Hi community,
this time we want to quickly highlight some projects that were brought to our attention (some more recently than others) that we would like to share with you:
W
e are happy to spread the word about yet another great addition to the Ogre3D eco system: Noesis GUI. It is a GUI library currently in the closed beta phase that relies on SVG graphics that are “converted back to triangles in real time with a powerful GPU-assisted tessellation algorithm. This allows for resolution independent user interfaces with optimum quality.” The whole rasterization process takes place on the GPU with custom shader implementations.The very nice thing about the library is, that it uses XAML as the source data which enables developers to utilize the existing XAML tools they are already accustomed with. Other features include 3D projection, extensive animation capabilities, skinning and an efficient C++ API.
Some days ago, they now officially released an Ogre binding for their library that was created by our Ogre3D team member Murat Sari (wolfmanfx). It is available for everyone participating in the closed beta program.
Access to the beta as well as further information can be found on their website: http://www.noesisengine.com/
If you are looking for technical details on how their libraries works, check out that blog entry: Technology behind NoesisGUI
NoesisGUI from Noesis Technologies on Vimeo.
As most of you will already be aware of, it has again been an interesting and productive Google Summer of Code year for our community. As usual the GSoC year is concluded by a summit for the mentors organized by Google and we thought we’d share some bits and pieces as well as talk about the experiences of this year in general.
As we do every year, we sent out two of our mentors to represent our community at the summit. Last year it was Noam and Mattan, this year Assaf and Mattan (David was our first pick as he never attended so far, but it didn’t work out in his schedule).
The event is a two day conference held in Google’s offices in Mountain View, California. Hospitality was wonderful, nice hotel rooms, great food and lots of friendly people. The breakout sessions during the summit covered a variety of topics, all focusing on the summer of code and open source in general.
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As many of you will know, Microsoft just released their SDK for its new mobile OS named “Windows Phone 8” (WP8) at the Build developer conference into the wild today and we are happy and proud to announce that OGRE supports it from day one!
Microsoft provided us early access to the Windows Phone 8 SDK which they made publicity available for developer everywhere today. More than that, they even took care of a major part of the porting work themselves and contributed the code changes to us via Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.
Many thanks for the support!
Since the Windows Phone 8 SDK supports creating projects in C++ (unlike Windows Phone 7) OGRE can be compiled for it with minimal effort. Another reason for the easy adoption was that OGRE 1.9 already supported WinRT, DirectX 11 and loading binary versions of shaders before the guys at Microsoft and Nokia started their porting work. Additionally, the API Microsoft now provides for WP8 is very similar to Windows 8 WinRT API – meaning the port was more or less only a few lines of code to be changed in OGRE.
Bottom-line is that OGRE projects can easily be compiled to run on Windows desktops, tablets and phones using the same code base with just minor modifications.
(more…)Yet another commercial game using Ogre3D as the rendering engine was released this autumn. Check out these extracts and screenshots from the official press release we received:
This year was one of success for JetDogs Studios. One of the new creations of the company is an inimitable game with an exciting title “Alchemy Mysteries: Prague Legends”. The action of the fascinating story proceeds in the old mysterious Prague whose secrets are to be discovered by an orphan named Eva – the main character of the storyline.
The special mystic atmosphere was created thanks to the graphical platform OGRE 3D. Using this advanced technology, the developers succeeded to create many different fine details. Pre-rendered cube-maps of extremely high quality are the basis for environments with full 3D elements. All the characters of the game are also in full 3D that makes scenes and actions completely realistic.
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