Release Notes - Version 1.4

Major features:

  • osgEarthDrivers API - Every osgEarth driver now has its own header-only API for configuring and loading layer types programmatically.
  • osgEarthSymbology - A new library for creating, manipulating, and symbolizing vector geometry.
  • Controls Toolkit - This osgEarthUtil namespace is a lightweight 2D UI toolkit for rendering HUDs, popups and text overlays.
  • Unlimited Image Layers - The new "composite" layering technique lets you add a virtually unlimited number of image layers to your map without multi-pass rendering.
  • Layer Opacity Control - New global uniforms let you control the relative opacity of each layer at runtime.
  • Rasterizing Feature Driver - The new "agglite" driver rasterizes vector data into image tiles and overlays them on the map. This driver uses the "lite" version of the AGG rendering
  • Inline Geometry - You can now specify inline geometry in a .earth file (instead of loading it from a file) using the OGC-WKT geometry notation.
  • Vertical Datums - Properly display EGM96 (MSL) data such as DTED using the new vdatum support
  • Blacklisting - TileSources? now blacklist tiles that have been requested and couldn't be retrieved so they aren't requested again, avoiding hammering servers with bad requests.
  • Data Extents - TileSources? report where they actually have data so that osgEarth doesn't make unnecessary requests to them. Useful when you have a server with many inset areas.

Other new features:

  • AutoClipPlaneHandler - automatically optimize your clip planes based on distance to the horizon
  • SQLite caching - new "sqlite" cache type stores tiles in a sqlite db.
  • NASA WorldWind elevation reader
  • Graticule - lat/long lines (geocentric only - beta code)
  • OceanSurfaceNode - simple animated ocean geometry
  • WMS-T - preliminary support for time-animated layers
  • HTTP authentication support
  • Mask layers
  • UnifiedCubeProfile - for ingesting cube/quadsphere data sources
  • Triangulating Interpolator - new elevation interpolator for sim correlation support
  • Units - new class for converting linear and angular units

Noteworthy fixes:

  • Better mime-type support in HTTPClient
  • Frame coherency for EarthManipulator tethering
  • Better memory management in sequential/preemptive modes
  • Better proxy support
  • Custom read/write mutex fixes some rare deadlock issues
  • Better vector rendering in some drivers
  • Avoiding making repeat requests for tiles that could not be retrieved in the database pager.