= !OpenSceneGraph 2.6 release adds osgWidget library, KdTree intersections, Anti-aliased FBOsand much more. =
PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 25th July 2008 - !OpenSceneGraph Professional Services announces the release of !OpenSceneGraph 2.6, the industry's leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.6 written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets - a real-time visualization tool which eclipses commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality, stability and performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.6 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and FreeBSD operating systems.
=== Open-source development delivers industry-leading features and performance ===
The !OpenSceneGraph 2.6 release is the culmination of 9 years of work by the lead developers and the open-source community that has grown up around the project. The real-time graphics industry and academia embraced it from the very beginning, deploying it in real-world applications, and actively participating in its development, testing and refinement. The end result is a high-quality library with a feature set relevant to application developers' needs.
=== Updates include: ===
* New osgWidget library (still in beta status)
* New KdTree support, with automatic building of KdTrees and intersections with them for high performance intersection testing
* New Anti-aliased FrameBufferObject support
* Improved precision of intersections and camera manipulation
* Improved Alias Wavefront .obj support
* A wide range of build and bug fixes
=== Downloads and Licensing ===
!OpenSceneGraph is open-source so full source code is provided, and can be copied, modified and used free of charge for commercial and non-commercial use. Access to the source allows end users greater flexibility in how they develop, debug and deploy their applications. They gain productivity and freedom by being able to leverage the tool chain in accordance with their own release cycles. Downloads of binaries and source can be found in the [http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Downloads Downloads] section of the openscenegraph.org website.
!OpenSceneGraph is released under the [http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Legal OpenSceneGraph Public License], which is based on the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL), permitting the software to be used free of charge across the full spectrum of commercial and open-source applications. Furthermore, it allows both static and dynamic linking of the !OpenSceneGraph libraries without restricting the licensing of the user's software.
=== !OpenSceneGraph Books now available ===
The !OpenSceneGraph Quick Start Guide is now available in Chinese as well as English, and alongside the Reference Manual books can be found at [http://www.osgbooks.com OsgBooks].
=== Professional support and services ===
!OpenSceneGraph project is backed up with professional services by [http://openscenegraph.com OpenSceneGraph Professional Services], based in Scotland, and [http://www.skew-matrix.com Skew-Matrix] and [http://www.blue-newt.com Blue-Newt Software] both based in the USA, and a range of [wiki:Community/Contractors Contractors] from around the world. Services available include:
* Confidential Professional Support
* Bespoke development
* Consultancy
* Training
=== Community support and contributions ===
The diverse and growing community of over 1900 developers is centred around the public osg-users mailing list, where members discuss how best to use !OpenSceneGraph, provide mutual support, and coordinate development of new features and bug fixes. Members of this community come from many different countries with backgrounds ranging from some of the world's largest aerospace companies, game companies, and visual simulation specialists to university researchers, students and hobbyists.
The !OpenSceneGraph project owes a great deal to the community for its development and support, in particular we wish to thank the [http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Support/Contributors/TwoPointFour 306 individuals] from around the world that have directly contributed to the development and refinement of the !OpenSceneGraph code base.
----
About !OpenSceneGraph:[[BR]]
!OpenSceneGraph Project was founded in September 1999 by Don Burns and Robert Osfield.
Further information, screenshots, downloads, documentation, and support links can be found on the !OpenSceneGraph project website http://www.openscenegraph.org.
About !OpenSceneGraph Professional Services:[[BR]]
!OpenSceneGraph Professional Services, founded by project lead Robert Osfield in April 2001, is based in Callander, Perhshire, Scotland, and provides professional services on top of !OpenSceneGraph. Further information about the services it provides can be found at http://www.openscenegraph.com.
= !OpenSceneGraph 2.4 release adds geometry shaders, multiple render targets, support for terrabyte scale terrain databases, writing to !OpenFlight and much more. =
PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 25th April 2008 - !OpenSceneGraph Professional Services announces the release of !OpenSceneGraph 2.4, the industry's leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.4 written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets - a real-time visualization tool which eclipses commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality, stability and performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.4 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and FreeBSD operating systems.
