happier users and a better world in which
    to live.

    This release also sees the addition of a simple hang gliding flight sim
    demo.

25th January 2001 - osg_src-0.8-35.tar.gz

    >>> Anisotropic texturing now supported <i>and</i> loading of gzip compressed files

    Anisotropic texturing provides for the next step in quality texturing 
    filtering above tri-linear and is especially effective when viewing
    texture surfaces at shallow angles.

    Also added in this release is on-the-fly support for loading gzipped
    (.osgtgz, .tgz) and zipped (.zip) database files.  This features allows
    users to store whole databases (models and textures) in a single
    tar ball and unpack them automatically on running the osg.  This
    is ideal for browsing the web.

22nd December 2000 - osg_src-0.8-33.tar.gz

    >>> Support added for OpenGL vertex arrays, and several key image loaders.
    
    Support for OpenGL vertex arrays has been added to improve performance,
    particularly accelerating PC based graphics.

    Also added is support gif, jpeg, pic, tga, tiff image formats via
    dynamic plugins.

8th Decemeber 2000 - osg_src-0.8-32.tar.gz

    >>> New high resolution, low latency timer class - osg::Timer.

    Real-time graphics relies upon accurate timers for updating physics
    simulations and managing constant framerates.  The OSG now provides
    osg::Timer which, when supported, takes advantage of hardware timers.


18th November 2000 - osg_src-0.8-29.tar.gz

    >>> Support for detail drawing with osg::PolygonOffset.

    Rendering of polygons which overlay underlying geometry, such
    as white lines on a runway, can now be achieved utilizing the
    new osg::PolygonOffset which encapsulates glPolygonOffset to 
    avoid z fighting which otherwise hampers such detailing.

10th November 2000 - osg_src-0.8-28.tar.gz

    >>> New Open Flight .flt loader!

    Thanks to Brede Johansen submission of .flt loader, the OSG can now
    read Open Flight .flt databases.

3rd November 2000 - osg_src-0.8-26.tar.gz

    >>> Driving and Flight modes have been added to viewers.

    osgUtil::DriveManipulator and osgUtil::FlightManipulator have been
    added to allow the scene graph viewer (sgv) and other viewers to 
    support a drive and flying modes.  These modes can be accessed
    in sgv by pressing '2' and '3' respectively ('1' returns to 
    trackball manipulator).  Left mouse button accelerates forward,
    middle stops motion and right deccelerates.