OGRE Changelog

What's new in OGRE 1.9.0

Apr 11, 2014

OgreMain:
Extract the overlays from OgreMain and transform it into a own overlay component
Progressive Mesh improvements and new Mesh LOD sample.
Loads of documentation updates
Added Mesh::mergeAdjacentTexcoords to collapse two adjacent texcoords into one (i.e. float2 texcoord0 & float2 texcoord1 become float4 texcoord0)
According to the documentation, the default SceneManager ambient light should be black, which is wasn't though.
SceneManager: updateSceneGraph should happen BEFORE prepareShadowTextures.
AtomicScalar operators should be returning their value. Only affects using GCC or Clang.
New class ProgressiveMeshGenerator to degenerate mesh detail at runtime.
Bug fix for Sphere::merge. Inaccurate results can occur if one sphere does not fully encompass the other.
New LOD strategies 'distance_box' and 'screen_ratio_pixel_count'. Details, see Ogre Manual.
SharedPtr moved to use atomics (related API change see below in the porting notes).
SubMesh has a new method: clone(const String& newName, Mesh *parentMesh) to perform deep copies of SubMesh objects. The second parameter is optional and can be used to reparent a SubMesh.
Removed Configfile::load(const String& filename, const String& resourceGroup, const String& separators, bool trimWhitespace) because it can easily be ambiguous. If you wish to load from a resource group, use the existing function loadFromResourceSystem. The arguments are identical to the removed function. See OGRE-175.
New Volume Rendering component with LOD. See GSoC 2012 Volume Rendering
Many Terrain improvements.See GSoC 2012 Terrain Improvements
RTSS
Changed error handling of RTSS sub-render state parameter creation. Sub-render state now throws exception on errors
Added 2 new demo samples: multiple lights and textured fog
CgProgramManager
Added support for high-level output profiles glslv/glslf/glslg and hlslv/hlslf (glslg not fully working yet)
Platform Support:
Android Port
Remove eclipse based android port
CMake based build support
Create find Ant / NDK packages (currently Ant and the NDK must be in the global path)
Generate android make files for the sample browser
Use android tool chain to compile OGRE as static lib
Cleanup RTSS (Remove OgreStringSerialiser)
Improve platform integration
Add Android log listener into OgreRoot
Disable Filesystem- / Zip- / EmbeddedZip- Archives on android
Resource system improvements
OgreAPKFileSystemArchive to handle file access inside the APK
OgreAPKZipArchive so we can handle zip files inside the APK (APK is also compressed using zip)
Improve EGL support
Create concrete subclasses of EGL-Support/Window/Context
Handle context creation / configs inside OGRE
Resource recreation / Handle it like DX device lost / restore
Add managed resource class which every resource derive from (only active on Android - handled via macros)
Recreation of Texture, Shader, HardwareVertexBuffer
ETC1 texture codec
PKM support
Sample browser
Add touch input support
Build a APK file via CMake command line
Add rotation support
Fix / Enable more samples
Compositor not working
Improve CPU/ vendor detection
Add how to build it on Linux / OSX / Win32
Provide pre-compiled dependencies
Fix our dependencies so the can compile against the android tool chain
Windows Metro style application (WinRT)
Add support as a new platform (named WinRT).
Create a WinRT project for the sample browser.
Create a how to compile file.
Get all existing samples to work with the D3D11 render system.
Multi monitor\device support.
Windows Phone 8 port.
OS X
Add a helper function to get a sandbox friendly temp file name for iOS and OS X.
Other fixes to file handling in response to App Store rules.
Support for building with libc++ on OS X.
Proper example of DisplayLink usage in the SampleBrowser.
Plugins and components are now built as frameworks.
Add escape key as a shortcut for Cancel. Fix crash when hitting cancel as well.
RenderSystems:
DirectX 11
Improvements from GSoC project.
Add tessellation shaders support.
Add tessellation sample.
Add dynamic linking support.
DirectX 9Ex support
Added OpenGL 3+ RenderSystem. Still marked as experimental and under heavy development.
OpenGL ES
GLES 2 terrain support.
OpenGL ES state and uniform caches.
Rewrote PVRTC codec, adding cube map, 3D and mipmap support. Only files created with PVRTexTool are supported now, not Apple's texturetool utility.
Experimental OpenGL ES 3.0 support.
GL RenderSystem
GLEW updated to 1.9.0.
Remove restriction that all GLSL programs have the same matrix order when linking.
GLSL binary shader cache now works properly (OGRE-251)

New in OGRE 1.9 RC1 (Jun 10, 2013)

New in OGRE 1.7.4 (Jan 16, 2012)

