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OpenSceneGraph/NEWS.txt
Robert Osfield 7b564a13d7 Updated news for rc2.
2006-07-14 20:46:21 +00:00

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OSG News
========
!!!OpenSceneGraph 1.1 release introduces improved peformance and scalability, full OpenGL Shading Language support and new OpenFlight 16.1, TerrPagea2.2 and Quake3 loaders.
AYRSHIRE, Scotland - July 19th 2006 - [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services announces the release of [=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.1,
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.
The OpenSceneGraph-1.1 release introduces:
* Improved support for multi-threaded, multi-pipe applications, including performance improvements and automated configuration of threading.
* Support for OpenGL Shading Language uniform arrays
* New precipitation particle effects that leverage the OpenGL Shading Language to provide high performance and high image quality rendering of rain and snow effects.
* New OpenFlight loader with support for version 16.1, including OpenGL Shading Language support.
* New Quake3 BSP loader
* 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.
* A range of bug fixes.
For further information and to download the latest release head to the project website:
http://www.openscenegraph.org
Special thanks go to the many contributors who help make this release possible.
Robert Osfield\\
Project Lead and Proprietor [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services
!!!High performance open-source graphics toolkit [=OpenSceneGraph=] hits 1.0!
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."'''\\
Randi Rost, director of developer relations at 3Dlabs, http://developer.3Dlabs.com/
!!!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:
* A full-featured and industry-proven scene graph
* High performance due to support for \\
- View frustum, small feature and occlusion culling\\
- Level of detail\\
- State sorting and lazy state updating\\
- [=OpenGL=] fast paths and latest extensions\\
- Multi-threading and database optimization
* Extensive support for [=OpenGL=], from 1.1 through 2.0 including the latest extensions
* Tightly coupled support for [=OpenGL=] Shading Language, developed in conjunction with 3Dlabs
* 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=]
* Particle effects
* High quality anti-aliased [=TrueType=](R) text support
* Seamless support for framebuffer objects, pbuffers and frame buffer render-to-texture effects
* 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=]."''\\
Chris "Xenon" Hanson, Vice President of R&D, 3D Nature LLC, http://www.3DNature.com
!!!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/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." ''\\
Phil Lavery, Greythorn Associates. http://www.greythornassociates.com
!!!Professional support and services
[=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 include:
* Confidential Professional Support
* Bespoke development
* Consultancy
* Training
!!!Community support and contributions
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.
Robert Osfield\\
Project Lead and Proprietor [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services
----
About [=OpenSceneGraph=]\\
Further information, screenshots, downloads, documentation, and support links can be found on the [=OpenSceneGraph=] project website http://www.openscenegraph.org .
About [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services\\
[=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 .
About Andes Engineering\\
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 .
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BETA releases
25th May 2005 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.9
>>> OpenGL Shading Language integrated into core, Introspection, movies, particle effects and much more...
Introduction to the OpenSceneGraph:
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 OpenSceneGraph 0.9.9 release:
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 Shader Language support:
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.
Introspection support:
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.
Better support for Apple native Windowing:
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 latest OpenGL extensions:
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.
Particle Effects:
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.
DXF and Movie plugins:
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.
Application and examples:
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
Robert Osfield,
OpenSceneGraph Project Lead,
May 23rd 2005.
--
Project Links:
OpenSceneGraph - http://www.openscenegraph.org
OpenProducer - http://www.andesengineering.com/Producer/index.html
OpenThreads - http://openthreads.sf.net
xine-lib - http://xinehq.de/
OpenSceneGraph Commericial Support, Training and Consultancy links:
OpenSceneGraph Professional Services - http://www.openscenegraph.com
Andes Engineering - http://www.andesengineering.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26th November 2004 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.8
>>> Support for database archives, improved pager, 3d compressed textures
Release 0.9.8 reflects a continuation of the prior committment to release
often, arriving only two short months after 0.9.7. This contrasts sharply
to the long period between 0.9.6-2 and 0.9.7. The following set of
improvements and features are part of the 0.9.8 release.
The osgDB Pager has been Improved to provide better multi-processor
stability and constant frame rate peformance.
Reference documentation has been taken out of the main distribution and
placed on the public website. The documentation is also now completely
built with Doxygen.
