VR Juggler 2.0.0 released

Introduction
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After three developer releases, four alpha releases, and three beta releases, it gives me great pleasure to announce the long-awaited release of VR Juggler 2.0.0. VR Juggler 2.0 has been in development for more than four and a half years, and it has been a long and winding road to reach this point. This release represents the work of a varied group of developers, many who have come and gone during the last four and a half years. Just as importantly, VR Juggler 2.0 is the result of feedback from countless users of VR Juggler 1.0 and the ten (!) 2.0 pre-releases.

The new features in VR Juggler 2.0 relative to VR Juggler 1.0 are too numerous to list here. Interested readers are referred to the following web page on the Juggler Wiki:

http://www.vrjuggler.org/twiki_public/bin/view/Juggler/VrjTwoZeroFeatures

Since VR Juggler 2.0 Beta 3 was released one month ago, the new developments are as follows:

* Support for Windows XP x64 Edition
* Finalized support for AMD64/EM64T and IA-64 Linux distributions
* Bug fixes and documentation enhancements in VRJConfig
* Stability fixes in Sonix
* Stability fixes for Open Scene Graph-based VR Juggler applications
* More application shutdown improvements

As usual, you can find binaries, source code, pre-packaged dependencies, and rendered documentation on SourceForge. Downloads and requirements can be found here:

http://www.vrjuggler/vrjuggler/download-2_0.php

New VR Juggler users should read the VR Juggler 2.0 /Getting Started Guide/:

http://www.vrjuggler.org/vrjuggler/2.0/getting.started.guide/getting.started.guide/

To update to this release from VR Juggler 2.0 Beta 1, Beta 2, or Beta 3, the process is as simple as installing the release and recompiling your applications. To update from 2.0 Alpha 4, the process is the same as explained in the 2.0 Beta 1 release notes. Please read the VR Juggler 2.0.0 release notes for more details. The release notes can be seen here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=333262

With this release, the VR Juggler 2.0 pre-releases should be considered obsolete. No more patches will be merged to the 2.0 Alpha 3 or Alpha 4 branches. Users of VR Juggler 2.0 pre-releases are strongly encouraged to update to the VR Juggler 2.0.0 release.

Porting from 1.0
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We have worked to address problems with VR Juggler 1.0, both in the design and in the implementation. We have also taken advantage of advances in C++ compiler technology to make the code faster, simpler, and more robust. To learn about updating VR Juggler 1.0 applications, refer to the porting documentation:

http://www.vrjuggler.org/twiki_public/bin/view/Juggler/MigratingToVrjTwo

This is a Wiki page, so everyone can contribute additional information and/or tips as necessary.

What's Next?
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As most VR Juggler users are probably aware, we use an even/odd version numbering scheme. When the minor version number is even, the release series has been stabilized and will primarily only have bug fix releases on an as-needed basis. When the minor number is odd, the code is an in-progress version of the next stable release series and should be considered (relatively) unstable.

The CVS HEAD branch of the repository has been identified as VR Juggler 2.1 since the release of VR Juggler 2.0 Beta 3. VR Juggler 2.1 is the code that will become VR Juggler 2.2. At this time, we plan to release VR Juggler 2.2 between 6 and 12 months from now. The development process will be much more focused and will not experience the degree of instability and long development cycles seen with VR Juggler 1.1. To that effect, you can see the current plans for VR Juggler 2.2 here:

http://www.vrjuggler.org/twiki_public/bin/view/Juggler/DevelopmentStatus#VR_Juggler_2_2_Features

We also have VR Juggler 2.4 in our sights (mainly to keep VR Juggler 2.2 development under control), and the plans for VR Juggler 2.4 can be seen here:

http://www.vrjuggler.org/twiki_public/bin/view/Juggler/DevelopmentStatus#VR_Juggler_2_4_Features

VR Juggler 2.0 has its own branch in the CVS repository so that bugs can be fixed and patch releases (2.0.1, 2.0.2, etc.) can be released. Some VR Juggler 2.2 features may be merged to the 2.0 branch, but only as long as no changes would be required to user code or user configurations to update to a VR Juggler 2.0.x patch release. This would be decided on a case-by-case basis. Users interested in tracking VR Juggler 2.0 through CVS should refer to the following page to get the necessary information about the Juggler CVS branches:

http://www.vrjuggler.org/twiki_public/bin/view/Juggler/CvsBranches