New in OGRE 1.7.3 (May 9, 2011)

OS: Remove the animation timer. Since DisplayLink is used by default now, this only hurts performance of things like input.
Some small changes to ensure that the terrain and paging libs are added to linker flags for SDK sample builds.
Consider weight when scaling in AnimationTracks
Only allow to set custom render capabilities before RenderSystem is fully created
iOS: Fix to prevent absolute paths from being inserted into resources.cfg for iOS to fix running the sample browser on devices.
OS X: The Cocoa view has no use inside the main library. Moving into the GL Rendersystem where it is actually used.
OS X: Disabling CoreGraphics error checking by default
OS X: 64 bit Cocoa support. New dependencies are also available to download. Fixed a few uninitialized variables along the way. Also updated GLEW to the same version as in default, the older version had some Apple specific bugs that needed to be resolved.
Several fixes for the Xcode templates such as: file permissions for the installer, iOS device orientation.
Adding Cocoa window event handling. Plus several other fixes for parameter parsing and other things. Thanks to jdiogo for finding the bugs.
OS X: Build fix when targeting 10.5 or earlier.
OS X: A few fixes for Cocoa windowing. Now plays nicer with externally created windows.
Clean up several warnings(hidden local variables, unused functions)
iOS: Fix orientation change support. Use UISupportedInterfaceOrientations in your apps info property list to restrict which orientations are supported by your application.
Fix a couple comment typos
GLES: Disable ENABLE_GL_CHECK, again.
GLES: Fix for images with custom mipmaps. The dimensions were never being reduced for each mipmap level. As a side effect, memory usage is also reduced.
iOS: IOKit isn’t needed at all and causes link errors with iOS 4.2.
Separate out all the OS X and iOS specific code from SampleBrowser.cpp. It was getting a bit unruly and difficult to maintain
iOS: Improve orientation support. Separate EAGLView into its own files.
iOS: Several fixes to the Xcode templates regarding viewport orientation and some cleanup for readability.
Patch 3116577: Plane equality operators. Also cleaned up some documentation.
Fix a catch-22 that prevented OGRE_BUILD_PLATFORM_IPHONE from showing up in CMake-Gui.
Fixed an incorrect error message in the Terrain component.
Do not offer the Carbon API option in 64-bit Mac builds and default to Cocoa
Allow the retrieval of NSOpenGLContext and NSOpenGLPixelFormat easily in OSXCocoaWindow
Specify the NSOpenGLFPAScreenMask to resolve ambiguity in the pixel format on multiple display systems
In OSXCocoaWindow::createWindowFromExternal, don’t force the window to be made key and ordered in front. As an external window, the calling application should have full control over window behaviour.
When creating an external window in Cocoa, don’t centre the window (app should be in charge of that) Also don’t mess with the first responder.
Fix using multiple Cocoa windows with Ogre. Previously the window delegate was incorrectly listening in on the events of *every* window, not just the one containing Ogre. This meant if the application had more than one window (Ogre or otherwise), the Ogre windows would get confused with all the events from different windows. Fix this by making sure each delegate only attaches to the NSNotifications of the specific window it’s concerned with.
Support getCustomAttribute() on Texture, only GL extracts anything interesting so far but more can be added This is pretty much essential if you want to get to internal API data for resource sharing without down-casting, which itself requires otherwise unnecessary linking to plugins. It’s why we’ve offered this for RenderWindow etc in the past, I’m not sure why it’s never been done for Texture. Also support retrieving the FBO ids directly from render targets on GL (already allowed retrieval of FBO struct but again that requires linking)
Added support for spotlight_viewproj_matrix_array GPU parameter
Changed DataStream::getAsString and MemoryDataStream constructors to deal with streams of unknown size
[Papercut] Add destroyRenderTarget function to Ogre::Root