New Plugins added or modified this release:
o STL - This plugin provides OSG with the capability to import
Stereolithography files, commonly used in the CAD
markets.
o NET - This plugin provides OSG with the ability to read data files
from a web site through an http interface.
o OSGA - This plugin provides database archival support, including
large file (greater than 2 GB) support.
o OBJ - The existing obj plugin has been re-written for clean up.
New support for 3d texture compression using the
GL_NV_texture_compression_vtc extension has been added, providing an
improvement on the S3TC compression techniques.
The OSG Spelling Bee is making its mark in this release, with submissions
by the community to correct spelling and typo errors throughout the osg,
osgDB and osgUtil libraries.
osgDB::ReaderWriter and osgDB::Registry have been refactored to allow
multi-threading of database reading and writing.
The NodeTrackManipulator has been improved.
Several general bug fixes have been fixed.
Producer and osgProducer now provide new Mac OSX CGL support, providing an
environment that is independent of X11.
A few new examples have been added as well:
o osgplanets - A simple example that demonstrates an attempt at
accurate depiction of planetary motion.
o osgspotlight - An example demonstrating a spot light using
a projected texture.
o osglauncher - An example which reads a config file and displays other examples
and shows and launches them by clicking on the icons.
o osgmotionblur - An example of motion blur using accumulation buffers
18th August 2004 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.7-2
Build fixes for VisualStudio6.0.
Fixes for osgFX registry support.
Fixes to osg::Image::flipVertical() adding support for mipmaps and
compressed textures.
DDS plugin now can vertically flip images by using "dds_flip" Options string.
Added support in osgTerrain for reading imagery with color tables.
9th August 2004 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.7
>>> support for and generation of large scale geospatial databases,
>>> support for movies and examples of shadows and volume rendering.
The 0.9.7 encompasses many improvements, bug fixes, new examples and
significant new functionality, the most notable of which is a new
osgTerrain library for generation of large scale geospatial databases.
The new osgTerrain library and associated osgdem utility program
allows users to use moziacs of geospatial imagery and digital elevation
maps to generate a complete paged database which can be used with
standard OSG viewers, and users programs. By utilising GDAL to load the
imagery and DEM's a wide range of geospatial formats are supported.
The TerraPage plugin has also been rewritten ontop of the OSG's
osg::PagedLOD and osgDB::DatabasePager which provides support for the
tile fallback mechanism to ensure that no holes or cracks appear in the
databases being roamed, and to achieve constant frame rate via load
balancing mechanisms with osgDB::DatabasePager.
The osgDB::DatabasePager has been further improved to provide more
configurable load balancing which allows application developers to achieve
constant frame rates when using paged databases.
Double Vec & Matrix classes & CoordinateSystemNode/EllipsoidModel class
have been introduced to better support browsing of large scale databases,
and to provide a mechanism for tracking the local up orientation when
roaming whole earth databases.
osgUtil has been enhanced with:
- an improved triangle tipper class (osgUtil::TriStipVisitor),
- a new simplifier (osgUtil::Simplifer) for reducing triangle density of
osg::Geometry leaves (utilised by osgTerrain to provide simplification
of terrain tiles),
- improved and more configurable optimizer (osgUtil::Optimizer),
- a new utility class for compiling and releasing OpenGL objects
(osgUtil::GLObjectVisitor) replaces the previous and more limited
DisplayListVisitor.
All the osgGA::MatrxManipulator's (used for camera manipulator etc) have
been revamped with usage of doubles internally, and with tracking of the
current CoordinateSystem if one is active, to be better support whole
earth databases. All the MatrixManipulators have been extend to allow
the setting of a user defined home position. Two new manipulators have
been introduced osgGA::TerrainManipulator, for roaming whole earth/terrain
databases, and osgGA::TrackerManipulator which allows the camera to be
attached to a node in the scene graph.
Movie support under Linux and OSX via libMpeg3 and Quicktime respectively,
which extend the new osg::ImageStream base class which allows application
developers access to playing, pausing and rewinding movies.
The conversion utility osgconv has been extended to allow compression of
textures and mipmap generation during conversion when writing to the native
.ive binary format. Texture compression and pre computer mipmaps enable
faster loading of databases and lower utilisation of memory resources.
Write support added to JPG plugin.
Write + 3D texture support added to DDS plugin.
Pseudo loaders .trans, .rot and .scale have been added.
Updated LWO, AC3D, BMP, IVE and FLT loaders.
osg::TexGenNode has been added to provide a mechanism for positioning
OpenGL's texture coordinate generation planes.
