flightgear/NEWS

New in 0.54
* More optimizations and code cleanups.  (Norman Vine, Bernie Bright, Charlie
  Hotchkiss.)
* Bug fixed that was causing odd display artifacts due to a degenerate
  fragment being created for every tile.
* Bug fixed that caused scenery generation to go bad (misplaced fclose on an
  invalid file descriptor.)

New in 0.53
* Some initial "GameGLUT" support contributed by Gary R. Van Sickle
  (tiberius@braemarinc.com)
* Tracked down and eliminated some memory access type bugs that were
  causing segfaults on some platforms, with some compilers using various
  optimization flags.
* Assorted code optimizations submitted by Norman Vine.
* Renamed fg -> fgfs
* Shuffled files.  
  - Created a new directory Simulator/Airports/ to handle airport data 
    specific tasks 
  - Created Simulator/Object/ to handle basic rendering objects
* Panel code update from Friedemann Reinhard (use --enable-panel to activate)
* Contributions from Bernie Bright
  - Created some new classes to enable pointers-to-functions and
    pointers-to-class-methods to be treated like objects.  These objects
    can be registered with fgEVENT_MGR.
  - File "Include/fg_callback.hxx" contains the callback class defns.
  - Modified fgEVENT and fgEVENT_MGR to use the callback classes.  Also
    some minor tweaks to STL usage.
  - Added file "Include/fg_stl_config.h" to deal with STL portability
    issues.  Added an initial config for egcs (and probably gcc-2.8.x).
    Don't have access to Visual C++ so I've left that for someone else.
  - This file is influenced by the stl_config.h file delivered with egcs.
  - Added "Include/auto_ptr.hxx" which contains an implementation of the
    STL auto_ptr class which is not provided in all STL implementations
    and is needed to use the callback classes.
  - Deleted fgLightUpdate() which was just a wrapper to call
    fgLIGHT::Update().
  - Modified fg_init.cxx to register two method callbacks in place of the
    old wrapper functions.
  - The new classes in libmisc.tgz define a stream interface into zlib.       
    I've put these in a new directory, Lib/Misc.  Feel free to rename it      
    to something more appropriate.  However you'll have to change the         
    include directives in all the other files.  Additionally you'll have      
    add the library to Lib/Makefile.am and Simulator/Main/Makefile.am.        
                                                                              
    The StopWatch class in Lib/Misc requires a HAVE_GETRUSAGE autoconf        
    test so I've included the required changes in config.tgz.                 
                                                                              
    There are a fair few changes to Simulator/Objects as I've moved           
    things around.  Loading tiles is quicker but thats not where the delay    
    is.  Tile loading takes a few tenths of a second per file on a P200       
    but it seems to be the post-processing that leads to a noticeable         
    blip in framerate.  I suppose its time to start profiling to see where    
    the delays are.                                                           
                                                                              
    I've included a brief description of each archives contents.              
                                                                              
    Lib/Misc/
      zfstream.cxx
      zfstream.hxx
        C++ stream interface into zlib.
        Taken from zlib-1.1.3/contrib/iostream/.
        Minor mods for STL compatibility.
        There's no copyright associated with these so I assume they're
        covered by zlib's.

      fgstream.cxx
      fgstream.hxx
        FlightGear input stream using gz_ifstream.  Tries to open the
        given filename.  If that fails then filename is examined and a
        ".gz" suffix is removed or appended and that file is opened.

      stopwatch.hxx
        A simple timer for benchmarking.  Not used in production code.
        Taken from the Blitz++ project.  Covered by GPL.

      strutils.cxx
      strutils.hxx
        Some simple string manipulation routines.

    Simulator/Airports/
      Load airports database using fgstream.
      Changed fgAIRPORTS to use set<> instead of map<>.
      Added bool fgAIRPORTS::search() as a neater way doing the lookup.
      Returns true if found.

    Simulator/Astro/
      Modified fgStarsInit() to load stars database using fgstream.

    Simulator/Objects/
      Modified fgObjLoad() to use fgstream.
      Modified fgMATERIAL_MGR::load_lib() to use fgstream.
      Many changes to fgMATERIAL.
      Some changes to fgFRAGMENT but I forget what!

New in 0.52
* Stars added in 8 stages as sky gets darker for a smoother more realistic
  transition.
* rewrote star loader to significantly improve load times.
* Tweaked sky brightness and dawn/dusk colors.
* Fixed a small problem with moon rendering.
* Fog color tries to track the sky color at the center of view in sunrise
  and sunset situations.
* Optimizations from Norman Vine
* Code fixes and tweaks from Charlie Hotchkiss.
* Added an --enable/disable-sound option.
* Added a pause key "p"
* Added command line options to specify initial position and orientation.
* Added command line option to start in paused or unpaused state.