Fix a problem with using some of the lower-level renderable callbacks such as RenderObjectListener to alter shader parameter state – mGpuParamsDirty would not be updated to reflect this and as such things like manual param variances within light iteration loops would not be propagated. Allow user to mark GPU params dirty themselves to resolve this.
iOS: Rework some of the sample browser code to shut down properly on iOS
GLES: Use the correct GL type for BGRA textures
OS X: Use correct pixel format attribute name for specifying FSAA in Carbon windows.
GL: Only bind up to the max supported number of render targets since not all implementations support 8. This prevents a few OpenGL errors.
iOS: Clean up the FSAA/framebuffer code in swapBuffers. This should resolve issues on iOS 4.1 that have been reported. Bug #384
iOS: Don’t search for X11 if building for iOS. I’m surprised that this hasn’t been found until now. Apparently most devs have the X11 package installed.
iOS: 2 fixes. The compiler should be g++ instead of gcc and switching the architecture to build for both armv6 and armv7.
OS X: A few CMake fixes to ease building for universal libraries. Upping the minimum OS to 10.5(it’s required for x86_64). Also updating the list of Boost versions to be current.
Don’t apply visibility settings to statically built samples. Fixes linking problems with Xcode 4 and iOS. (Backporting to 1.7)
Remove a GL ES 2 reference in the 1.7 branch
iOS: The meaning of ARCHS_UNIVERSAL_IPHONE_OS changed in Xcode at some point to just armv7. Changing it to Standard will compile for both armv6 and armv7.
OS X: A few small tweaks for Cocoa windows. Clearing the framebuffer right away, fixing multisampling for example
iOS: Let’s pretend that the iOS simulator doesn’t have SSE. (Works around a Xcode 4 bug)
OS X: Add support for 8 FSAA samples
Update the boost versions to look for.
Patch 3153910 – Fix a typo in MovableObject::setRenderQueueGroupAndPriority. Render queue priority should be set to the priority argument, not the queue ID.
Patch 3221772 – iOS: Fixed bug in setting up the viewport if the lower-left corner is not 0,0.
RTSS: Fix the “Disco” effect in the Shader Sample on OS X. Thanks to Wolfmanfx!
Fix a documentation spelling error in 2 places
Patch 3046729 – Improvements on previous ProgressiveMesh patch. “Sometimes it seems to be actually desired to list itself as neighbor, so instead of denying this, we rather make the loop in ProgressiveMesh::PMTriangle::notifyRemoved more robust to these edge conditions.”
GLES: Fix using PVR textures
OS X: Fix a crash when switching between windowed and full screen when using the Cocoa interface.
Bug #397: Fix the build with some versions of GCC.
[Papercut] Image getColourAt parameters should be type size_t, not int
373 – [Papercut] Image has getColourAt but not setColourAt
Bug 409 – System freezes in GLPixelUtil::getMaxMipmaps when width or height is 0. Bug was reported for GL but could affect GL ES as well.
Reformat a little text in an exception so that it follows the format used elsewhere.
Bug 374 – [Papercut] PixelBox should have getColourAt and setColourAt
Bug 365 – [Papercut] void BillBoardSet::setMaterial (const MaterialPtr &material) is missing
Bug 340 – Viewport::clear() saves and re-sets the previous Viewport, even if that Viewport has since been deleted
Bug 344 – Add utility functions to enable/disable skybox/dome/planes instead of destroying and recreating.
Bug 423 – Fix for looking up for texture definitions in very complex compositor setups in getSourceForTex and getTargetForTex
iOS: Explicitly specify the release lib paths so that libraries are always installed to the correct places. This fixes the problem of duplicate, single architecture libraries in SDK builds.
iOS: Remove -fno-regmove flag to keep Clang from complaining about it.
Update the SDK CMakeList template
Several updates and fixes for the OS X and iOS SDK build scripts
OS X: Fix a long standing issue that often prevented 3 situations: Building with Clang, 64 bit debug builds and linking with Xcode 4.
OS X: Add macAPI option to the config dialog
Added Gentoo install location for Cg to the FindCg.cmake script
Fixed a comment in OgrePixelFormat.h
Modified FindTBB.cmake to cope with TBB 3 paths
Fixed a build error with GCC 4.6
Xcode 4 templates and installer files