Fourteen new examples have been added:
osgdem a utility for creating large scale geospatial paged
database
osgphotoalbum an example of how to use PagedLOD to dynamic generate
geometry for paged in imagery
osgbluemarble an example of how to build PagedLOD database for
paging imagery
osgtesselate - an example of how to use osgUtil::Tesselate to
tessellate polygonal boundaries
osgsimulation an example of how to use various features in osgSim.
osgdepthshadow an example of how to implement shadows use depth
shadow textures.
osgsimplifier an example of how to use the new osgUtil::Simplifier.
osgspacewarp an example of how to create a special effect that
depends upon tracking the modelview matrix.
osgdistortion an example of how to use prerendering of a texture to
create a distortion effect.
osgsimple a bare bones example of how to create a simple viewer
using a Windowing toolkit, in this example using
Producer, but is written so the example could easily
be modified to work with other Windowing toolkit.
osgkeyboardmouse adding to keyboard and mouse functionality on the
osgsimple base.
osgsimplepager adding database paging support to the osgsimple
example.
osgmovie an example which creates a quad to render a loaded
movie file with - requires the LibMpeg3 (Linux) or
Quicktime (OSX) plugin to work.
osgvolume an example that reads a stack of 2d images to create
a 3D texture, and creates a scene graph using
standard OSG components (osg::ClipNode,
osg::TexGenNode, osg::Billboard and
osg::TexEnvCombine) to create a per per lit volume.
Wrapping up the complete 0.9.7 release is a wide range of smaller features
enhancement and many bug fixes.
2nd October 2003 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.6-2
>>> osgFX Special Effects nodekit (for bumping mapping & cartoon effects etc), support for double Matrix traversals,
>>> improved build support, thread safety and robustness.
The new osgFX nodekit, written by Marco Jez, adds a set of decorator
nodes that add can be conveniently added above subgraphs in your scene
to add special a range of special rendering effects. Effects include
AnisotopicLight, BumpMapping, Scribe, Specular Highlights and Cartoon
rendering.
Support for double Matrices has been added with the new Matrixd class,
and complimented by the a Matrixf class. The original Matrix class is
now a typedef which can be set to either Matrixf or Matrixd (which is
now the default), When the Matrix typedef is set to Matrixd and the OSG and
dependent apps are recompiled all internal operations such a cull traversals
will now be double with double matrices which much improved numerical
precision, making it ideal for datasets where a large values are contained
with transforms in the scene graph (such as with whole earth databases),
and when a transforms are nested which creates requires concatenation of
a number of matrices to get the final model view matrices.
The osgGA::MatrixManipulators (which are used to control the camera
position) and osgProducer/OpenProducer have been moved across to using
exclusively double Matrices. This has been done to improve numerical
precision when computing camera positions, whilst having little impact
on performance since camera operations are only done a small number of
times per frame.
osg::Quat now supports doubles by default, but also allows users to select
float version osg::Quat simply by changing the osg::Quat::value_type typedef.
Work has been on OpenThreads and OpenProducer, in particular to improve
thread safety and robustness on the Win32 platform. Reported crashes
on exit from osgProducer::Viewer based apps, and freezes during runtime
have been fixed.
Threading problems which caused crashes in recent updates of the Terrapage
loader have also been fixed, and additional internal changes have been made
to improve the Terrapage loader's ability to hit constant frame rates.
Support has also been added for loading light points directly from the
Terrapage database.
A new .iv/.wrl loader plugin, written by Vivek Rajan, at Magic Earth,
has been added to the distribution which uses with OpenInventor or Coin
to load model, converting them into OSG equivalents. Coin has support
for VRML97 models, so can be used to import such models into the OSG.
Since the new plugin is dependent on OpenInventor or Coin the compilation
is optional, but off by default. To compile this plugin under Unix, set
the environmental variable USE_INVENTOR or USE_COIN and recompile.
Windows .dsp project file does to current exist, but should be
possible to add this.
The .ive plugin has been improved with the addition of support for
osgSim light points, and various internal refinements to make it function
better on the various platforms supported by the OSG. Note, these changes
mean that the .ive format has has changed and is no longer compatible
with previous version of .ive. It is recommend that one recreates .ive
for the original source via osgconv or similar to ensure consistency.
A JPEG2000 image plugin has added, written by Michael Gronager. The new jp2
plugin uses the japser open source project to read and write JPEG2000 files.
