root/OpenSceneGraph/trunk/NEWS.txt

OSG News
========

= !OpenSceneGraph 2.6 release adds osgWidget library, KdTree intersections, Anti-aliased FBOsand much more. =

PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 5th August 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 for scene graph based graphics user interface elements (beta release).
    * KdTree support, with automatic KdTree generation on load and use of KdTree during line intersections which massively improves intersection speeds.
    * Precision improvements to line intersections, provide accurate whole earth intersection.
    * OpenGL Multi-sample FrameBufferObject support.
    * New osg::ImageSequence class for doing texture animation of a series of image files.
    * New database optimizer that is able to remove static transforms by duplicating shared geometries.
    * Use glGenerateMipmap to speed up mipmap generation in non power-of-two textures.
    * New osgViewer::ScreenCaptureHandler for adding screen shot support to osgViewer applications.
    * New osgscreencapture example that demonstrates use of double buffer PixelBufferObject's for streaming of imagery from the screen.
    * New utility application osgfilecache which can be used to populate the local cache for given lat/lon ranges and levels.
    * Rewritten DatabasePager that now supports multiple database reading threads. This includes handling of HTTP requests via a separate reading thread, vastly improving the speed of updates when handling HTTP hosted databases that have already partially been downloaded to local file cache.
    * Support for a file cache for locally caching paged databases hosted over HTTP.
    * Support for http authentication in osgDB and the libcurl plugin
    * New osgconv --format <fmt>, --formats and --plugins command line options for listing available plugins and the file formats/options they support.
    * Performance improvements in handling TerraPage.
    * Animated GIF support.
    * New SVG image loader.
    * Improvements to the .obj loader to support a wider range of .obj files and material properties.
    * Support for thread safe Atomic reference counting.
    * Support for COLLADA DOM 2.x
    * Support for Philips WOWvx 3D auto-stereoscopic displays
    * New include/osg/Config and include/OpenThreads/Config configuration files, that are automatically generated by CMake, which make more straight forward to build end users applications against OpenSceneGraph versions built with non default build options.
    * Support for CMake 2.6
    * 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/TwoPointSix 324 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. 

=== Updates include: ===

 * Support for OpenGL Geometry shaders
 * Support for OpenGL Multiple Render Targets extension to Frame Buffer Objects
 * Support for OpenGL Occlussion Query extension
 * New !OpenFlight writer
 * New libcurl based plugin for reading http hosted databases
 * Quicktime based reading of live video streams under Windows and OSX
 * Better load balancing in database pager
 * Improvements to osgTerrain for support of terrabyte scale whole earth terrain databases
 * Additions to the Shapefile loader with .dbf attribute file, .proj projection file support and loading data as doubles
 * Enhanced intersection functionality including double support for line intersections
 * Parallel build support under Visual Studio
 * Support for reading Producer .cfg viewer configuration files
 * 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 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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

= OpenSceneGraph 2.2 release adds support for advanced displays, soft and parallel split shadow maps and easier builds =

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.
 * Support for Texture2DArray and integer texture OpenGL extensions.
 * Support for spherical displays.
 * Support for checkerboard stereo displays.
 * 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. 

----

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=] 2.0 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 [[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.

  
!!!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.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=] Books now available!

See %newwin%[[http:://www.osgbooks.com OsgBooks]]

!!!Professional support and services
[=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.

* 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://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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


!!![=OpenSceneGraph=] 1.2 release introduces Windows 64bit and AIX support, COLLADA support, processor affinity and texture atlas builder.

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.

The [=OpenSceneGraph=]-1.2 release introduces:

* 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.
* A range of bug fixes and API refinements.

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.

For further information and to download the latest release see the project website:

    http://www.openscenegraph.org

Robert Osfield\\
Project Lead and Proprietor [=OpenSceneGraph=] Professional Services


!!!OpenSceneGraph 1.1 release introduces peformance and scalability improvements, 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

        osgtessellate     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