OpenSceneGraph/NEWS
2002-02-11 03:26:20 +00:00

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OSG News (most significant items from ChangeLog)
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10th 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.
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.