A scalar bar, and sphere segment helper classes have been added to osgSim,
the new osgscalarbar and osgspheresegment examples demonstrate how to use
these new features.
To help handle running applications of graphics cards/drivers that exhibit
bugs with certain OpenGL extensions, support has been added to the GLextensions
code to allow extensions to be disabled via the new
osg::setGLExtensionDisableString(std::string) function or by setting an
OSG_GL_EXTENSION_DISABLE environmental variables. Follows is an example of
the disable string:
set OSG_GL_EXTENSION_DISABLE =
"ATI:GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap;Sun:GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic:"
New examples include:
osgforest - an example which demonstrates simple techniques for creating forests
osgfxbrowser - an example which demonstrates the various osgFX Effects available
osgscalabar - an example of how to set up the osgSim::ScalarBar.
osgspheresegment - an example of how to set up the osgSim::SphereSegement
osgpagelod - a very simply test program for setting up osg::PagedLOD/osgDB::DatabasePager
23rd July 2003 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.5
>>> Support added for OpenGL2.0 shaders, native multi-threaded Database paging,
>>> high peformance binary format reading and writing, .dds compressed image
>>> loader and ARB_fragment_program and ARB_vertex_buffer_object extensions,
>>> improvements to the Terrex .txp and OpenFlight .flt loaders.
The key new features of the 0.9.5 release are the new OpenGL2.0 nodekit, constant frame rate
database paging support, classes, and the new native .ive binary plugin which supports
both reading and writing of all core osg nodes, including inlining of compressed
and non-compressed imagery.
The native database paging support, provided by the new osg::PageLOD and osgDB::DatabasePager,
achieves constant frame rate through threading of the database reading, and time based
incremental compile and delete of display lists, vertex_buffer_objects and texture objects.
A new TextureObjectManager class also caches a list of expired texture objects for reuse,
and allows new newly loading imagery to reuse expired texture objects, with the imagery
automatically subloaded to the reused texture objects. This reuse happens transparently
and benefits other OSG usages such as the OSG's Terrapage loader.
To provide support multi-thread operation of the OSG, such as multi-thread database paging
and multi-threaded, multi-window graphics enabled by OpenProducer, the OpenSceneGraph and
OpenProducer have now adopted the OpenThreads threading library, osgDB and osgProducer now
depend upon it. OpenThreads is open source, light weight, cross platform C++ threading
which encapsulates the low level, platform specific threading API calls. Currently pthreads
under Unix and Win32 threads under Windows are supported, with Sgi sproc threads to be
released very soon. The OpenThreads project website can be found at http://openthreads.sf.net.
The new .ive binary plugin was developed by Uni-C's VR-Center, and kindly submitted as
open source, adds support for binary reading and writing OSG nodes drawable and state
(including compressed/mipmapped) textures. The .ive format produces a much faster
load times and smaller file size then native ASCII .osg format. Load times for .ive
files are also 10-20x faster then equivalent OpenFlight .flt and load in an already
optimized scene graph form making it much more suitable for paging. Files can be
converted easily using the osgconv utility : osgconv myfile.flt myfile.ive
The new osgGL2 nodekit library adds support for the OpenGL2.0 vertex ProgramObect and fragment
ShaderObject's recently ratified by the OpenGL ARB, . The osgGL2 uses the extension have local
prototypes which allow them to be compiled even in the absence of OpenGL headers that don't
support the GL2 extension, allowing to port to all platform, and at runtime the extensions are
queried for and used if available. At time of release only 3DLabs WildcatVP series supported
this extension at runtime, but other graphics cards and manufactures will be releasing GL2
extension very soon and will be automatically supported by osgGL2. The osgGL2 was developed
by Mike Weiblen at 3DLabs whom have kindly submitted osgGL2 as open source and for inclusion
with the OSG distribution.
The ARB_fragment_program, ARB_vertex_buffer_object and ARB_vertex_program attributes are
also now supported in core osg library. The new osg::FragmentProgram state attribute
encapsulates the ARB_fragment_program which is supported by the recent graphics cards
from NVidia, ATI and 3DLabs. Support for ARB_vertex_buffer_object and ARB_vertex_program
attributes have been added to the osg::Geometry class. The ARB_vertex_buffer_object extension
can boost performance by as much as 50% when working on geometry bound data sets.