New in OGRE 1.7.1 (Apr 29, 2010)

Terrain: Fix memory leak after updating lightmaps
Terrain: Ensure that imported position is used when preparing from ImportData
Fix calcMorphKeyframeSize in serializer – there has never been an ‘isOriginalGeometry’ flag!
Safety checks – use !mSkeleton.isNull() instead of hasSkeleton() when accessing the pointer, since hasSkeleton() determines whether the skeleton name is provided, not whether the skeleton has loaded & the pointer is valid
Terrain: Fix a delete that should have been OGRE_DELETE as pointed out by harkon
Focussed shadow camera setup dealt with extrusion of directional light volume incorrectly: – It clipped the extrusions against the scene AABB, which may exclude casters in sparse scenes where the main camera has stopped seeing them or their shadows for a frame or more – It should actually have been extruding the receivers AABB clipped to the camera by the shadow far distance – Focus regions would not be affected because extrusion along the light direction does not widen the focus; in fact the use of the whole scene BB instead of just the receivers BB may have led to worse focus
ArchiveManager’s constructor should be in source, not header, to avoid link errors if constructed from outside OgreMain (this fixes tests build on OS X) Fix some new/deletes in tests that should have been OGRE_NEW/OGRE_DELETE
Mark a few more options as ‘Advanced’ to de-clutter the main CMake page. Disabling zip, freeimage, dds etc is definitely an advanced function.
Patch 2981322 – allow OGRE_LIB_DIRECTORY to be set to install in alternate named directories such as lib64 for 64-bit Linuxes that use that convention.
Fix for VC10
Patch 2986452: avoid potential resource group change deadlocks
Patch 2986446: For ACT_LIGHT_POSITION_OBJECT_SPACE for directional lights, we need to use the inverse of the inverse transpose as with ACT_LIGHT_DIRECTION_OBJECT_SPACE, to deal with non-uniform scalings
Patch 2986441: MovableObject’s queryLights and _notifyCurrentCamera didn’t take account of object scaling when dealing with bounding radius
Patch 2986437: auto-tracking update should be after the re-entrant call to update shadow textures, otherwise old tracking state may be used
Fixed BillboardChain::getNumChainElements when tail < head
Fix loading of mesh versions 1.30 and before They were picking up LOD loading from latest version instead of fallback in MeshSerializerImpl_v1_4 because of inheritence error
In Mesh::destroySubMesh, fix up SubMesh name map for the removed item
If group name on manual LOD level is blank, use parent mesh
Make PlayPen plugin work on OS X
Fix bug 308 according to user report – don’t include _mingw.h in more recent MinGW packages
Fix bug 313: doc build target doesn’t handle spaces in directry names
Fix terrain rendering on ATI/GL – no support for fp30/fp40 in latest ATI drivers but arbfp1 works
Terrain morphing was missing from shader when alignment wasn’t x/z
Deal with CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES a little better: – Selectively remove 64-bit archs (Carbon requirement) instead of manually setting “i386 ppc”, so that user can still customise archs for 10.6 – Set the default arch if none is specified (Cmake 2.8.0)
Patch 2977286: Fix support for scene blending operations other than SBO_ADD on Dx9 because caps were not being set
Patch 2979431: Matrix4::makeInverseTransform bug with non-uniform scale
Patch 2978035: D3D9 should send a “DeviceLost” message to app-side listeners before a device is reset
Deferred Shading Demo : Fixed ‘is camera inside light’ test for spotlights.
Fix problem with picking the right shader generator in TerrainMaterialGeneratorA – Would not fall back from Cg when Cg not available (bad nesting) – Can only use ps_2_0 when not parallax mapping
Fix memory leak in SharedPtr when initialised with a null pointer
Ensure libdl exists before linking to it
Fix install of tools PDBs in debug mode
Add test for switching full screen modes without reinitialisation
(Fixed commit) Applied l3fthn4d’s compositor (material_scheme & shadows settings) patch as discussed in http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=56031
Fix bug 305: Entity::setMaterialName(material, group) calls SubEntity::setMaterialName(material) without group.
Add the rtshader materials directory to resources.cfg
Correct case-sensitivity issue with samples media path
Remove nested parenthesis, not supported on CMake 2.6 (only 2.8)
Explicitly include errno.h. Otherwise build errors occur if not using boost and threading is turned off.
Patch 2971821: Fix consistency of inclusions of OctreeSceneManager plugin (important when referenced with relative paths)
