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OGRE Changelog

What's new in OGRE 1.9.0

Jul 24, 2015
  • Core Improvements:
  • OgreMain:
  • Extract the overlays from OgreMain and transform it into a own overlay component
  • Progressive Mesh improvements and new Mesh LOD sample.
  • Loads of documentation updates
  • Added Mesh::mergeAdjacentTexcoords to collapse two adjacent texcoords into one (i.e. float2 texcoord0 & float2 texcoord1 become float4 texcoord0)
  • According to the documentation, the default SceneManager ambient light should be black, which is wasn't though.
  • SceneManager: updateSceneGraph should happen BEFORE prepareShadowTextures.
  • AtomicScalar operators should be returning their value. Only affects using GCC or Clang.
  • New class ProgressiveMeshGenerator to degenerate mesh detail at runtime.
  • Bug fix for Sphere::merge. Inaccurate results can occur if one sphere does not fully encompass the other.
  • New LOD strategies 'distance_box' and 'screen_ratio_pixel_count'. Details, see Ogre Manual.
  • SharedPtr moved to use atomics (related API change see below in the porting notes).
  • SubMesh has a new method: clone(const String& newName, Mesh *parentMesh) to perform deep copies of SubMesh objects. The second parameter is optional and can be used to reparent a SubMesh.
  • Removed Configfile::load(const String& filename, const String& resourceGroup, const String& separators, bool trimWhitespace) because it can easily be ambiguous. If you wish to load from a resource group, use the existing function loadFromResourceSystem. The arguments are identical to the removed function. See OGRE-175.
  • New Volume Rendering component with LOD.
  • Many Terrain improvements.
  • RTSS:
  • Changed error handling of RTSS sub-render state parameter creation. Sub-render state now throws exception on errors
  • Added 2 new demo samples: multiple lights and textured fog
  • CgProgramManager:
  • Added support for high-level output profiles glslv/glslf/glslg and hlslv/hlslf (glslg not fully working yet)
  • RenderSystems:
  • DirectX 11:
  • Improvements from GSoC project.
  • Add tessellation shaders support.
  • Add tessellation sample.
  • Add dynamic linking support.
  • DirectX 9Ex support
  • Added OpenGL 3+ RenderSystem. Still marked as experimental and under heavy development.
  • OpenGL ES:
  • GLES 2 terrain support.
  • OpenGL ES state and uniform caches.
  • Rewrote PVRTC codec, adding cube map, 3D and mipmap support. Only files created with PVRTexTool are supported now, not Apple's texturetool utility.
  • Experimental OpenGL ES 3.0 support.
  • GL RenderSystem:
  • GLEW updated to 1.9.0.
  • Remove restriction that all GLSL programs have the same matrix order when linking.
  • GLSL binary shader cache now works properly (OGRE-251)

New in OGRE 1.8.0 (Jul 24, 2015)

  • Terrain changes:
  • Terrain vertex data is now compressed by default, reducing the vertex size by 40% on the GPU
  • Terrain data is saved in a compressed format (Deflate) resulting in smaller disk sizes (uncompressed data files are still supported)
  • DeflateStream added:
  • Wraps any other stream to compress / decompress data via the deflate algorithm
  • If given an uncompressed stream to load, automatically falls back on a passthrough read for easy compatibility
  • Vertex normals can now be animated in morph and pose animation:
  • Normals can be included in vertex morph keyframes, and specified as part of reference poses
  • Software, SSE and hardware (shader) pipelines supported
  • Mesh format has been upgraded to support the new data
  • Note: Animated normals are currently not compatible with stencil shadows because of the conflicting vertex structure requirements
  • Versioned mesh writing:
  • MeshSerializer can now write all versions of .mesh back to Ogre 1.0 rather than only being able to write in the latest version format. This should make it easier for tool & exporter developers who can use the latest code but still support users on older versions
  • OgreMeshUpgrader now accepts an optional -V parameter where you can specify the target version to write
  • New Instancing system:
  • Completely new InstanceManager system written from scratch, which is more robust, supports extending it with multiple techniques
  • Interface and behavior very similar to Entity, to maintain consistency and allow easy switch between Entities and Instanced Entities. Instanced Entities can be attached to scene nodes.
  • Implemented ShaderBased technique (up to 80 instances per batch, matrices stored in vertex shader's constant registers)
  • Implemented VTF technique (huge amount of instances per batch stored in a texture, needs Vertex Texture Fetch)
  • Added "New Instancing" sample to show the capabilities, limits, and features of this new system.
  • A cache of the binary representation of shaders

New in OGRE 1.7.0 (Jul 24, 2015)

