Hello everybody,

Najak asked me to tell you all some news about Beta 3.4. I will just go over some of the new features here and what is behind the announcement on the roadmap.
 

“Terrain Tool set bug fixes, and user interface enhancements to make work flow more intuitive, friendly and efficient.”

I stopped counting the improvements we made on this part of V3d. I think nobody knows the number of fixes that will go into this release. One of the things I like most here is that we added an automatic normal map generation which makes the terrains look even better.

“Physics, to make integration into your own scenes more intuitive and easy.”

I am working with this feature for a very long time now. And it is great. Now you can create a physical representation for every actor just with a few clicks. Also I think we are trying to automate this process. We also built a taskforce for Physics, where I take part in. You probably won’t see the results until Beta 3.4, but we are working hard.

“Particle Editor, to take it to a level of usability that let's you modify the particles in any of your scenes, easily.”

I didn’t check this out too closely yet, but looks great. See here (click to enlarge):

“Cinematic Control, with a better interface for setting up more cinematics (not just camera).”

This now supports recording of entities as well, as well as ScreenEffects and Scripting. It is great.

“Configuration of controls and AI for your own custom models.  Elegance added to this workflow.”

I do not know too much about this, but I found something about it in my inbox recently. It seems to be near completion.

“Gui Editor, 1st cut, with nominal functionality.”

I do not know too much here as well, but I can say that GUI system is being fixed at the moment and heavily improved.

“Reconstruction of some scenes to make use of our Component Model, so that there will be a sufficient degree of editability to our demo scenes.”

I did not see anything on that yet.

“Reconstruction of the main Avatar class (and derivatives) to make configuration of Avatars and other smart-objects more dynamic and editable from Architect.”

I have no clue about this one here.

“PSSM - Parallel Split Shadow Map technique to provide the next level of quality in our shadowing techniques.  They look awesome.”

Yes these really look awesome. They are working, I think there only is a little issue with terrain self shadowing.

“New Water, taking it to the next level of performance and realism.  You will love it.”

You really will. And I already do. The performance is better than with the old one but it looks 1000s times better. I love it, I really do. See here (click to enlarge):

“QuadTree spatial manager introduced, for more efficient handling of high content scenes.”

This is in as well. This works for a few weeks now. Great if you have bigger scenes.

“New Demos, including one for Vehicle Physics, where you can modify the ramps and track.”

This is a demo scene from my project , which was first shown here: http://game-engine.visual3d.net/forum/showthread.php?t=951

I will tell you a lot more about the full game and its purpose when it is time for doing so, but for now you will see a ramp physics demo scene, showcasing the great physics.

“New Lost Isle 3, with enhancements.”

This is in the works for longer and I already saw some screens. We also have some kind of little demo scene for Beta Testers, which already looks amazing. I also made some suggestions on how the new Lost Isle should work like. You will see the best Lost Isle ever.

“Easier configuration of Input Handling.”

I have no idea here.

“Many miscellaneous fixes”

Oh yes we really have these. Would be interesting to know how many bugs we fixed during this beta development. One thing that I think really went under here, is that we have extremely great Scripting now. We worked a lot on that. There is now a beautiful scripting editor and everything works as it should be. There is also documentation.

That is all I have to share for now. I may update when there were more milestones reached.

-Chris