Patch 2971818: deal with missing MinGW header & make inclusion specific to MinGW
Just make sure meshes are being reloaded in LOD test
Added tests for manual LOD, seems to work
Explicitly note in the manual some directives which are irrelevant when using shaders
Another bad svn:eol-style property
Fix some bad svn:eol-style properties
More Xcode template work. Cleaned up warnings. Changed iPhone template to use a NSTimer to make it more reliable at high framerates. Fixed the installer path.
GLES 1.x patch: fix opengl es 1.1 compilation under windows – ID: 2961527. Thanks Thomas. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=302997&aid=2961527&group_id=2997
GLES 1.x render system: Replaced a printf with a log entry.
RTSS: Extended the normal map texture unit settings script parsing caps. Now it can read the filtering type, max anisotropy and mip map bias.
Patch 2965714: CMake Infinite Loop Fix for OS X using makefiles instead of XCode
Patch 2968889: fix ExampleApplication loading config files in debug mode
Fixed some iPhone remnants of the OGRE_CONFIG_DISABLE to OGRE_CONFIG_ENABLE change
Implement missing wireframe and points rendering in GL ES. Also fixed a typo in a comment.
Doc fix
Fix copy & paste error that could cause crashes when unloading & reinitialising terrain
Fix a couple bugs in the Xcode templates. Added an option to choose separate locations for OS X and iPhone SDK’s. Cleaned up the installer package a little bit.
Patch 2963406: Deal with negative scale in Entity::getBoundingRadius
Patch 2963372: Matrix4::makeTransform/makeInverseTransform inefficiencies fixed Reduces complexity of this from 39MUL+30ADD to 18MUL+15ADD
Must set the OGRE_MEDIA_DIR_* to an absolute path for build folder versions
Patch 2959565: fix XSI exporter build
Fix bug 264: problem with Camera::setDirection when using non-fixed yaw and a non-identity parent node.
Fix bug 299: Sequence of light changes can cause crash because of light hash==0
Make sure linking or copying media works in non-SDK builds for OS X and iPhone
Mention that the default material generator requires the Cg plugin
Fix water sample when exiting & reentering it by making sure mesh is removed from MeshManager
Update Xcode templates for 1.7 final release
Profiler: endProfile checks group id against mask.
GpuProgram: Added init in the contractor to mMorphAnimation and mPoseAnimation members.
Fix bug 297: Incorrect use of Boost_USE_STATIC_LIBS causes boost library search to fail when trying to switch to Boost dynamic libs
Changes for building SDK for iPhone
Should delete .exe not .7z when building SDK multiple times
D3D9 Render System: Device multi thread flag is used now only when OGRE_THREAD_SUPPORT == 1. This will save us a few cycles in the other threading modes..
FindOIS.cmake fixes: – Respect OGRE_DEPENDENCIES_DIR (useful if used outside of OGRE) – On Win32 define names of the OIS DLLs so they can be copied from wherever they are found
FindOGRE.cmake fixes: – Use OGRE_DEPENDENCIES_DIR if defined (external dependencies) – Find media in the OGRE_SOURCE folder correctly – Use a zip file common to 1.6 and 1.7 to detect media (OgreCore.zip doesn’t exist anymore in 1.7+)
Compile fix for people using ExampleFrameListener
RTSS: Fixed Normal map point and spotlight GPU parameters that weren’t update correctly.
Minor tweaks to the demos installer – Nicer defaults – License display (forced to be RTF unfortunately)
Enable WiX installer interface and allow the user to specify the install directory for the demos Fix media installing Add missing samples.cfg
Fixed remaining bugs for MinGW SDK and finished mingwsdk.sh
Fix shortcut errors in WiX setup
Generate WiX config files and custom task for building a demo installer on MSVC Remove space in OGRE_VERSION before suffix, more trouble than it’s worth even for display strings demomedia.wxi.in was generated using ‘heat dir Media -gg -cg OgreMedia -out demomedia.wxi.in -sfrag’ on a clean Media export, then replacing SourceDir with Cmake variable
Fixes and enhancements for MinGW SDK generation.
Merged v9841 into tag since urgent change
Merged v9841 into tag since urgent change
In future, use the Windows-mode 7zip self-extractor not the default console-mode one
Final changes for the OS X SDK. Fixes up all the absolute paths in CMake generated files.
OGRE_VERSION has a whitespace and version suffix appended; this breaks builds if used as the .so version for shared libraries. Use a dedicated OGRE_SOVERSION instead.
RTSS: Fixed Normal map and PSSM3 GPU parameters that weren’t update on object switch scenario.

