diff --git a/NEWS.txt b/NEWS.txt index 4de6284e4..c8349434d 100644 --- a/NEWS.txt +++ b/NEWS.txt @@ -1,11 +1,114 @@ OSG News (most significant items from ChangeLog) ================================================ -23rd November 2005 - OpenScneneGraph-1.0-rc6 +29th November 2005 - OpenScneneGraph-1.0-rc6 ->>> Long awaited Release candidate six... + AYRSHIRE, Scotland - November 29th, 2005 - OpenSceneGraph Professional + Services and Andes Engineering today announced the release of + OpenSceneGraph 1.0, the industry's leading open source, OpenGL 2.0 + and OpenGL Shading Language-capable graphics library designed to + accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics + performance. OpenSceneGraph 1.0, written entirely in standard C++ + and 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 graphs in functionality and performance. + OpenSceneGraph 1.0 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple + OSX, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris and FreeBSD operating systems. -Lots of stuff is new and improved, in particular render to texture support. + + Feature rich and performant + =========================== + The OpenSceneGraph is designed from the ground up using Standard C++ + and Design Patterns, and provides seamless support of OpenGL 1.1 right + through to OpenGL 2.0. Thanks to the open source development model, where + beta releases have been publicaly throughout the software development, + extensive industry testing early on in the development cycle has resulted + in toolkit that is driven by the needs of real end users, rather than marketing goals. + The end result is a toolkit of high quality, robustness, industry-leading + performance and feature set. Features include: + + o Fully featured and industry proven core scene graph + o High performance due to support for view frustum, level of detail, + Small feature and occlusion culling; state sorting, lazy state updating, + OpenGL fast paths, multi-threading and database optimization. + o Extensive support for OpenGL, from 1.1 through to 2.0 and latest extensions. + o Tightly coupled support for OpenGL Shader Language, developed in conjunction with 3D labs. + o Support for an wide range of 2D image and 3D database formats, with 34 loaders available + including industry standards such as OpenFlight, OBJ, 3DS, TerraPage, Jpeg, Png and GeoTiff. + o Particle effects. + o High quality anti-aliased TrueType(R) text support. + o Seamless support for framebuffer objects, pbuffers and frame buffer render-to-texture effects. + o Visual simulation extension Light points, impostors. + o 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. + o Large scale, whole earth geospatial terrain paged database generation. + o 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. + o Multi-threaded and highly configurable support for multiple CPU/multiple GPU + machines such as SGI(R) Onyx(R) and Silicon Graphics Prism(TM) through to multiple graphics card PCI express PC systems. + o Cross platform - support for Windows(R), Linux(TM), OSX, IRIX(R), Solaris(TM), FreeBSD(R) and HP-UX. + o Open Source license that permits usage in commercial applications free of + charge and without affecting the license of end-user applications. + The OpenSceneGraph Public Licence is based on the wxWigets relaxation + of the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL). + + Quotes on features + "" + "" + + High quality support and services + ================================= + + The 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. Services + available including confidential professional support, bespoke development, + consultancy and training. + + Quotes on support, training, consultancy: + "" + + Community based support is available via public mailing lists which + are free of charge, with nearly 1200 developers subscribed to the main + public list, which acts as the center for community support, and + participation in development and testing of the software. + + Quotes on the community: + + "" + + Industry Proven + =============== + Throughout its development it's been heavily used in hundreds of + companies and organisations around the world, testing its design and + implementation directly with real-word applications and often helping + develop and refine the code base. Many industry leading applications have + been ported to, or developed from the ground up using the OpenSceneGraph, and already are in active service: + + Quote on industry usage: + + "" + "" + + Thanks + ====== + + The OpenSceneGraph 1.0 release is the culmination of 7 years' work, taking what + started out a small hobby project to the an industry-leading graphics toolkit + used throughout industry and academia. Community participation has been a + crucial part to the success of the project with 169 contributing software + developers** from around the world, we are indebted to all their efforts. + 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. + + Robert Osfield + Project Lead and Proprietor OpenSceneGraph Professional Services + 29th November 2005. 25th May 2005 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.9