=== Open-source development delivers industry-leading features and performance ===
The !OpenSceneGraph 2.4 release is the culmination of 9 years of work by the lead developers and the open-source community that has grown up around the project. The real-time graphics industry and academia embraced it from the very beginning, deploying it in real-world applications, and actively participating in its development, testing and refinement. The end result is a high-quality library with a feature set relevant to application developers' needs.
!OpenSceneGraph is open-source so full source code is provided, and can be copied, modified and used free of charge for commercial and non-commercial use. Access to the source allows end users greater flexibility in how they develop, debug and deploy their applications. They gain productivity and freedom by being able to leverage the tool chain in accordance with their own release cycles. Downloads of binaries and source can be found in the [http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Downloads Downloads] section of the openscenegraph.org website.
!OpenSceneGraph is released under the [http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Legal OpenSceneGraph Public License], which is based on the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL), permitting the software to be used free of charge across the full spectrum of commercial and open-source applications. Furthermore, it allows both static and dynamic linking of the !OpenSceneGraph libraries without restricting the licensing of the user's software.
=== !OpenSceneGraph Books now available ===
The !OpenSceneGraph Quick Start Guide is now available in Chinese as well as English, and alongside the Reference Manual books can be found at [http://www.osgbooks.com OsgBooks].
!OpenSceneGraph project is backed up with professional services by [http://openscenegraph.com OpenSceneGraph Professional Services], based in Scotland, and [http://www.skew-matrix.com Skew-Matrix] and [http://www.blue-newt.com Blue-Newt Software] both based in the USA, and a range of [wiki:Community/Contractors Contractors] from around the world. Services available include:
The diverse and growing community of over 1800 developers is centred around the public osg-users mailing list, where members discuss how best to use !OpenSceneGraph, provide mutual support, and coordinate development of new features and bug fixes. Members of this community come from many different countries with backgrounds ranging from some of the world's largest aerospace companies, game companies, and visual simulation specialists to university researchers, students and hobbyists.
The !OpenSceneGraph project owes a great deal to the community for its development and support, in particular we wish to thank the [http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Support/Contributors/TwoPointFour 306 individuals] from around the world that have directly contributed to the development and refinement of the !OpenSceneGraph code base.
----
About !OpenSceneGraph:[[BR]]
!OpenSceneGraph Project was founded in September 1999 by Don Burns and Robert Osfield.
Further information, screenshots, downloads, documentation, and support links can be found on the !OpenSceneGraph project website http://www.openscenegraph.org.
About !OpenSceneGraph Professional Services:[[BR]]
!OpenSceneGraph Professional Services, founded by project lead Robert Osfield in April 2001, is based in Callander, Perhshire, Scotland, and provides professional services on top of !OpenSceneGraph. Further information about the services it provides can be found at http://www.openscenegraph.com.
PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 4th October 2007 - !OpenSceneGraph Professional Services announces the release of !OpenSceneGraph 2.2, the industry's leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.2 written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets - a real-time visualization tool which eclipses commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality, stability and performance. !OpenSceneGraph 2.2 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and !FreeBSD operating systems.
=== Open-source development delivers industry-leading features and performance ===
The !OpenSceneGraph 2.2 release is the culmination of 8 years of work by the lead developers and the open-source community that has grown up around the project. The real-time graphics industry and academia embraced it from the very beginning, deploying it in real-world applications, and actively participating in its development, testing and refinement. The end result is a high-quality library with a feature set relevant to application developers' needs.
=== Updates include: ===
* Improved build support under Windows including versioning of dll's to avoid problems with mixing !OpenSceneGraph versions on a single system.
* Soft Shadows and Parallel Split Shadow Maps now supported.
* Viewer configuration file support
* Writer support for Inventor, OBJ 3D formats
* Writer support for HDR imagery
* Viewer Configuration file support
* Unification of threading models and viewer event handlers so that all now work for both Viewer and !CompositeViewer classes.
* GDAL plugin for support for a wide range of geospatial imagery and digital elevation maps formats.
* A wide range of build and bug fixes.