New in OGRE 1.7.0 (Mar 29, 2010)

Compositor changes
Allow ‘pooled’ compositor surfaces.
Separate compositor instances using the same size & format surfaces can share them, saving memory
System detects the compositor instance chaining to avoid problems with interdependence
"pooled’ has to be explicitly enabled on texture definitions, it is not the default because once enabled you cannot necessarily rely on being able to see all the intermediate texture results (because they can be ping-ponging across shared textures); people may be relying on this
Manual switching between supported compositor techniques is now possible on the fly
Compositor techniques can now have ’scheme’ names, you can manually switch between supported techniques using the scheme name to drop to different approaches for reasons other than hardware compatibility (performance, alternative tweaks etc)
You can keep & share the textures used by previously active techniques so switching back & forth is faster (must use ‘pooled’ option for this).
Compositors can now specify if they don’t want to inherit the FSAA setting from the main target for texture definitions (‘no_fsaa’)
Compositors can now turn on sRGB gamma conversion per texture definition instead of just inheriting from the main surface (‘gamma’)
Cross-compositor communication (from SoC2009 Compositor)
Define a texture as accessible from other locations by the chain_scope or global_scope directive in the texture definition
Reference a texture from a different compositor in the chain (or in general) using the texture_ref directive
Compositor code connection improvements (from SoC2009 Compositor)
It is now possible to define a custom composition pass (instead of just quad/scene/clear) in code and trigger it using the render_custom composition pass type.
You can now link between a compositor and related code (for example, a compositor listener) automatically using CompositorLogics.
SceneManager changes (from SoC2009 Compositor)
It is now possible to pause a frame’s rendering mid-way (for example, during a callback called in the middle of the process) to trigger a side render and then resume rendering. See SceneManager::_pauseFrame and SceneManager::_resumeFrame.
Added an option to manually trigger the updating of shadow textures for specific lights. See SceneManager::prepareShadowTextures. The combination of the two new additions allow reusing a single texture for multiple shadowmaps.
New Sample Browser (from SoC2009_Samples)
Instead of many separate demos, we now have one integrated sample browser
Samples are pluggable libraries that can be reloaded at runtime without restarting the browser
A simple ‘tray’ system is used to make sample GUI controls easy to create
Antialising changes
Support for Coverage Sampled AA (CSAA) – Dx9 & Dx10 only for now
Unified & simplified AA settings
on Root’s config options the setting is now called ‘FSAA’ in all cases, and consist of samples and a hint string (separated by spaces)
on the miscParams to createRenderWindow you can supply ‘FSAA’ and ‘FSAAHint’. The former is the number of samples, the latter any hinting (e.g. ‘Quality’)
Light changes
Near/far plane settings for shadow cameras can now be manually configured per light if required
You can now mask lights out per object by calling MovableObject::setLightMask – a renderable object’s mask is bitwise and’ed with the light’s mask and the light is excluded if the result is 0.
LOD changes (from Soc2008_LOD)
LOD no longer has to use distance as a metric for changing LOD levels
LodStrategy can now be set on both Material and Mesh, to either Distance or PixelCount (new strategies can also be added)
STL container changes
All STL containers now use custom memory allocators
Profiler changes
Allow milliseconds as well as percentage view – gives a better idea of absolute fluctuations.
Define profiler masks so that profiling can be added to core OGRE but still filtered out by categories (added some simple profiling to test)
Hierarchy of profiles is now inclusive instead of exclusive (children no longer subtract their time from parents). This is more useful in practice when doing breakdowns
Added numerical indicators instead of a scale with ‘ticks’ since its more useful
Optimisations
Fixed-function light state is now handled more intelligently, leading to better performance with large numbers of objects
Shader parameters are now updated more selectively, reducing unnecessary updates
GpuProgramParameters changes
Support added for shared parameter sets which allow you to define / update shader variables for many programs and materials in one place. See GpuProgramManager::createSharedParamerers
Use shared_params, shared_param_named and shared_params_ref in scripts to define and reference shared parameter sets.
Parameters are now automatically migrated when the program they are based on is changed and reloaded; any parameters which still apply are merged into the new parameters
Archive changes
Archive now supports create and remove of files (FileSystem only implemented for now)
DataStream changes
Writeable data streams are now supported (FileSystem only implemented for now)
File handling changes
New class StreamSerialiser is the new way to read & write binary chunk-based formats
Build changes
Cmake is now used to generate project files, separate explicitly maintained build systems are being removed. See Building With CMake
RenderWindow changes
miscParams now supports ‘vsyncInterval’ option, allowing you to sync to a multiple of the refresh rate if you want (and the hardware supports it)
Viewport changes
Added clear method to manually clear any combination of colour/depth/stencil to a specified value without performing an update.
Image changes
Added loadTwoImagesAsRGBA and combineTwoImagesAsRGBA to make it easier to construct combined normal/height and diffuse/specular images etc
New Paging Component
SceneManager-independent, separate optional component (OGRE_HOME/Components/Paging)
Pluggable strategy components to control paging strategy for a section of the scene
Pluggable content components to control paging of content
Plugggable collection components so that paged elements can be composed or selected between in different ways (e.g. paging many LOD levels within a page)
New Terrain Component
SceneManager-independent, separate optional component (OGRE_HOME/Components/Terrain)
Inherently editable
Hierarchical geometry batching; batch counts reduce at lower LODs as well as vertex count. At the lowest level of detail, the entire terrain page is a single batch.
LOD now adapts in real-time to camera settings (viewport sizes & LOD bias) so you can use the same terrain with multiple views efficiently
Skirts are used instead of stitching to avoid cracks in geometry; this means fewer indexing arrangements & lower overall index buffer usage
Saving & loading of terrain built in, including loading / processing in a background thread
In-built support for splatting layers, configurable sampler inputs and pluggable material generators
Support for generating global normal maps and light maps, in a background thread
New ‘Real Time Shader System’ (RTSS) Component
Automatically generate shaders to replace the fixed-function pipeline and to add features such as per-pixel lighting, normal mapping and shadows.
New Property Component
Separate optional component (OGRE_HOME/Components/Property)
boost::bind based property system to make it easier to expose reflected properties from your objects
Threading changes
WorkQueue added to accept generalised work items to be executed in multiple background worker threads
WorkQueue starts the number of workers based on hardware, or can be told to start a different number
Main Ogre WorkQueue is in Root::getWorkQueue. You can also subclass WorkQueue and provide your own if you want
ResourceBackgroundQueue now uses WorkQueue instead of using its own queue and can have multiple tasks running at once
New focus on data-driven, task-based parallel execution with separation of GPU and CPU activities
Boost, POCO and Thread Building Blocks supported as threading back-ends (Boost preferred)
Resource changes
ResourcePool added as a place for other application components to shelve & re-use resources
Material changes
scene_blend_op and separate_scene_blend_op added to passes, to change the default ‘+’ operator between source & dest blending params
Material listeners can now register to listen to a specific scheme, to allow for none-competing scheme handlers for different schemes.
iPhone OS port
Synced GLESRenderSystem with GLRenderSystem and added some more extension detection
Added support for ARM architecture and CPU feature detection
iPhone OGRE SDK disc image and sdk package script
OS X improvements
Moved code and resources from the Mac directory to OgreMain
Eliminated deprecation warnings when targeting Mac OS X 10.5/10.6
General organization and compatibility improvements