Two new image loaders, dds and pnm, and a 3dc point cloud have been added. The .dds plugin
adds support for compressed & mipped mapped imagery, making it ideal for applications where
large texture sizes or database paging is required. The pnm image loader reads the
pnm, pgm and pbm image formats. See http://netghost.narod.ru/gff/vendspec/pbm/ for details.
The Terrapage .txp plugin been updated to include support for multi-texturing, layers and billboards
and includes improvements to multi-threaded pager, which has also been ported over to use OpenThreads.
The OpenFlight .flt plugin has also been improved and now support detail textures via multi-texturing.
TessellationHints now supported by ShapeDrawable which allow the shape primitives to be rendered
are vary levels of detail.
Supported has been added for auto scaling and rotating text into osgText.
Five new examples have been included in the distribution:
osgtexturerectangle illustrates how to use the osg::TextureRectangle which encapsulates
the NV_texture_rectangle extension.
osgprerendercubemap illustrates how to use pre rendering imagery to osg::TextureCubeMap
for tasks such as building a environmental texture maps.
slideshow3D is a presentation tool which use a scene graph to store a render set of slides, each
slide containing layers which can contain bullet points, paragraph, imagery and 3d animated
models - and is effectively a 3D power point. The presentations can be built separately and stored in a .osg file or created by
slideshow3D via an xml file, two examples - introduction.xml and models.xml, which are included
in the OpenSceneGraph-Data-0.9.5 data distribution. slideshow3D depends upon libxml2 for parsing
the xml files.
osgpoints uses the osg::Point state attribute to attenuate and control point size and any points
loaded by the application. This is a useful way of visualizing point data clouds.
osgdemeter is example of how to integrate the Demeter, OSG using osgProducer::Viewer as a viewer
class. This example depends upon the demeter terrain engine, which can be download from
http://www.terrainengine.com.
Camera style convenience set and get methods to osgUtil::SceneView, consolidating
previous functionality that was provided by both osg::SceneView and osg::Camara into one place.
This move has made osg::Camera redundant so has it been removed to avoid confusion,
usage inconsistencies and bloat of core libraries.
The long time deprecated osg::GeoSet has been removed, to aid migration of old .osg datasets
osgconv has a copy of GeoSet and the .osg support for it so is able to convert any remaining
.osg database which contained GeoSet's.
28th April 2003 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.4-2
>>> Multi-threaded, multi-pipe support via integration with OpenProducer,
>>> 64bit Linux support for Intel Intanium and AMD Opteron,
>>> new osgText library with greater performance, and thread safety,
>>> new DDS plug-in for compressed and non-compressed images,
>>> new MD2 plug-in adds support for animate Quake character and
>>> support added for NV_texture_rectangle.
The most significant new feature is the osgProducer library that adds
tight integration with OpenProducer, providing the OpenSceneGraph with a
scalable, configurable and portable framework for developing real-time
and interactive graphics applications. The scalability afforded by
OpenProducer allows applications to be developed which run seamlessly
on single pipe machines up to multi-pipe machines such as Sgi Onyx
IR system, and Sun Zulu systems.
The osgProducer/OpenProducer framework automatically handles the
multi-threading of cull-draw pairs and GUI events.
All the example programs have been ported over from being based on
GLUT to using osgProducer (osgGLUT can now be found in the bazaar
section on the website). The move to osgProducer allows all the examples
to scale from running on laptops up to multiple CPU and graphics pipe systems.
The configuration of threading and multiple camera views can all be done
via ASCII configuration files, no need to recompile. A number of
new examples have also been added or revamped, bringing the total to 42.
Also in the theme of increasing scalability there is support for 64bit Linux for both
IA64 (Intel Itanium) and x86-64 (AMD Opteron) which compliments the existing
support for Solaris and IRIX 64 bit compilation. 64 bit supports allows
the use of very large data sets, and potential performance improvements.
To help support development teams working with multiple build configuration,
the makefile system has been extended to allow multiple build targets to be
built from one source code base. All makefiles are also now named GNUmakefile
which ensures that they are only run by gmake to avoid an confusion on system
where gmake isn't the default make tool.
A completely new osgText implemention has been developed which is simpler
to use, faster, and thread safe. Support for high quality true type fonts
has now been moved to a freetype plug-in which is dynamically loaded on demand,
with the core osgText library providing a default font when the plug-in is
unavailable. Moving the freetype dependency out of the osgText library makes
it just dependant on OpenGL and Standard C++ like the rest of the core libraries,
allowing osgText to compile by default on all platforms.