=== Downloads and Licensing ===
!OpenSceneGraph is open-source so full source code is provided, and can be copied, modified and used free of charge for commercial and non-commercial use. Access to the source allows end users greater flexibility in how they develop, debug and deploy their applications. They gain productivity and freedom by being able to leverage the tool chain in accordance with their own release cycles. Downloads of binaries and source can be found in the [http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Downloads Downloads] section of the openscenegraph.org website. [Downloads Downloads]
!OpenSceneGraph is released under the [http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Legal OpenSceneGraph Public License], which is based on the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL), permitting the software to be used free of charge across the full spectrum of commercial and open-source applications. Furthermore, it allows both static and dynamic linking of the !OpenSceneGraph libraries without restricting the licensing of the user's software.
=== !OpenSceneGraph Books now available ===
The !OpenSceneGraph Quick Start Guide is now available in Chinese as well as English, and alongside the Reference Manual books can be found at [http://www.osgbooks.com OsgBooks].
=== Professional support and services ===
!OpenSceneGraph project is backed up with professional services by [http://openscenegraph.com OpenSceneGraph Professional Services], based in Scotland, and [http://www.skew-matrix.com Skew-Matrix] and [http://www.blue-newt.com Blue-Newt Software] both based in the USA.
* Confidential Professional Support
* Bespoke development
* Consultancy
* Training
=== Community support and contributions ===
The diverse and growing community of over 1700 developers is centered around the public osg-users mailing list, where members discuss how best to use !OpenSceneGraph, provide mutual support, and coordinate development of new features and bug fixes. Members of this community come from many different countries with backgrounds ranging from some of the world's largest aerospace companies, game companies, and visual simulation specialists to university researchers, students and hobbyists.
The !OpenSceneGraph project owes a great deal to the community for its development and support, in particular we wish to thank the [http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Support/Contributors/TwoPointTwo 282 individuals] from around the world that have directly contributed to the development and refinement of the !OpenSceneGraph code base.
!OpenSceneGraph Project was founded in September 1999 by Don Burns and Robert Osfield.
Further information, screenshots, downloads, documentation, and support links can be found on the !OpenSceneGraph project website http://www.openscenegraph.org.
!OpenSceneGraph Professional Services, founded by project lead Robert Osfield in April 2001, is based in Callander, Perhshire, Scotland, and provides professional services on top of !OpenSceneGraph. Further information about the services it provides can be found at http://www.openscenegraph.com.
PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 15th June 2007 - [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services announces the release of [=OpenSceneGraph=] 2.0, the industry's leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. [=OpenSceneGraph=] 2.0, written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon [=OpenGL=], offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets a real-time visualization tool which rivals established commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality and performance. [=OpenSceneGraph=] 2.0 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and [=FreeBSD=] operating systems.
The [=OpenSceneGraph=] 2.0 release is the culmination of 8 years of work by the lead developers and the open-source community that has grown up around the project. The real-time graphics industry and academia embraced it from the very beginning, deploying it in real-world applications, and actively participating in its development, testing and refinement. The end result is a high-quality library with a feature set relevant to application developers' needs.
* New unified build system using [[http://www.cmake.org CMake]], which simplifies the build process, automatically detecting installed dependencies and providing build configuration as well as support for a wide range of development tools.
* New libraries:
** osgViewer - provides native windowing support and viewer functionality that scales from a single view embedded in a window to multi-thread, multi-gpu, multi-screen viewers and can handle multiple scene graphs at one time. The new viewer architecture also provides support for novel display systems that require distortion correction, such as hemispheres and full domes as well as power-walls and caves. It replaces Producer as a windowing toolkit.
** osgManipulator - provides a set of interactive manipulators for scaling, rotating and moving objects in the scene.
** osgShadow - provides an extensible framework for adding dynamic shadows to your scene.
* New low-level extensible intersection framework that includes support for line, plane and polytope intersections.
* New high-level intersection classes that support paged databases, [=LineOfSight=], [=HeightAboveTerrain=] and [=ElevationSlice=].
* View-dependent overlay - provides ability to overlay text, country boundaries etc. directly on to terrain, even paged databases.