New in OGRE 1.6.1 (Jan 23, 2009)

Shadows:
LiSPSM now automatically adjusts for duelling frusta
Uniform shadow camera is now independent of FOV for directional shadows
Directional shadows no longer jitter when using the uniform shadow camera
Fix PSSMShadowCameraSetup when using arbitrary number of split points
Memory:
Nedmalloc deallocator should deal with null pointers
Nedmalloc is now the default allocator
Linux build now has option to change allocators
Materials:
cubic_texture now calls processTextureNames event properly
Fixed support for multi-line comments
Fixed script inheritance ordering bug
Fixed extra space being added to the parameters of texture_source in scripts
High-level shaders can now be reloaded properly after a compile error
DirectX9:
Fix device reset error when using hardware occlusion queries
DirectX10:
Fixed compilation on the November 08 DirectX SDK
Image pitch bug fixed
OpenGL:
Fix crash on Radeon 9200 in _setPointParameters
GTK fullscreen mode now works
GLSL:
Fix warnings of the form “Could not find vertex shader attribute 'vertex' to match BindAttributeLocation request”
Fix custom attribute names (tangent, blendWeights etc) interfering with user-specified 'varying' bindings that happen to be called the same thing
Fix “Invalid Enumerant” errors caused by trial-and-error binding of custom attributes
OS X:
Fixed plist link for OctreeZone project
Make sure OgreMemoryNedMalloc.h is copied during Framework bundling
Code::Blocks:
Project files updated to include PCZ plugins & sample
GL render system project updated to include render to vertex buffer
PCZ SceneManager:
Texture shadows now work correctly in PCZ scene manager
Null and infinite AABBs now handled correctly
Tangent support:
StaticGeometry now supports tangent parity option
Allow texture coordinate index 0 to be used for tangents if required (previously only the tangent semantic, or texture coordinate 1 or higher were supported)
Pixel buffers:
Some blit functions were ignoring the left/top/front offsets, this is fixed
HardwarePixelBuffer::lock implementations should not return the same left/top/front offsets as the incoming parameters, since the returned pointer is already offset
Box now has a safer default construction, in particular setting front/back to 0/1
Linux / GLX:
Xt is now the default GUI on Linux instead of GTK (if installed)
Do not correct window size to valid fullscreen mode in windowed mode
Fix typo in closing GLX window
Fixed animation update for entities using the same Skeleton at all LOD levels
MeshSerializer can now load submeshes without indices successfully
Hardware SRGB option is now properly registered when using background loaded textures
In SceneManager::_manualRender, shader params for view/projection are now updated correctly
Fixed bugs with sky boxes / domes etc when repeatedly clearing the scene & resetting
Fix calculated SubMesh size in .mesh when using 16-bit indices
Manually changing the sort mode of solids in a render queue now works as expected
Fix precision error in AnimationState::hasEnded
Allow access to const version of OverlayElement factory list.
Allow setMaterial() on Entity/SubEntity as well as setMaterialName, for efficiency
STLport build option fixed
Fixed uninitialised typeName in Exception
Fix various compiler warnings

New in OGRE 1.6.0 (Nov 5, 2008)

