NAME

       coin250 - New Features in Coin v2.5.0 This is a brief summary of the new features in Coin v2.5.0, grouped
       by feature category.

Geographical Data Support

       The Geopgraphic Data Support nodes are partly based on GeoVRML (http://www.geovrml.org/), and partly
       based on our own UTM-nodes which can be found in the SmallChange library.

       The Geographic Data Support nodes makes it possible to create e.g. globe-spanning models that you can
       navigate around in without getting into float precision problems ('the shakes'). Some assistance from the
       application code is needed for this though; it is not a fully automatic solution.

       New nodes:

       • SoGeoOrigin

       • SoGeoLocation

       • SoGeoSeparator

       • SoGeoCoordinate

       In  addition  to  new  nodes, SoCamera and its derived nodes have been updated to support the SoGeoOrigin
       node.

       The coordinate system support in the above nodes are currently a bit lacking (only  a  few  systems/zones
       are  supported),  but  this  will  improve over time. API-changes should not be needed to extend this, so
       patchlevel releases would be enough to add more coordinate systems.

       The VRML2 counterparts of the above  nodes,  which  would  be  a  subpart  of  implementing  the  GeoVRML
       extension, are not yet in development, but they might show up for the next major release since a big part
       of the implementation will be shared.

       Note:  These  above  SoGeo*-nodes make the UTM*-nodes in the SmallChange library obsolete (for anyone who
       uses those), so the support for those nodes will eventually be deprecated  and  removed.  They  won't  be
       removed  over  night though, but for new users: avoid starting to use the UTM*-nodes at all cost to avoid
       having to waste time on a port down the line.

Generic GLSL Shader Support

       Shader support is implemented through a set of new  shader  nodes,  more  or  less  compatible  with  the
       corresponding  TGS  extensions.  Beyond  GLSL,  Coin  also supports ARB shaders and Cg shaders (if the Cg
       library is installed). However, we will only recommend the use of the shader language GLSL  and  put  our
       focus on that one.

       New nodes:

       • SoShaderProgram

       • SoVertexShader

       • SoFragmentShader

       • SoGeometryShader

       See also the 'Shaders in Coin' page for more information.

Generic Shadow Rendering Functionality

       Support  for  rendering shadows has been added to Coin through a set of shader-based nodes. The technique
       used is the Variance Shadow Maps technique (http://www.punkuser.net/vsm/).

       New nodes:

       • SoShadowGroup

       • SoShadowCulling

       • SoShadowStyle

Vertex Buffer Object (VBO) Usage

       A lot of nodes have had their rendering code optimized for VBO usage, giving great performance increases.
       However, this is not universally enabled - it is necessary to organize the scene graphs in specific  ways
       for VBOs to be used.

       See the VBO Rendering in Coin  page for a detailed description.

       Relevant classes:

       • SoVertexProperty

       • SoReorganizeAction

Expanded Sb* Class Collection

       The  set  of  Sb*  classes in Coin has been expanded greatly, with most notable a whole skew of SbVec and
       SbBox classes. The reasoning behind this move was that historically these  classes  were  just  added  as
       needed,  one  by one, causing the stable branch of Coin and the development branch of Coin to diverge and
       become more and more incompatible as time went by. Also,  extension  nodes  were  created  in  peripheral
       libraries  that  used  these  new  classes from the Coin development branch, and consequently couldn't be
       built gainst the stable branch of Coin. With this preemptive class set expansion, we hope to  cause  that
       the Coin stable branch and the Coin development branch stay closer in sync over a longer period, and that
       the incompatibility divergence will happen around major new feature sets instead of around minor details.

       New  Sb*-classes:   SbBox2i32,  SbBox3i32,  SbBox3d,  SbVec2b, SbVec2ub, SbVec2us, SbVec2i32, SbVec2ui32,
       SbVec3b, SbVec3ub, SbVec3us, SbVec3i32, SbVec3ui32,  SbVec4b,  SbVec4ub,  SbVec4s,  SbVec4us,  SbVec4i32,
       SbVec4ui32, SbXfBox3d

       Note:  You  can  also  find  a  good  deal  of  these  classes  in  TGS  Inventor, so this was also a TGS
       compatibility move.

Expanded Field Class Collection

       The exact same reasoning as for the Sb*-classes goes for the field classes.

       New field classes:  SoSFBox2s, SoSFBox2i32, SoSFBox2d, SoSFBox2d, SoSFBox3i32, SoSFBox3d,  SoSFColorRGBA,
       SoSFDouble,  SoSFVec2b, SoSFVec2i32, SoSFVec2d, SoSFVec3b, SoSFVec3i32, SoSFVec4b, SoSFVec4ub, SoSFVec4s,
       SoSFVec4us,  SoSFVec4i32,  SoSFVec4ui32,  SoSFVec4d,  SoMFColorRGBA,  SoMFDouble,  SoMFVec2b,  SoMFVec2s,
       SoMFVec2i32,  SoMFVec2d, SoMFVec3b, SoMFVec3s, SoMFVec3i32, SoMFVec4b, SoMFVec4ub, SoMFVec4s, SoMFVec4us,
       SoMFVec4i32, SoMFVec4ui32, SoMFVec4d

SoFrustumCamera node

       This node is added to make it possible to set up a custom camera with full control over the view  volume.
       SoFrustumCamera is basically a mapping of the OpenGL glFrustum() method.

       The  typical  use  of SoFrustumCamera is in a CAVE or MultiPipe environment where it's often necessary to
       set up cameras based on the configuration of the different displays.

Miscellaneous

       Below follows a non-exhaustive list of other, more minor, tweaks and tidbits.

   SoSearchAction on SoFile nodes
       To facilitate control over whether an SoFile node should traverse its children during  an  SoSearchAction
       traversal, two static methods have been added to SoFile.

       New functions:

       • SoFile::setSearchOK() [static]

       • SoFile::getSearchOK() [static]

   SbTypeInfo<T> template type information library
       For  those who write generic code using C++ templates, a template type information library has been added
       for the primitive Coin-types, so you can use type relations for populating a template instead of  needing
       template  parameters  for  all  changing  types  of  the  template, or you can write generic code on type
       attributes  like  the  number  of  dimensions  of  an  SbVec  class.  SbTypeInfo<T>  can  be   found   in
       Inventor/SbTypeInfo.h.

   Visual Studio Projects
       The  Visual  Studio  projects  have  been  split  into  projects  for  separately  building,  installing,
       uninstalling the Coin SDK, and document generation. This was done primarily to be able to  build  without
       automatically  performing  the  installation  procedure  at  the  same  time,  but  also  to  offer other
       supplementary targets later like the doc-generation project...

       New features for Coin v2.4.0 are here.

Version 4.0.0a                                   Wed Feb 26 2014                                      coin250(3)