* Plugins
** Improvements to the [=OpenFlight=], COLLADA, [=AC3D=], DDS plugins and many more
** New TXF texture font reader.
** New [=VRML2=] reader (using the [=OpenVRML=] library).
* Easier 3rd party windowing integration
** With examples showing integration with GLUT, SDL, Qt, [=WxWidgets=] and MFC
* External dependencies removed simplifying build and distribution
** [=OpenThreads=] is moved into the core of [=OpenSceneGraph=] and is no longer an external dependency
** Thanks to the integration of windowing support in osgViewer, [=Producer=] is no longer a dependency.
[=OpenSceneGraph=] is open-source so full source code is provided, and can be copied, modified and used free of charge for commercial and non-commercial use. Access to the source allows end users greater flexibility in how they develop, debug and deploy their applications. They gain productivity and freedom by being able to leverage the tool chain in accordance with their own release cycles. Downloads of binaries and source can be found in the [[http://www.openscenegraph.com/osgwiki/pmwiki.php/Downloads/Downloads Downloads]] section of the openscenegraph.org website.
[=OpenSceneGraph=] is released under the [[http://www.openscenegraph.com/osgwiki/pmwiki.php/Legal/Legal [=OpenSceneGraph=] Public License]], which is based on the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL), permitting the software to be used free of charge across the full spectrum of commercial and open-source applications. Furthermore, it allows both static and dynamic linking of the [=OpenSceneGraph=] libraries without restricting the licensing of the user's software.
[=OpenSceneGraph=] project is backed up with professional services by %newwin%[[http://openscenegraph.com [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services]], based in Scotland, and [[http://www.skew-matrix.com Skew-Matrix]] and [[http://www.blue-newt.com Blue-Newt Software]] both based in the USA.
The diverse and growing community of over 1700 developers is centered around the public osg-users mailing list, where members discuss how best to use [=OpenSceneGraph=], provide mutual support, and coordinate development of new features and bug fixes. Members of this community come from many different countries with backgrounds ranging from some of the world's largest aerospace companies, game companies, and visual simulation specialists to university researchers, students and hobbyists.
The [=OpenSceneGraph=] project owes a great deal to the community for its development and support, in particular we wish to thank the [[http://openscenegraph.com/osgwiki/pmwiki.php/Documentation/Contributors 264 individuals]] from around the world that have directly contributed to the development and refinement of the [=OpenSceneGraph=] code base.
Robert Osfield\\
Project Lead and Proprietor [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services
PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 12th September 2006 - [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services announces the release of [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.2, the industry's leading open source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.2, written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon [=OpenGL=], offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets a real time visualization tool which rivals established commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality and performance. [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.2 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and [=FreeBSD=] operating systems.
* Support for Windows 64 bit build, allowing Windows programmers to take advantage of greater scalability previously only available to [=OpenSceneGraph=] users under Linux, IRIX, Solaris, [=FreeBSD=] and OSX.
* Support for IBM's AIX operating system, bringing the total number of supported operating systems to 8.
* COLLADA plugin support for both the reading and writing of COLLADA 1.4 .dae files. COLLADA is the new industry standard data asset exchange format that is now supported by a range of 3D modelling packages and provides a unified art path route to and from the [=OpenSceneGraph=].
* Processor affinity support allowing application to lock cull-draw and database processes to specific processors, thereby avoiding cache coherancy problems associated with processes moving from processor to processor.
* A Texture Atlas builder has been added to the database optimization classes, allowing either manual or automated setting up of texture atlas. Using texture atlas can improve performance by reducing the number of state changes required to render a scene, and by allowing databases to batched in large groups of geometry, in a form that better suits modern graphics arhitectures.
* GPU timing stats have been added to the viewer class, provided the time taken to process allow drawing operations down on the GPU for the previous frame. Coupled with the existing timing of CPU update, cull and draw dispatch the stats reporting now provides the end user with a clearer idea of whether their application is CPU or GPU limited and server as a better guide to performance optimization work.
The [=OpenSceneGraph=]-1.2 release is the culmination of 7 years development, with contributions from 208 developers from around the world. The user base is composed of a wide range of industry and academic users with over 1400 developers subscribed to the projects public support mailing list.
!!!OpenSceneGraph 1.1 release introduces peformance and scalability improvements, full OpenGL Shading Language support and new OpenFlight 16.1, TerrPagea2.2 and Quake3 loaders.
the industry's leading open-source graphics library with [=OpenGL=] 2.0 and [=OpenGL=] Shading Language support. [=OpenSceneGraph=] is designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.1, written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon [=OpenGL=], offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets a real time visualization tool which rivals established commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality and performance. [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.1 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris and [=FreeBSD=] operating systems.
