VTP Development Log, 2000

Changes per major release.

December, 2000

Enviro / Terrain libraries

• Major rewrite to support Free, Open-Source 3D libraries including OSG
• Changed the GUI from using MFC to wxWindows, for portability
• Interactive placement of vegetation on the terrain

File Formats

• Enhancements to the BT format (additional projection info, more precise extents)
• Enhancements to the BCF file (now fully extensible with parameters for color, footprint, height, etc.)

VTBuilder:

• More support for building layers, including footprint editing and color/height parameters

September, 2000

VTBuilder:

• created by combining the previous programs "TBrowser" and "RBuilder"
• converting the projection of any data type
• manual alignment of any layer
• vegetation layers (import only)
• building layers (load, edit, save)
• display elevation height under cursor
• areas of unknown elevation can be hidden (masked)
• view option for reference map of world continental outlines
• more robust handling of non-standard or corrupt DEM file

BExtractor:

• allows manual extraction of building footprints
• reduced memory consumption

Enviro / Terrain library:

• reduced memory usage at startup time

April 19, 2000

Enviro / Terrain library:

• Memory requirements were reduced even further - by 40% for SMTerrain.
• Peak memory usage during startup was also reduced.
• More precise draping of object onto the terrain.
• SMTerrain: added a tolerance to frustum culling to reduce culling errors, and found a much more robust way to do adaptive LOD.
• Added support for already-prelit source textures.
• Ability to add "Points of Interest" to the terrain, which can be associated with URLs, picked with the mouse, and displayed in a split view.
• Added support for PNG image files, and reduced the number of required DLLs.
• You can now have as many floating labels as desired, without impacting texture RAM.
• Interactive placement of fences (two types).

TBrowser:

• Support for SDTS DEM files!
• Support for the PGM format.
• Fixed a small bug in gap-filling which only occurred when upsampling.

RBuilder:

• New "Layers" functionality, allows other types of data besides roads
• New layer types: Buildings (load and save, no modify) and Water (import-only).

January 27, 2000

Enviro:

• New LOD algorithm!  Select the "McNally" option in the Create dialog.  This algorithm uses much less memory than the others and is very fast as well.
• Lindstrom-Koller terrain got faster by 10-15%, and the last remaining 'cracks' in the ground were fixed.
• Terrain shading (pre-computed lighting) is now more subtle and realistic.
• New keyboard shortcuts: use 1-6 to jump to stored viewpoints, and Ctrl-C to toggle culling.
• Reduced memory requirements for terrain overall.
• Improved load time for large terrain.
• An HTML view can now be opened within the Enviro framework, which will eventually let you combine 3D and 2D information.
• Added a toolbar and a 'selection' mode which lets you pick ground points.

TBrowser:

• New option to not show the terrain elevation - saves time & memory when processing large datasets.
• Much faster loading, and 4x faster display of terrain.
• Fixed a rare case of "data holes" in the DEM loader.
• UI improvements: fixed Zoom-All, enabled the scroll bars, added panning with the middle button.
• Now lets you type in the coordinates for area of interest instead of dragging with the mouse.
• Now displays the Datum for the loaded terrain.

BExtractor:

• Now loads faster, and uses less memory while loading.
• New feature to toggle between the "monochrome" and "original color" of the DRG - can be useful when trying to clean up ambiguous areas.

RBuilder:

• Now displays the Datum for the loaded roads, and supports conversion to another Datum.