This is a major release with many exciting new features!
Beware of bugs.
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 <Collide> 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