* New precipitation particle effects that leverage the OpenGL Shading Language to provide high performance and high image quality rendering of rain and snow effects.
* TerraPage loader updated to latest terrapage code base, version 2.2.
* New outline and drop shadow support for osgText.
* New observer_ptr<> smart pointer which holds a pointer to an object, but does does affect its reference, so doesn't take any ownership of it. If the object goes out of scope then the observer_ptr<> is automatically set to 0.
* New osgGA::EventQueue class for making it easier to integrate 3rd Party Windowing toolkits. The revamped osgkeyboardmouse example demonstrates how to use it.
AYRSHIRE, Scotland - December 9th, 2005 - [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services announces the release of [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.0, the industry's leading open-source graphics library with [=OpenGL=] 2.0 and [=OpenGL=] Shading Language support. [=OpenSceneGraph=] is designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.0, written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon [=OpenGL=], offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets a real time visualization tool which rivals established commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality and performance. [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.0 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris and [=FreeBSD=] operating systems.
->''"3Dlabs congratulates the [=OpenSceneGraph=] development community on the release of [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.0. [=OpenSceneGraph=] is a shining example of how open-source projects can deliver commercial-quality products with outstanding performance and a ton of cutting-edge features. 3Dlabs committed engineering resources to [=OpenSceneGraph=] to help implement full support of programmable shader technology through [=OpenGL=] Shading Language. It is gratifying to see the excitement that developers have for this important cross-platform, real-time visualization library."'''\\
!!!Open-source development delivers industry-leading features and performance
[=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.0 release is the culmination of 6 years work by the lead developers and the open-source community that has grown up around the project. The real-time graphics industry and academia embraced it from the very beginning, deploying it in real world applications, and actively participating in its development, testing and refinement. The end result is a high quality library with a feature set relevant to application developers' needs. Features include:
* Support for a wide range of 2D image and 3D database formats, with 34 loaders available including industry standards such as [=OpenFlight=], [=TerraPage=], OBJ, 3DS, JPEG, PNG and [=GeoTiff=]
* Multi-threaded database paging support, which can be used in conjunction with all 3D database and image loaders, allowing terabyte database to be explored at a solid 60Hz
* Large scale, whole earth geospatial terrain paged database generation
* Introspection support for core libraries allowing external applications to query, get, set and operate on all classes in the scene graph, via a generic interface
* Multi-threaded and highly configurable support for multiple CPU/multiple GPU machines
->''"3D Nature uses [=OpenSceneGraph=] to build our [=NatureView=] real-time terrain visualization tool. [=OpenSceneGraph=] offered us a high-performance scene graph that had great terrain capability, advanced culling and level-of-detail features, multi-threaded paging and loading and solid, clean, accessible code. We have used and contributed to OSG for two years now, and could not have delivered the kind of high-detail interactive landscape visualization our users require without [=OpenSceneGraph=]."''\\
[=OpenSceneGraph=] is open-source so full source code is provided, and can be copied, modified and used free of charge for commercial and non-commercial use. Access to the source allows end users greater flexibility in how they develop, debug and deploy their applications. They gain productivity and freedom by being able to leverage the tool chain in accordance with their own release cycles. Downloads of binaries and source can be found in the [[http://www.openscenegraph.org/osgwiki/pmwiki.php/Downloads/Downloads Downloads]] section of the openscenegraph.org website.
[=OpenSceneGraph=] is released under the [[http://www.openscenegraph.org/osgwiki/pmwiki.php/Legal/Legal [=OpenSceneGraph=] Public License]], which is based on the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL), permitting the software to be used free of charge across the full spectrum of commercial and open source applications. Furthermore, it allows both static and dynamic linking of the [=OpenSceneGraph=] libraries without restricting the licensing of the user's software.