Native VC9 (2008) projects added
Correctly deal with decompressing DXT data that is less than 4 pixels in width/height
Fix assertion bug when mesh does not contain any UV
Added missing virtual destructors to new script compiler classes, fixes memory leak
Added PCZ plugins to SDK build script
Make LOD camera position available to shaders (lod_camera_position)
Fix passless technique handling in OgreEntity.cpp
Various GLX Config Dialog fixes
Add void* cast to deallocateBytes call to guarantee compatibility; this fixes luabind+ogre compile error for example
Safety change - don't assume that shadow texture cameras and shadow texture list is entirely in sync, in case an exception has made this temporarily not the case before shutdown
Simple ease-in, ease-out for camera motion in samples
Fixed new script compiler not respecting the 'gamma' option to the texture directive (hardware sRGB conversion on sample)
Make sure colour depth doesn't exceed desktop on GL/Win32/Windowed
gcc 4.3 deprecated the ext/hash_map and ext/hash_set includes. Now backward/hash_map and backward/hash_set.
When using manual LOD on an Entity and attaching an object to a bone, still use that attached object on lower detail versions. If a lower detail skeleton is being used though and the bone that the child object is attached to no longer exists, don't display the object.
Expose the ability to turn off shadows in a compositor in script
Fix for "No Contacts Requested" bug in ReferenceApp
Bugfix for segfault in Root::loadPlugins() when empty plugin directory specified
Fix wave_xform and scaling factors.
Allow Animation to change lengths, useful for editors; just document caveats.
Remove all 'using namespace OIS' directives, since OIS has a Vector3 now so it can be ambiguous, better to refer to external project explicitly
When increasing the number of shadow textures, use the settings from the end of the list if it is not empty. This avoids confusion when a user for example sets the size or format first, then increases the count.
OctreeSceneManager should be checking for duplicates in createCamera like the other SMs
texture_source now supported in new script compilers
Add missing ColourValue::getHSB method
Const fixes to Polygon, and adding missing obvious method (isPointInside)
Deal with D3D9 lost device condition where a texture is no longer contained in the TextureManager resource list, but still exists through some other shared pointer reference. Previously these were not released / restored (if in the default pool) and could cause a failure to restore the device, they now are dealt with properly.
Normalise rotation quaternions to eliminate the progressive drift which can happen in some cases (resulting in skewed matrices)
Fix a bug in the new compositor script compiler - the 'clear' and 'stencil' passes are supposed to pick up their settings (buffers, colour_value etc) from nested sections, not attributes directly under the pass. Added new translators to handle these nested areas and moved the attribute parsing into them. This fixes bad parsing of compositors with custom clear / stencil settings that used to work in 1.4.
Fix transposed matrix parsing in new script compiler; affected 'transform' attribute in texture_unit and also shader parameters expressed as a matrix in script. Addressing of matrix4 is [row][column] and not [column][row].
Fix to InstancedGeometry::destroy - clear list
Change Windows SDK script so that uninstall doesn't remove any new nested folders created by the user underneath it.
Fix compile when using (deprecated) GTK platform
Patch autotools files for PCZSceneManager and new Samples
InstancedGeometry should be looking for the best technique, not the first technique
Fixed Technique::movePass when moving a pass forward
Camera::getCameraToViewportBoxVolume extra plane generated, also added optional far plane inclusion as requested, non interface breaking
Extra checking in AutoParamDataSource to prevent accidental out of bounds access to light arrays
Protect Pass hash recalculation process from race conditions by adding mutexes to cover the change conditions
Mac/Carbon support for "border" and windowClosing event
Rename OgreOctree.h in OctreeZone plugin to avoid name clash with existing file on OctreeSceneManager plugin.
Limit FOV on standard shadow camera setup so it doesn't approach 180 degrees
Added support for leading '/' in tokens in new script compiler
NedMalloc now added as an option for faster memory allocation / deallocation
Fix problem with setting up a controller on a TextureUnitState when one already exists (e.g. calling setAnimatedTextureName more than once)
Slight optimisation to BillboardSet - use Matrix3 instead of Quaternion to orient, uses less instructions.
Default preferred render texture mode to FBO in OS X now - this appears to be working just fine in Leopard on my July 2007 MBP.
Improve LiSPSM quality when camera direction becomes parallel with the light direction (scale up the opt adjust factor automatically)
Fix weird darkening of grass blades in Demo_Grass while camera moves (bug 190)
Compatibility with libtool 1.6+
Use forward slashes in q3settings.cfg
Fixed some gcc warnings & const correctness issues
XCode & MinGW build fixes
Documentation fixes