Improved thread safety has also been achieved in the core osg and osgUtil libraries
making work on multiple CPU/multi-pipe systems robust and with improved performance.
Two new plug-ins have been added, for loading DDS and MD2 data formats. The DDS plug-in
is for loading compressed and non-compressed images. The MD2 plug-in loads Quake
animated characters.
osg::TextureRectangle class has been added, which encapsulates the
NV_texture_rectangle and EXT_texture_rectangle extensions. This is particularly
useful for render to texture algorithms, and dynamic paging of images such as for
rendering video streams.
Support for automatic subloading of osg::Texture2D textures has been added
so that when image data is updated the corresponding OpenGL texture is
automatically updated - no need for callbacks. Also added to the osg::Texture
classes is the option of automatic unref'ing of texture image data once the data has
been download to all active OpenGL graphics contexts.
A new osgUtil::DelaunayTriangulator utility class has been added. This is ideal for
creating optimal triangular meshes from unconnected data points.
Two new classes, osg::ArgumentParser and osg::ApplicationUsage, have been introduced
to convineiently and robustly parse command line arguments and
report command line usage, environmental variables and keyboard and mouse bindings
used by applications. Running any of the examples with -h or --help will report
full details example usage. Keyboard and Mouse bindings usage is now also available as
a HUD on all examples, simply press 'h' while the app is running to
bring up help.
A database cache in the osgDB library has been added, along with a clean up
of memory management in the OpenFlight loader, make development of
dynamic paging of databases easier and more robust.
Support for early abort of rendering has been added, which is useful for
interactive applications which occasionally have rendering that takes that long
enough (i.e.several seconds) that end users may wish to abort during the drawing.
There have also been many general API improvements and bug fixes, too many to enumerate,
but all go to solidify the quality of the scene graph and its accompanying libraries.
The combination of new features, robustness and scalability mark this release as a
significant step towards 1.0.
24th January 2003 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.3.tar.gz
>>> adds support navigational light points, multi-threaded dynamic
>>> paging of Terrapage databases, ARB_vertex_program extension,
>>> DirectD .x model loader, and integration with OpenProducer for
>>> multi-threaded, multi-window/pipe rendering.
Added osgProducer library which integrates the OpenSceneGraph seemlessly
with OpenProducer to provide runtime configurable management of windows
and multipipe graphic systems. The osgproducer demo illustrate how
developers can write applications very simply that harness the power
of the OpenProducer and OpenSceneGraph in an extremely flexible way.
OpenProducer can be downloaded from:
http://www.andesengineering.com/BlueMarbleViewer/producer_install.html
Support added for dynamic paging of Terrage databases, the required
multi-threading is set up by defult. All the end user application need
to do is load the database and the paging then happens automatically -
without any need for intervention by the users application.
Addition of osgSim which is NodeKit designed for visual simulation
market, currently features high fidelity light points support. Light
point sectors, blink sequences and groups, and light point fading are
all supported.
From Brede Johansen, support added for the ARB VertexProgram extension
with osgvertexprogram demo showing reflection and refraction in action, and
osgpbuffer demo for Win32.
From Ulrich Hertlein, new DirectX .x model loader.
From Tree, Support for encoded text types in osgText.
New osgshadowtexture demo which illustrates how to create
dynamic shadow textures in your scene.
New osglogo demo - features anti-aliased TrueType text and animation.
The app phase of operations on the scene graph has been renamed
the update phase to make its function clearer. The main phases are now
named now does update, cull, draw. The AppVisitor, set/getAppCallback etc
have be renamed UpdateVisitor, set/getUpdateCallback etc.
Removed the osg/ManagerManger and associated #define osgNew's, this has
been done to simplify users code and to solve the lack of thread safety
that was causing problems with the MemoryManager.
Support added for reading and writing of callbacks in the .osg format.
Support added for reading and writing of osg::Shapes in the .osg format.
Support added for reading OpenFlight comment records into osg::Node description
fields.
Improvements to the GEO loaders.
Numerous bug fixes and API refinements.
13th November 2002 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.2.tar.gz
>>> New AC3D and GEO loaders, new Shape primitives, improved OpenFlight support.
From Geoff Michel, AC3D .wc and Carbon Graphics GEO .geo loaders.
Support for multi-texturing added to OpenFlight loader.
LOD has been revamped to allow independent min and max ranges for
each LOD child, bringing it inline with the OpenFlight style LOD
representation.