->''"Our real-time 3D presentation tool, [=Present3D=], builds upon [=OpenSceneGraph=]'s excellent support for stereo visualization, video, imagery, text, 3d models and database paging, making it possible for us to develop a uniquely compelling immersive presentation software. The portability and royalty-free open-source licensing has allowed us to deliver it across a far wider range of platforms and at lower cost than would have been possible with any of the competing proprietary scene graphs." ''\\
[=OpenSceneGraph=] project is backed up with professional services provided by the partnership of [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services, based in Ayrshire, Scotland, and Andes Engineering in California, USA.
The diverse community of nearly 1200 developers is centered around the public osg-users mailing list, where members discuss how best to use [=OpenSceneGraph=], provide mutual support, and coordinate development of new features and bug fixes. Members of this community come from many different countries with backgrounds ranging from some of the world's largest aerospace companies, game companies, and visual simulation specialists to university researchers, students and hobbyists.
->''"Since I joined this list 6 months ago I have rarely seen a question go unanswered! The community averages 30 responses a day with about a fifth of them coming from the project lead himself."''\\
Jacob Foshee, Software Engineer in the Oil and Gas industry.
The [=OpenSceneGraph=] project owes a great deal to the community for its development and support, in particular we wish to thank the [[http://openscenegraph.org/osgwiki/pmwiki.php/Documentation/Contributors 171 individuals]] from around the world that have directly contributed to the development and refinement of the [=OpenSceneGraph=] code base. A special thanks goes to Don Burns, Marco Jez and Mike Weiblen for the massive contributions that they have made in terms of coding, support and expertise over a wide range of topics through the years.
Further information, screenshots, downloads, documentation, and support links can be found on the [=OpenSceneGraph=] project website http://www.openscenegraph.org .
[=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services, founded by Robert Osfield in April 2001, is based in Prestwick, Scotland, and provides professional services on top of [=OpenSceneGraph=]. Further information about the services it provides can be found at http://www.openscenegraph.com .
Andes Engineering, founded by Don Burns in December 2001, is based in Sunnyvale, California, and provides professional services and custom simulators on top of [=OpenSceneGraph=]. Further information about the products and services it provides can be found at http://www.andesengineering.com .
The OpenSceneGraph is an Open Source, high performance real-time graphics toolkit, written for developers of vis-sim applications, virtual reality, scientific visualisation, education through to games. The toolkit is based on OpenGL and Standard C++ and most portable toolkit of its kind, supporting Windows, Linux, OSX, Irix, Solaris, FreeBSD and HP-UX and Aix, including 64 bit support on Windows, Linux, OSX, Irix and Solaris. OpenGL version from 1.1 through to 2.0 are all seemlessly supported, including many of the latest extensions. The OpenSceneGraph is now firmly established as one of the worlds most popular scene graph technologies, and is used and developed by community of over a thousand developers.
The latest release of the OpenSceneGraph, 0.9.9, is the culmination of 7 years development and is the final milestone before reaching 1.0. All core features for 1.0 are now in place and ready for deployment. Since the development driven is by technical convergence rather than usual marketing forces, even the beta releases of the OpenSceneGraph are already mature enough for major industry players to have adopted it for their own application development, with many companies already releasing products based on top of the OpenSceneGraph.
The 0.9.9 release includes many minor API refinements, bug fixes and optimizations, but also major new features including tight integration of OpenGL Shading Language support directly into the core osg library, new reflection/introspection support, new particle effects, movie support and DXF import. Details follow:
OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) support has been moved from the osgGL2 node kit directly into the core osg library. This move also involved refactoring the handling of state so that it now specifically supports GLSL Program, Shaders and Uniforms in a convenient and flexible way. State sorting and lazy state updating are now applied to both Program and Uniforms to maximize performance throughput. The work was spearheaded by 3Dlabs engineer Mike Weiblen, collaborating with Robert Osfield with contributions from the community.
The new osgIntrospection and associated library wrappers provides support for full API reflection/introspection. That facilitates integration of the OpenSceneGraph with other programming languages, development of generic editors of scene graph attributes, general purpose serialization of scene graph objects such as for reading and writing to disk, or across local networks to support systems such as graphics clusters. The osgIntrospection is designed
to be non-intrusive, allowing 3rd Party libraries to be wrapped without these libraries needing to have explicit introspection support added into them. The-non intrusive approach also keeps introspection support a separate module which only needs to be loaded if you require it, this leaves the core libraries light-weight and focused on the their particular tasks. osgIntrospection is the inspired work of Marco Jez. Thanks also go to ANU Viz Lab for graciously funding Robert Osfield's contribution to this sub-project.
