OpenSceneGraph 2.0 released

OpenSceneGraph 2.0 release improves ease-of-use and scalability,
introducing new osgViewer, osgShadow and osgManipulator libraries, new
build system, improved multi-core, multi-GPU support.

 

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.

 

Open-source development delivers industry-leading features and
performance

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.

 

The theme for the 2.0 release has been making the OpenSceneGraph easier
to use, yet more flexible and powerful.

 

Features include:

 

    * New unified build system using 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:

          o 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 the osgProducer/Producer combo as viewer toolkit.

          o osgManipulator - provides a set of interactive manipulators
for scaling, rotating and moving objects in the scene.

          o 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

          o Improvements to the OpenFlight, COLLADA, AC3D, DDS plugins
and many more

          o New TXF texture font reader.

          o New VRML2 reader (using the OpenVRML library). 

    * Easier 3rd party windowing integration

          o With examples showing integration with GLUT, SDL, Qt,
WxWidgets and MFC 

    * External dependencies removed simplifying build and distribution

          o OpenThreads is moved into the core of OpenSceneGraph and is
no longer an external dependency

          o Thanks to the integration of windowing support in osgViewer,
Producer is no longer a dependency. 

 

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 Downloads section of the
openscenegraph.org website.

 

OpenSceneGraph is released under the 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 and OpenSceneGraph Reference
Manuals are now available and up to date with the latest
OpenSceneGraph-2.0 release. To purchase your copies head over to
OpenSceneGraph Books website. Profits from the books will help fund
further documentation and book efforts.

 

Professional support and services

OpenSceneGraph project is backed up with professional services by
OpenSceneGraph Professional Services, based in Scotland, and Skew-Matrix
and 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 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

 

About:

 

OpenSceneGraph Project - founded by Robert Osfield and Don Burns in
September 1999 as offshot from the development of Don Burns' hang
gliding flight simulator.

 

OpenSceneGraph Professional Services - founded by Robert Osfield in 2001
to provide OpenSceneGraph support, consultancy services, bespoke
development and training services.

 

 

 

________________________________

 

 

Mike Wittman

mwittman@seismicmicro.com <mailto:mwittman@seismicmicro.com> 

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Seismic Micro-Technology, Inc.

8584 Katy Freeway, Suite 400 / Houston, Texas 77024

Tel.  +1 (713) 464-6188

Fax. +1 (713) 464-6440

Web:  www.seismicmicro.com
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