Switch has been revamped to allow independent switching on or off of
each Switch child, bringing it inline with the OpenFlight style Switch
representation.
New osg::Shape geometry primitives added which allow the specification
of geometry in a form that can accelerate collision detection, and as
a way of specifying the geometry to tessellate. Shapes include
Sphere, Oriented Box, Cone, Cylinder, Grid, TriangleMesh, ConvexHull
and CompositeShape which allows the storage of a hierarchy of shapes.
Geometry has been extended to all per primitive bindings and
per primitive set bindings of attributes, and indexing of attributes
with the same or different index lists for each attribute list.
From Macro Jez, new cubemap helper classes.
Support added for handling different extensions on different graphics
contexts.
Draw and Sort callbacks added to osg::RenderStage.
Added PolygonStipple class.
Further refinement of class names and method calls:
Renamed classes :
Primitive -> PrimitiveSet
Renamed methods :
Geometry::addPrimitive(..) -> addPrimitiveSet(..)
Drawable::drawImmediateMode(..) -> drawImplementation(..) const
Drawable::DrawCallback::drawImmediateMode(..) -> drawImplementation(..) const
30th August 2002 - OpenSceneGraph-0.9.1.tar.gz
>>> 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
bug fixes. Follows is a quick run through the key improvements.
Addition of osg::Texture1D, Texture2D & Texture3D classes, Texture2D replaces
the original osg::Texture, which has now become a pure virtual base class. All
Texture classes, including TextureCubeMap are derived from this base class..
New osgtexture1D and osgtexture3D demos demonstrate the new texture classes in
action.
The build system has been updated to support HP-UX. This adds one of the last
remaining mainstream platforms supported.
A new Inventor/VRML1.0 loader was added. The inventor format has been requested
on numerous occasions, so this is a welcome addition.
Support added to lwo plugin for loading the new lwo2 format.
osg::TexEnvCombine implemented texture_env_combine and texture_env_crossbar
and texture_env_dot3 extensions.
osg::TexEnv texture_env_add added.
A osg::Sequence node has finally been implemented. It is accompanied by a
demo, osgsequence.
osg::DOFTransformNode implemented.
Support for OpenFlight15.7 added, DOFTransforms and general enhancements and
bug fixes.
New PROTECTED mode for protecting local state mode and attributes from be
overridden from state above it in the scene graph.
Support for fog coord and secondary colors extensions added to osg::Geometry.
osg::Billboard has been improved to allow rotations around all axes, as well
as point rotations. Check osgbillboard for a new improved demo.
The osglight example has been improved by utilizing AnimationPath and
PositionAttitudeTransform to keep light sources in motion.
osg::AnimationPath improved, now allowing swing and looping behavior and
with two new app callbacks which can update PositionAttitudeTransform
and MatrixTransform respectively.
Support for writing osg::Image's to .rgb format added.
To keep the overall API clean, and the following items have been
renamed and deprecated parts of the API have been removed:
Renamed classes:
EarthSky -> ClearNode
Transparency -> BlendFunc
Texture -> Texture2D (old style subload parameters removed)
Method's changed
Matrix -> makeRotate(..) euler angles parameters generalized.
Quat -> makeRotate(..) euler angles parameters generalized.
BoundingBox -> isValid() renamed valid()
BoundingSphere -> isValid() renamed valid()
StateAttribute -> OVERRIDE_OFF & OVERRIDE_ON which were short hand
versions of OVERRIDE | OFF and OVERRIDE | ON
removed, as the meaning of the bitmask was
often confused by the short hand notation.
Transform -> setMatrix/getMatrix() etc methods removed,
Transform becoming the transform base class,
with MatrixTransform taking over all the original
functionality.
19th 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, so multi-texturing can now be done with very little coding
from the user - all you need to do is specify the texture unit to use
when setting texturing state and texture coordinates and the rest is
handled automatically by the scene graph!
The new osg::Geometry classes which supersedes the old Performer style
osg::GeoSet, support multi-texturing, and uses sharable osg::Arrays which
utilize 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 such smoke, fires, engine plumes, fountains, fire works, and
is fully customizable to produce your own favorite effects. osgParticle
is a NodeKit (see below) which can be directly linked to in your
application to allow you to create particle effects by hand, or have
the library dynamically loaded in when you load a database which contains
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.gzosg-
>>> 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 parameters 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.
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