So, if you want to follow my tweets related to OGRE, graphics & tech in general, and occasionally some random other stuff, here’s my Twitter page. In the interests of making it easier to find in future, I’ve added a link to the navigation bar on the left too.

Enjoy!

As usual you can find everything on the downloads page, and details of the changes since RC1 after the jump. You might also want to look at the original 1.7.0RC1 release announcement to see the major new features that were added in 1.7.

Source releases and Windows SDKs are up now. Edit: SDKs for OS X,  MinGW, and Ubuntu PPA are now up too.

Enjoy!

Changes since 1.7.0 RC1 (highlights only):

• Fix GPU-extruded stencil shadows on Dx9
• Allow Terrain to have layers inserted / removed at any point in the stack
• Fix bug 254: DXTn volume texture size calculation crash
• Samples tidied up, and some fixes to unloading behaviour in Compositor, Instancing and VolumeTex samples
• Many fixes to FindOGRE.cmake, now much more reliable and compatible with 1.6 and 1.7. Reference SDKs with OGRE_SDK, or source builds via OGRE_SOURCE and OGRE_BUILD paths.
• New SDKs for Windows and OS X created
• Fill in some missed PVRTC rendersystem caps
• Fix resolving some types in OS X 10.5 SDK
• Added validateConfigOptions() call in Root::restoreConfig(). Solves a crash when moving cfg file from one machine to another.
• RTSS: some refactoring and bug fixing
• Terrain: fixed several bugs
• GLES rendersystem bugfixes
• Fix Codec compile when using OGRE_STRING_USE_CUSTOM_MEMORY_ALLOCATOR
• HashedVector::mListHashDirty was not initialised correctly in a few cases
• Null shadow textures should not be dynamic since that means after a device lost they lost their contents, and there is no handler to manage this.
• Prevent excessive logging when texture load failed in ensureloaded/ensurePrepared
• Windows 64-bit compatibility fixes
• Fix problems when using logical GPU parameter indexes which end up needing more space than originally thought
• Fix a problem with .hdr introduced by new FreeImage
• Fix a bug in ResourceGroupManager::loadResourceGroup when a resource changes group
• Added a Character sample featuring the Sinbad character model.
• Add CMake option corresponding to OGRE_PROFILING
• Fix a large number of problems on Windows with establishing the max size of a window and switching between fullscreen and windowed modes
• WorkQueue::addRequestHandler and WorkQueue::removeRequestHandler no longer block until existing background requests are processed, leading to better parallelism
• Fix no grass displayed on ATI cards on GL in grass demo
• Static build now works including all sample browser plugins
• Fix RGBA colours in custom GLSL attributes
• Reduce compiler warnings
• Lots & lots of other bugfixes and tweaks!

So, we’re glad that he’s agreed to join the team officially now – welcome aboard Nir! In practice it’s business as usual, but he has his well-deserved official badge now

Zi Ye (aka ‘omniter’) has been with us since Google Summer of Code 2009, and has proven himself not only skilled in the art of coding, but also skilled in the art of.. well, art! He took it upon himself to create an animated character in the spirit of Ogre, and has clearly succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

Zi has named the new character ‘Sinbad’, and modelled him on a hybrid of our original Ogre logo and that of a certain well-known sea-faring character, whose name Steve Streeting, the founder and project lead of Ogre, adopted as his development & community alias many, many years ago. He has animations for idling (strangely my personal favourite because it exudes so much character), walking, jumping, drawing and putting away his swords, 2 types of attack and, curiously, a dance routine He stars in a new sample where he can be controlled by the user, which  demonstrates character control and also using tag points to attach related items (the swords) to a skeleton.

This will all be included in the next release of Ogre 1.7, or you can access it now from the 1.7 Subversion branch. There’s also a video available of a slightly earlier version of the demo. ‘Sinbad’ is available for free use in other applications too so long as you don’t try to charge money for him.

Huge thanks to Zi for doing this! If you want to congratulate him yourself, here’s his development thread on the subject.

