OpenSceneGraph/NEWS

OSG News (most significant items from ChangeLog)
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14th December 2001 - 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.
    
    An new osg::Matrix class has been implemented which cleans 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, bottlenecks or 
    hinderances to extensibility have been addressed, there are too many 
    to list, but it does represent 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.