New in 0.51
* Translucent menus
* Various HUD intensities so you can find something that is readable for the
  current conditions and lighting.
* Tie visibility to far clip plane & view frustum culling so reducting
  visibility can increase frame rates by increasing what is culled.
* Fixed stupid bug with misplaced initial position.
* Hopefully fixed a bug when parsing system.fgfsrc on windoze.

New in 0.50
* HUD updates from Charlie Hotchkiss (ladder number rotate w/ ladder, control
  position indicators are back)
* Only draw the PUI cursor if Mesa/Glide/Fullscreen.
* Added mipmapping.
* Calculate the model view transformation matrix once per tile per iteration.
  Then glLoadMatrixd() it for each fragment rather than calling push(), 
  translate(), pop().
* Added a basic splash screen.
* Added support for switching between fullscreen and window mode for 
  Mesa/3dfx/glide.
* added an enable/disable splash screen option
* added an enable/disable intro music option
* added an enable/disable instrument panel option
* added an enable/disable mouse pointer option
* Ground collision detection.  You can now land or test for collision with
  any scenery surface.
* Converted angle of attack scale into a radio altimeter.

New in 0.49
* Managment of multiple textures
* Incorporated Friedemann Reinhard's initial panel code.
* Fog mode is now GL_FOG_EXP2 instead of GL_FOG_LINEAR
* Build the non-shared pieces of the FG sim as static libs.

New in 0.48
* Incorporated Steve Baker's PUI user interface library written
  entirely on top of OpenGL
* Incorporated Steve Baker's Audio library which currently only
  supports Linux, but a win32 port is very close to being done.
* Sort object fragments by material property before rendering.  This
  will be a big help to performance when we start including objects
  with a wide variety of material properties and textures.
* Overlapped scenery tiles to reduce the chance of an occasional
  floating point precission induced gaps.
* Fixed a bug in zlib exposed by Borland Win32 compiler.
* Impose a maximum triangle area during scenery generation so even
  very flat areas will get split into a few smaller sub triangles.
* Fine grained (fragment level) view frustum culling.
* view transformation optimizations -- Norman Vine.
* Fixed polygon winding problem in scenery generation, so all
  tri-strips are wound counter clockwise (opengl default).

New in 0.47
* Course (per tile) view frustum culling.
* Added a command line option to specify --fg-root which will override
  $FG_ROOT
* Hard coded default locations for FG_ROOT for situations when nothing
  is specified.  Unix = /usr/local/lib/FlightGear  Win32 = \FlightGear
* Restructured the command line processing code so that it can process
  these sames comands (one per line) out of a config file.
* Added a command line option to specify field of view.  This is
  adjustable at run time using "X / x".  Supporting code contributed
  by Norman Vine.

New in 0.46:
* Complete C++ re-write of the HUD section.
* Miscellaneous bug fixes and tweaks.

New in 0.45:
* Added an option to enable/disable wireframe rendering.
* Added an option to enable/disable fog/haze.
* Added an option to enable/disable sky blending.
* Added an option to select smooth/flat polygon shading.
* Added an option to enable full-screen mode.
* Added a visual frame rate counter on the HUD.  (Contributed by Durk Talsma)
* Autopilot updates (Jeff Goeke-Smith)
* Added an option to control the number of neighboring tiles that are drawn

New in 0.44: 
* Fixed a horible bug that cause the time to be *WAY* off when
  compiling with the CygWin32 compiler.
* Wrap up zlib so we can conditionally compile back in normal behavior
  on systems that have trouble building zlib.
* Minor adjustment to texture coordinate generation to reduce texture
  swimming.
* Added a command line option to enable/disable texture maps
* Minor transformation adjustments to try to keep scenery tiles closer
  to (0, 0, 0) GLfloats run out of precision at the distances we need
  to model the earth, but we can do a bunch of pre-transformations
  using double floats and then cast to GLfloat once everything is
  close in where we have less precision problems.
* command line option to set starting position by airport ID
* Cleaned up initialization sequence to eliminate interdependencies
  between sun position, lighting, and view position.  This creates a
  valid single pass initialization path.
* use already calculated LaRCsim values to create the roll/pitch/yaw
  transformation matrix

New in 0.43:
* material properties bug fixed when rendering terrain.
* bug in sky color generation fixed.
* bug in fog color generation fixed.
* zlib on the fly decompression/compression support.
* more code reorganization and clean ups.
* a fixed up 30 arcsec DEM file preprocessor.  World wide DEM's are 
  available in this format.

New in 0.42:
* Simple autopilot heading hold contributed by 
  Jeff Goeke-Smith <jgoeke@voyager.net>
* More code reorganization and clean ups.

New in 0.41:
* Many autoconf cleanups and tweaks
* make and make install work in unix
* make works for cygnus win32 (but not install yet)
* make dist now works
* added the Tools directory into the main source tree

New in 0.40:
* Gnu automake/autoconf/libtool make system
* Initial texture support
* Bug fixes