Release Notes - SICS Dive 3.1.0 -

This is the 3.1.0 release of DIVE, the distributed VR software system from Swedish Institute of Computer Science, September 1996.

Please send bug reports to dive-bugs@sics.se or olof@sics.se, vrml, Dive/Tcl, DCI interface and WWW bugs to emmanuel@sics.se.

New features:

• Completely new communication packet based on Scalable Reliable Multicast (SRM) called SID2.
• Implementation of relative URLs resolution, e.g. inlining a Dive/Tcl script "document.tcl" from a Dive file located at "http://www.sics.se/dive/data/document.vr" will inline "http://www.sics.se/dive/data/document.tcl".
• Posix tilde substitution is now supported when specify file names.

Changes from 3.0.13 TO 3.1.0

• views have flags and can be set by the file interface: wireframe, visibility, gouraud, nobackface, concave.
• proc_bound flag - tcl scripts evaluated in one specific process.
• concave flag
• PPM/PGM Texures.
• XWD (X Window Dump) Textures.
• JPEG Texures are supported as long as the executable "djpeg" is accessible from the PATH. "djpeg" comes with the JPEG library from the Free Software Foundation and is available from various sites. The official site is ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg.
• GIF Textures are supported as long as the executable "giftopnm" is accessible from the PATH. "giftopnm" comes with the netpbm library (previously pbmplus) and is available from various sites, e.g. ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/graphics/netpbm/ and ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/packages/NetPBM.
• Better classification support in Dive/Tcl: dive_find_sub_byclass and dive_find_closest_byclass.
• distr_flags is generalized for all entities: subs parameter removed.
• configure parameters have changed name: render_textureon ->render_texture, render_wireframe -> !render_filledpolys.
• Changed the way of setting flags in entities from the Dive/Tcl interface. The old dive_invisible, dive_nograsp, dive_realobj, dive_wireframe, dive_clipping_plane and dive_nobackface have been removed and replaced by a general dive_flag command. A Dive/Tcl file named dive_compatibility.tcl can be inlined to get aliases to the old commands.
• A new WWW scheme called "dive" has been intoduced in order to implement relative URLs resolution. This scheme is the default scheme when loading files. Its meaning differs slighlty from the old "DIVEPATH" resolution scheme: when giving a full absolute path to a document, the file will also be looked for in the "DIVEPATH", e.g. given a path to ~/dive/data/jeep.vr, Dive will look for jeep.vr both in ~/dive/data and in the directories specified in the DIVEPATH. It will be necessary to specify the scheme dive in front of inlines to get backward compatibility.

Known bugs in 3.1.0

• When loading a world as an object "in front" in vishnu, the world parameters affect the current world only locally. All objects are also placed in one big heap.

Moving Code from 3.0.13 to 3.1.0

• Due to the new dive_flag in Dive/Tcl, the old commands are emulated by inlining a script called dive_compatibility.tcl.

What more to come (in 3.1)