OpenRM Scene Graph / News: Recent posts

Tarballs for release candidate 1 of 1.6.0 openrm-devel, openrm-demo and openrm-gordo have been posted at the OpenRM beta web page, http://www.openrm.org/beta/. A formal release will happen after web and related documentation have been finalized.

Openrm-devel 1.5.2-3 is a maintenance release. It contains a fix for a bug whereby the quadrics objects (cones, cylinders, spheres) were not properly intialized during rmPipeMakeCurrent if you didn't let OpenRM create the OpenGL context. This bug would affect only those applications that create and manage their own windows and OpenGL contexts. There are no API changes between 1.5.2-1, 1.5.2-2 and 1.5.2-3.

The mklib.macosx-X11 script didn't make it into the 1.5.2 release due to not being checked in to the CVS tree. We subsequently added it, then released version 1.5.2-2 of openrm-devel, which contains the missing mklib.macosx-X11 script.

Today's release contains version 1.5.2 of openrm-devel, openrm-demo and openrm-cave-demo. We've added gordo to the list of project downloads, and its inaugural entry is 1.5.2.

Project website updates are in progress and should be completed soon (later today, 4/18/04).

The openrm-chromium tree will be updated within the next week or two for 1.5.2.

Thanks for your continued support.

The OpenRM+Chromium demonstration programs have been updated to use OpenRM 1.5.1 and Chromium 1.5.

Version 1.5.1 of OpenRM Scene Graph (devel, demo) is now on the web at openrm.sourceforge.net. New features and capabilities include:
- Constant-rate rendering support.
- Increased pick limits.
- Auto-spin mode for use with rmauxEventLoop.
- Texture objects are now shared, which will substantially reduce memory consumption in programs that instance textures.
- Preliminary support for FreeBSD.
- New routines to measure and manipulate time.
- New RMdemo program - fpsVis3d - used to benchmark rendering and test constant-rate rendering.
- Eradication of several small bugs.
- It just occured to me to mention two other new demo programs that failed to make their presence known in the documentation:
- spriteTest - generates lots and lots of sprites, was used as the test application for the increased pick limits.
- textureTest - like spriteTest, can generate lots and lots of textures, and was used to test the memory consumption on the new texture instancing code.

The 1.5.0 Programming Guide represents a substantial body of work, including editing, beyond what is available in the older 1.4.3 version. In order to support the project, the 1.5.0 may be purchased for a nominal charge at http://www.r3vis.com/SSD/PGuide/index.html

OpenRM is a 2D/3D Scene Graph rendering engine for Linux/Unix/Win32 layered atop OpenGL. Supports stereoscopy, volume rendering, 2D/3D texture mapping, picking, LOD and view-dependent operations, text, and image-based data. New in OpenRM Scene Graph 1.5.0 is direct support for distributed memory parallel rendering when combined with Chromium (chromium.sourceforge.net). This significant work is intended to be used by developers who need the utmost in parallel application performance, and is designed to drive extremely high resolution tiled displays in a distributed memory environment. The "parallel OpenRM" is built to be completely independent of all parallel programming frameworks, so developers can choose MPI, PVM, etc. to build parallel applications and still benefit from a parallel scene graph.

There many improvments in this version, please refer to the RELEASENOTES in the openrm-devel-1.4.3 tarball for complete details. Highlights include renewed support for Win32 DLL builds, support for "an infinite" number of scene graph objects (subject to the amount of RAM and swap on your machine, of course), a new callback that can be used to set the rendering order for child scene graph nodes, a few new demonstration programs, and a few bug fixes.... read more

The RM Scene Graph/OpenRM Scene Graph Programming Guide is ready for download. Check the OpenRM website at Sourceforge, and follow the links. While still incomplete, this document will be a valuable resource to developers.

http://openrm.sourceforge.net/

We're starting a new mini-project as part of the OpenRM effort that we're calling "Gordo". Gordo is a set of examples that show how to combine OpenRM with FLTK into a finished application.

The Fast Light Toolkit (FLTK) is a popular and easy to use toolkit for building cross platform user interfaces. Check the OpenRM download page (openrm.sourceforge.net/download.shtml) to get the Gordo source.... read more

Just outta beta, OpenRM 1.4.0 is now ready at openrm.sourceforge.net.

Enjoy!

Starting on Dec 7, the folks at Sourceforge brought online a new set of web servers. While most everything works better than before, there are have been a few glitches. One of these is that it appears that the "receive an email when a package is updated" service config file was clobbered. As a result, you will probably need to re-register for this service if you were monitoring any of the OpenRM packages.

Santa uploaded a fresh OpenRM 1.3.1 (RC4) tarball today, after the elves found and fixed a couple of typos in rm/rmpublic.h.

Missing was an RM_EXPORT_API definition for a new 1.3.1 function.

OpenRM 1.3.1 is a maintenence release containing incremental upgrades from 1.3.0, most notably support for Win32 DLLs. Thanks to Todd Yocum of VRCO for a substantial contribution that makes this release possible.

Due to some issues with Sourceforge, the 1.3.1 tarballs are downloadable, but not via the "Download" page off openrm.sourceforge.net. Visit the "Sourceforge Pages" link off the main OpenRM page, and follow the links from there. Sorry for the confusion - we'll get this fixed ASAP.... read more

OpenRM Scene Graph (openrm.sourceforge.net), via R3vis
Corporation (www.r3vis.com) has been selected to receive a
Phase 1 SBIR Grant from the US Department of Energy. The
funded work will be made available under LGPL as part of
the OpenRM project.

The funded work will result in:
1) a thread-safe scene graph (multiple rendering threads
reading from a single scene graph)
2) pipelined-parallel rendering engine (app-view-draw
stages)
3) integrated support for tiled display environments
4) support for offscreen rendering.... read more

This is a maintenence release consisting of a few minor
API changes, internal code rearranging and hardening.
Thanks for all your contributions!

FYI - lots of activity behind-the-scenes will result in
OpenRM v 1.2.1. ETA is April 27. Included will be lots
of additional documentation, some minor API changes
and better (snazzier) online documentation.

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OpenRM Scene Graph, a scene graph API and development environment for OpenGL platforms, including X11 and Win32 systems, is now officially in the water and steaming. Please visit http://openrm.sourceforge.net/ for details.