  • Compositor changes:
  • Allow 'pooled' compositor surfaces
  • Separate compositor instances using the same size & format surfaces can share them, saving memory
  • System detects the compositor instance chaining to avoid problems with interdependence
  • 'pooled' has to be explicitly enabled on texture definitions, it is not the default because once enabled you cannot necessarily rely on being able to see all the intermediate texture results (because they can be ping-ponging across shared textures); people may be relying on this
  • Manual switching between supported compositor techniques is now possible on the fly
  • Compositor techniques can now have 'scheme' names, you can manually switch between supported techniques using the scheme name to drop to different approaches for reasons other than hardware compatibility (performance, alternative tweaks etc)
  • You can keep & share the textures used by previously active techniques so switching back & forth is faster (must use 'pooled' option for this).
  • Compositors can now specify if they don't want to inherit the FSAA setting from the main target for texture definitions ('no_fsaa')
  • Compositors can now turn on sRGB gamma conversion per texture definition instead of just inheriting from the main surface ('gamma')
  • Cross-compositor communication (from SoC2009 Compositor)
  • Define a texture as accessible from other locations by the chain_scope or global_scope directive in the texture definition
  • Reference a texture from a different compositor in the chain (or in general) using the texture_ref directive
  • Compositor code connection improvements (from SoC2009 Compositor)
  • It is now possible to define a custom composition pass (instead of just quad/scene/clear) in code and trigger it using the render_custom composition pass type.
  • You can now link between a compositor and related code (for example, a compositor listener) automatically using CompositorLogics.
  • SceneManager changes:
  • It is now possible to pause a frame's rendering mid-way (for example, during a callback called in the middle of the process) to trigger a side render and then resume rendering. See SceneManager::_pauseFrame and SceneManager::_resumeFrame.
  • Added an option to manually trigger the updating of shadow textures for specific lights. See SceneManager::prepareShadowTextures. The combination of the two new additions allow reusing a single texture for multiple shadowmaps.
  • Antialising changes:
  • Support for Coverage Sampled AA (CSAA) - Dx9 & Dx10 only for now
  • Unified & simplified AA settings
  • on Root's config options the setting is now called 'FSAA' in all cases, and consist of samples and a hint string (separated by spaces)
  • on the miscParams to createRenderWindow you can supply 'FSAA' and 'FSAAHint'. The former is the number of samples, the latter any hinting (e.g. 'Quality')
  • Light changes:
  • Near/far plane settings for shadow cameras can now be manually configured per light if required
  • You can now mask lights out per object by calling MovableObject::setLightMask - a renderable object's mask is bitwise and'ed with the light's mask and the light is excluded if the result is 0.
  • LOD changes:
  • LOD no longer has to use distance as a metric for changing LOD levels
  • LodStrategy can now be set on both Material and Mesh, to either Distance or PixelCount (new strategies can also be added)
  • STL container changes:
  • All STL containers now use custom memory allocators
  • Profiler changes:
  • Allow milliseconds as well as percentage view - gives a better idea of absolute fluctuations.
  • Define profiler masks so that profiling can be added to core OGRE but still filtered out by categories (added some simple profiling to test)
  • Hierarchy of profiles is now inclusive instead of exclusive (children no longer subtract their time from parents). This is more useful in practice when doing breakdowns
  • Added numerical indicators instead of a scale with 'ticks' since its more useful
  • Optimisations:
  • Fixed-function light state is now handled more intelligently, leading to better performance with large numbers of objects
  • Shader parameters are now updated more selectively, reducing unnecessary updates
  • GpuProgramParameters changes:
  • Support added for shared parameter sets which allow you to define / update shader variables for many programs and materials in one place. See GpuProgramManager::createSharedParamerers
  • Use shared_params, shared_param_named and shared_params_ref in scripts to define and reference shared parameter sets.
  • Parameters are now automatically migrated when the program they are based on is changed and reloaded; any parameters which still apply are merged into the new parameters
  • Archive changes:
  • Archive now supports create and remove of files (FileSystem only implemented for now)
  • DataStream changes:
  • Writeable data streams are now supported (FileSystem only implemented for now)
  • File handling changes:
  • New class StreamSerialiser is the new way to read & write binary chunk-based formats
  • Build changes:
  • Cmake is now used to generate project files, separate explicitly maintained build systems are being removed.
  • RenderWindow changes:
  • miscParams now supports 'vsyncInterval' option, allowing you to sync to a multiple of the refresh rate if you want (and the hardware supports it)
  • Viewport changes:
  • Added clear method to manually clear any combination of colour/depth/stencil to a specified value without performing an update.
  • Image changes:
  • Added loadTwoImagesAsRGBA and combineTwoImagesAsRGBA to make it easier to construct combined normal/height and diffuse/specular images etc
  • New Paging Component:
  • SceneManager-independent, separate optional component (OGRE_HOME/Components/Paging)
  • Pluggable strategy components to control paging strategy for a section of the scene
  • Pluggable content components to control paging of content
  • Plugggable collection components so that paged elements can be composed or selected between in different ways (e.g. paging many -LOD levels within a page)
  • New Terrain Component:
  • SceneManager-independent, separate optional component (OGRE_HOME/Components/Terrain)
  • Inherently editable
  • Hierarchical geometry batching; batch counts reduce at lower LODs as well as vertex count. At the lowest level of detail, the entire terrain page is a single batch.
  • -LOD now adapts in real-time to camera settings (viewport sizes & -LOD bias) so you can use the same terrain with multiple views efficiently
  • Skirts are used instead of stitching to avoid cracks in geometry; this means fewer indexing arrangements & lower overall index buffer usage
  • Saving & loading of terrain built in, including loading / processing in a background thread
  • In-built support for splatting layers, configurable sampler inputs and pluggable material generators
  • Support for generating global normal maps and light maps, in a background thread
  • New Property Component:
  • Separate optional component (OGRE_HOME/Components/Property)
  • boost::bind based property system to make it easier to expose reflected properties from your objects
  • Threading changes:
  • WorkQueue added to accept generalized work items to be executed in background worker threads
  • WorkQueue starts the number of workers based on hardware, or can be told to start a different number
  • Main Ogre WorkQueue is in Root::getWorkQueue. You can also subclass WorkQueue and provide your own if you want
  • ResourceBackgroundQueue now uses WorkQueue instead of using its own queue
  • All Ogre thread support will use WorkQueue in future
  • Resource changes:
  • ResourcePool added as a place for other application components to shelve & re-use resources
  • Material changes:
  • scene_blend_op and separate_scene_blend_op added to passes, to change the default '+' operator between source & dest blending params
  • Material listeners can now register to listen to a specific scheme, to allow for none-competing scheme handlers for different schemes.