January 12th marks the official release date of the PC kart game Zero Gear by NimbleBit! For the low price of only $19.99 you can beat up your friends in 18 different levels, in customizable karts and characters. Play with physically based weapons, earn achievements and compete in many different game modes.

To help get you into the actions with your friends, Zero Gear is also offered in a 4-pack for $39.99. Thats 50% off each copy!

Still not satisfied? Take your friends and try the full game for FREE this entire week! Zero Gear will be free to play on Steam until Jan. 18th! If you are STILL on the fence, lets keep it 25% off for the entire week. Get Zero Gear now or be sorry later!!11!

ZOMG, LETS GO PLAY!! http://store.steampowered.com/app/18820/

Congratulations to the guys at NimbleBit on their release!

As usual, plenty of people have been testing it direct from Subversion for a while now, but even so we’re issuing it as a Release Candidate to begin with. Due to time constraints, we’re also only issuing this as a source release for the moment – prebuilt SDKs will follow in a second Release Candidate or the final.

For those of you using Subversion, the new path for Ogre 1.7 is now https://svn.ogre3d.org/svnroot/ogre/branches/v1-7. Otherwise, you can find the new release on the source downloads page.

Happy New Year!

Here are some of the main new features and enhancements you’ll find in OGRE 1.7:

• License changes
  • OGRE 1.7 is now released under the MIT License
• 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 (from SoC2009 Compositor)
  • 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.
• New Sample Browser (from SoC2009_Samples)
  • Instead of many separate demos, we now have one integrated sample browser
  • Samples are pluggable libraries that can be reloaded at runtime without restarting the browser
  • A simple ‘tray’ system is used to make sample GUI controls easy to create
• 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 (from Soc2008_LOD)
  • 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. See Building With CMake
• 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 ‘Real Time Shader System’ (RTSS) Component
  • Automatically generate shaders to replace the fixed-function pipeline and to add features such as per-pixel lighting, normal mapping and shadows.
• 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 generalised work items to be executed in multiple 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 and can have multiple tasks running at once
  • New focus on data-driven, task-based parallel execution with separation of GPU and CPU activities
  • Boost, POCO and Thread Building Blocks supported as threading back-ends (Boost preferred)
• 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.
• iPhone OS port
  • Synced GLESRenderSystem with GLRenderSystem and added some more extension detection
  • Added support for ARM architecture and CPU feature detection
  • iPhone OGRE SDK disc image and sdk package script
• OS X improvements
  • Moved code and resources from the Mac directory to OgreMain
  • Eliminated deprecation warnings when targeting Mac OS X 10.5/10.6
  • General organisation and compatibility improvements

Enjoy, and have a happy new year!

Changes since v1.6.4:

• If Mesh::buildTangentVectors is called and causes vertex splits, and mesh had pose animation, make sure we fix up the poses too.
• Change 0 -> NULL in Dx9 Present() call, user reported issue on Intel G33/G31 GPU allegedly resolved by this (illogical, but does no harm)
• Fix a crash when trying to render a line list with stencil shadows enabled
• Deal with Dx9 device lost for hardware occlusion queries better
• Fix problem in OpenGL when mixing anisotropy levels in different texture units on the same pass
• Fix Win x64 RTC issues with timer
• Fix bug in HLSL with 3×4 matrix arrays
• Culling fixes for InstancedGeometry
• Prevent GLX ConfigDialog from creating empty dropdown elements which cause a crash when clicked on.
• Fix straggling texture unit state bug with multiple contexts in GL.
• PF_L8 is not likely to be a valid render target format on many cards, use PF_X8R8G8B8 as is the default for non-depth shadows.
• Documentation updates

Thanks to 3d-test.com for running this interview and to David for doing such a great job on it.

The single player game launches today, with an MMO version planned for 2010. Having played the single player game, it’s immediately obvious that it was designed by a team of veterans of the genre; it’s highly polished and a lot of fun to play, and we’re very proud that OGRE has been a part of creating this title.

Torchlight is available to purchase as a digital download from Perfect World, Steam, Direct2Drive and other partners. Go get it!

Welcome aboard Noam!