Forthcoming:
- Runtime distributions (no packp3d etc yet)
- Documentation downloads
The list below contains a subset of the changes introduced:
- We now offer 64-bit Windows and Mac OS X builds.
- Switch to MSVC 2010; no more assembly manifests.
- Cocoa port for better Mac OS X support, esp. newer versions.
- We now compile the Python modules into panda3d/*.pyd modules;
no more imp.load_dynamic hackery needed. - Support for GPU profiling in OpenGL, see pstats-gpu-timing
- sRGB framebuffers, see framebuffer-srgb
- sRGB texture support, see Texture::F_srgb et al.
- Integer vector support, including passing to shaders
- Native .ogg vorbis and .wav loader (does not require ffmpeg)
- FFmpeg support is a separate plug-in module now, libp3ffmpeg.
- Sample programs are now part of the source code repository
- Can be built with Python 3 (highly experimental)
- Improvements to Windows installer
- M_filled_wireframe rendering mode
- Support specifying sampler state separate from textures
- Support for bindless texture clearing
- Texture LOD bias and min/max LOD settings
- Framebuffer properties allows separate red/green/blue bits
- Explicit float color and float depth specification in fbprops
- Coverage samples settable via FrameBufferProperties
- Stereo buffer implementation in OpenGL via FBOs
- Support enumeration of pixel formats in WebcamVideo
- Frame rate meter can be configured to show milliseconds
- Changes to improve font crispness with default settings
- Fix assertion error when using more than one GraphicsEngine
- raw-w, raw-a, etc. keyboard events for layout-independent input
- Allow querying active keyboard layout via win.get_keyboard_map()
- Distinguish between lmeta and rmeta keys on Mac OS X
- Floating-point image manipulation API, support float tiffs
- Various new 16-bit and 32-bit and int texture formats
- Man pages are now available for the majority of utilities
Pipeline:
- Fix bugs with group transformations in .egg
- Don’t create unnecessary intermediate node when loading .egg
- bam2egg supports materials, and correctly converts animations
- dae2egg has some skeletal animation support
- Support Maya versions up to 2015
OpenGL renderer changes:
- Error checking is now OFF by default for performance reasons,
set gl-check-errors or gl-debug to true to enable. - GL 4.2 shader_image_load_store support (incl. multi-bind)
- Layered render-to-texture (using geometry shaders)
- Seamless cube maps (on by default), see gl-cube-map-seamless
- Added gl-debug for improved debug output support
- Added GL object labels when gl-debug is enabled
- gl-dump-compiled-shaders can be used to dump program binaries
- Direct3D-style NT_packed_dabc vertex arrays now directly supported
- Native rendering of line strips, using primitive restart
- Immutable texture storage support (disabled by default)
- Bindless texture support (disabled by default)
- Specular component is now computed separately in FFP
Shader system:
- Support for tessellation shaders
- Support for compute shaders via ComputeNode
- GLSL preprocessor with “#pragma include” support
- Much better coverage of shader inputs in GLSL
- GLSL error messages now show source filename
- Fixes apiclip_of_x shader inputs
- Matrices can be passed directly to setShaderInput
- Support binding images to shaders
- Viewport array support
Optimizations and performance improvements:
- Use of C++11 move semantics to reduce refcounting overhead
- Build with Eigen by default for faster linear math
- Dramatic overhead reduction of generated bindings
- Streamline culling process
- Tighter bounding volume generation
- Take advantage of CPU features for bit operations
- Circumvent bounding volume generation when not required
- Optimizations for interned strings
- Use of GCC atomics should improve 64-bit Linux performance
API features:
- Buffer protocol support for textures and arrays
- Interrogate supports various C++11 features
- Expose TextGlyph interfaces for making custom text renderers
- Better handling of default arguments for many functions
- Cyclic references can sometimes be tracked through tasks
- ShowBase clean teardown possible
- API documentation is more accurate
- Improve interfaces for interop with other applications
Deprecated features:
- Use of pandac.PandaModules is discouraged; use panda3d.core
- Deprecate DirectStart and global run() function; use ShowBase
- Remove old decal system
- Remove Direct3D 8 renderer
- Remove M_light_vector tex gen mode and FFP-based bump mapping
Bug fixes:
- Various point rendering issues are fixed now
- Fix pview issue with 1-frame and/or multiple animations
- Fixes for multisampling in FBOs
- Fix aspect ratio of frame rate meter
- Support NaN and infinity values in Config.prc variables
- Fixes for webcams on Linux that do not output Huffman tables
- Better support for non-basic Cg shaders on non-NVIDIA cards
- Many others
