Note: The installers were updated on October 6th to include Python 3.9 bindings.

This is primarily a bugfix release, but includes a few new features as well. Also see the release announcement.

Rendering

• Add High Dynamic Range filter with ACES tone mapping to CommonFilters
• Add sRGB filter to CommonFilters (to be used as fallback to framebuffer-srgb)
• Fix (shadow) buffer no longer working after host buffer is destroyed (#890)
• Fix rare bug with shader parameters not being set right across render passes
• Fog density passed to shader now defaults to 0 when no fog is applied
• Don’t check sampler/light type mismatch for non-shadow-casting lights (#942)
• Shader generator now makes use of Material alpha values if present (#912)
• Support sRGB textures and framebuffers in OpenGL ES 2 renderer

Asset Loading

• Egg files can now be loaded with sRGB texture formats automatically
• Fix maya2egg regression not creating animations properly (#1004)
• Fix FMOD issue reading sounds from read-write-opened multifiles (#1002)

Stability

• Fix faulty collision detection when sphere is under polygon (#907)
• Fix PStats misreporting an exploding number of RenderState/TransformState
• Fix memory leak when removing a task that is awaiting a non-Panda future
• Optimize RenderState cache for case where texture is replaced repeatedly
• PNMImage add_sub_image() / mult_sub_image() now properly adds offset (#903)
• Fix some ServerRepository issues in Python 3
• Fix has_tags() still returning true after clearing all Python tags (#936)
• Fix crash in BitArray.has_any_of()
• Fix errors in PythonUtil.detectLeaks() and PythonUtil.report()
• Fix runtime error during ControlManager deletion (#884)
• Some error messages in nativenet are changed to debug messages
• Fix TexMemWatcher crash when graphics memory reaches 1 GB (#975)
• Fix a Triangulator crash dealing with certain invalid polygons (#985)
• Fix in MultiplexStreamBuf::Output::write_string() (#902)
• Fix a buffer overrun on FreeBSD when extracting very long command-line args

Input and Windowing

• M_confined mouse mode on Windows now confines mouse to client rectangle
• Fix incorrect handling of shift modifier on macOS (#959)
• Fix erroneous dpad_*-up events when emulating a dpad on Linux (#973)
• Fix tab handling in DirectEntry with certain versions of Windows CRT (#994)
• Fix parented window receiving WS_POPUP style on Windows (#915)

Deployment

• macOS app bundle now performs chdir into Resources folder upon launch
• No longer defaults to FMOD audio on macOS unless FMOD is explicitly bundled
• Improvements to Config.prc handling (strip comments, sort files, etc.)
• Line buffering is now used on Windows when writing to log files (#947)
• stdout/stderr output streams are now flushed on exit (#946)
• Build paths are now properly stripped from compiled Python code (#991)
• Update to support a change in location of numpy/Pillow libraries (#914)
• Fix libffi-7.dll not being included in official wheels
• PYTHONINSPECT mechanism is no longer enabled when building with optimizations
• A few unnecessary warning messages are squelched
• Windows builds now include previously missing CRT dlls

API

• Add pickle support to Datagram class
• Unexpose a crashing CollisionPolygon constructor and method (#908)
• FilterManager has new parameter to control framebuffer clamping
• Add snake_case aliases for functions in DirectGuiGlobals
• Global delete operator is now safe to call with a null pointer
• Improvements to API reference documentation

Build

• Fix issues building with development versions Python 3.9 and 3.10
• Fix an ABI incompatibility issue with MouseWatcher in NDEBUG builds
• Fix incorrect NaN/inf detection in double-precision release builds (#987)
• interrogate C++ parser supports arbitrary constant expressions in bitfields
• interrogate C++ parser supports sizeof with constant expression