Apologies for the longer than usual delay between formal releases, but I think you’ll like the new version. 🙂 There are so many updates in this version, you’ll need to look at the full detail of this story to read them all.

You can of course grab eveything you need from the Downloads Area. Visual C++ users please note: you need to download the updated 3rd-party libraries from the Extras area as well as the updated source code. Enjoy!

Here’s the full list of all the major updates, there are actually lots more small changes but these are the headlines:

  • SceneQuery introduced; a generic way to query the SceneManager
    database of objects and world geometry in a way which is optimised per scene management
    technique but transparent for the client application. Currently only IntersectionSceneQuery
    is implemented but RaySceneQuery, SphereSceneQuery and others will soon be available
    too
  • ReferenceApplication introduced; this is a new library which sits
    on top of the main OGRE library in order to provide a reference implementation
    of combining OGRE with other libraries for use in a full application. Currently
    combines OGRE and ODE to provide an easy to use collision and realistic physics
    system, utilising the new SceneQuery functions for generic collision detection.
    Object to object collision is currently supported, together this object to world
    collision for the BspSceneManager (ie collision against Quake3 levels), see the
    BspCollision demo for an example. Per-object friction, bounciness and mass parameters
    are all definable, also most of the ODE joint types ie ball, hinge, hinge2, universal.
    World collision for the terrain managers will be added shortly.
  • Many
    structural enhancements to the GLRenderSystem, including an extension manager,
    separation of window creation etc into a GLSupport class (to enable platform specific
    window management). Win32GLSupport added so Win32 no longer uses SDL for window
    management.
  • Hardware mipmap generation supported in GL 1.3+
  • New
    demos: BspCollision and Demo_Water
  • RenderTargetListener now supports
    pre and post Viewport update events
  • RenderSystem now supports anisotropic
    texture filtering and dot3 texture operations
  • Significant updates to
    the 3D Studio Max exporter, now very mature
  • Added 3 more basic mesh exporters
    / converters: Maya, Wings3D and VRML 97
  • Attaching objects to a skeleton:
    any MovableObject (entities, particle systems etc) can now be attached to any
    bone on an entity, and will move correctly with the animation
  • XMLConverter
    can now generate / update LOD information for meshes too
  • Bones can now
    be manually controlled in combination with animation tracks much more easily,
    allowing you to do things like tilt a characters head toward a target while playing
    other animations, make a character bend at the waist etc.
  • New particle
    affectors: ScaleAffector (particle resizing) and ColourFaderAffector2 (dual-state
    colour affector which changes behaviour based on a particle’s TTL)
  • Alternative
    terrain engine added (NatureSceneManager), supports paging and very large areas

  • Significant speed enhancements to Node, in particular skeletal animation is now
    many times faster for large skeletons
  • Interface breaking change since
    0.10.0: SceneNode::createChild now returns a Node* rather than a SceneNode*, you
    will have to cast it. This was to resolve virtualisation problems
  • Platform-specific
    Timer classes and general timing improvements mean that accuracy and consistency
    is much better
  • Rendering to texture now supported in GL as well as D3D

  • SDLRenderSystem renamed to GLRenderSystem
  • Python support resurrected,
    Linux only for now due to Boost problems with VC
  • Gui enhancements, including
    pop up menus and scrollable text areas and being able to #include in .overlay
    files to reuse definitions (NB: the event and gui classes will shortly be moved
    into a separate plugin)
  • Added ability to switch between buffered and
    unbuffered input on demand
  • VC++.Net 2003 support added
  • MaterialSerializer
    for writing .material scripts from an in-memory version
  • Many bugfixes,
    including the removal of all remaining memory leaks