Thanks to new support for AGL and CGL in OpenProducer, all OpenSceneGraph/osgProducer-based examples and application will run straight out of the box under OSX native AGL or CGL Windowing. This allows better integration of OpenSceneGraph applications with OSX, access to faster and up to date OpenGL drivers.
Support for the Non power of two texture feature of OpenGL 2.0 has been added
to all the core texture classes. Also to facilate high resolution video streaming, OpenGL Pixel Buffer Objects are now supported. Support for blend equation and logic op have also been added.
Terrain generation and rendering enhancements:
The osgTerrain library, for generating whole earth, geospecific paged databases, has been enhanced with support for alpha source textures and multiple texture layers. The new multiple texture layers support can be controlled at runtime via the new osgFX::osgFX MultiTextureControl node, which provides a convenient means for blending between the different layers at run-time. Multiple textures layers can be very useful for mixing topographical maps with satellite/aerial photography.
To make it easier to add particle effects to your application a new osgParticle::ParticleEffects node has been written, with five concrete implementations of SmokeEffect, FireEffect, ExplosionEffect and ExplosionDebrisEffect which you can create, adjust and add to your scene graphs.
A new DXF plugin has been added for reading .dxf files. Movie support has also been enhanced with integration of the OpenSceneGraph with Xine-lib via the xine plugin, this allows you to add movie content into your applications, including DVD's and streamed across the LAN, thanks to Xine-libs inbuilt streaming support.
To facilitate faster builds and a logical division between applications that come with the OpenSceneGraph, the original example directory has now been split into two, with the new applications/ directory now comprising osgviewer, osgconv, osgarchive, osgversion and osgdem. The Makefiles now build by default only the applications directory, thus avoiding the cost of recompiling the 74 example programs. Examples can still be compiled by run make COMPILE_EXAMPLES=yes, or setting COMPILE_EXAMPLE=yes as an env var or in a custom dependencies file.
There are eight new examples, osgblendequation and osglogicop demonstrate the new osg::BlendEquation and osg::LogicOp state attributes, osgGLUTkeyboardmouse and osgGLUTsimple are GLUT based examples, osgslice does some image reading of rendered slices, osgparticleeffects demonstrates the new osgParticle::ParticleEffects.
osgpbuffer also example now uses Producer's pbuffer support making it portable across platforms and much cleaner.
API refinements, bug fixes and performance improvements:
There have been many bug fixes, a number of performance improvements and API cleanups that have occured throughout the 0.9.8 - 0.9.9, too many separate items to enumerate here. Together with the above new features they all go to making the OpenSceneGraph-0.9.9 the most robust, high performance and feature rich version so far, and sets the stage for the upcoming 1.0.
We would like to thank the following engineers for their contributions in the 0.9.8 - 0.9.9.9 time frame (in alphabetic order):
Alberto Farre, Bob Kuehne, Brede Johansen, Carlo Camporesi, Chris Hanson, Don Burns, Donn Mielcarek, Don Tidrow, Farshid Lashkari, Frederic Marmond, Garrett Potts, Igor Kravtchenko, James French, Jan Ciger, John Grant, Joakim Simonsson, Joran Jessurun, Jason Daly, Kevin Moiule, Leandro Motta Barros, Marco Jez, Mason Menninger, Mike Weiblen, Nathan Monteleone, Norman Vine, Olaf Flebbe, Paul Melis, Per Fahlberg, Rainer Oder, Randall Hopper, Reinhard Sainitzer, Robert Osfield, Ruben, Sebastien Grignard, Stephan Huber, Terry Welsh, Thom DeCarlo, Tony Horrobin, Tree, Tugkan Calapoglu, Vivek Rajan, Waltice and Yuzhong Shen
>>> Support added for 1D & 3D textures, texture env combiners, secondary color and fog coords, DOFTransform and Sequence nodes. Inventor/VRML and LWO2 loaders added and the a port HP-UX!
Despite only 6 weeks passing between 0.9.0 and this latest 0.9.1 release
there has been a number of significant new features, API clean ups and
