Releases notes for Xith3D release 0.8.0
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This version has been released on June the 26th, 2006

New features :

- COLLADA v 1.4 Loader has been added !
  Look at the org.xith3d.loaders.dae package.
  Bones and skinning aren't supported yet and splines support is planned.
  However simple animation and texture is working-
  Thanks David Wallace Croft for that valuable contribution !
  
- A new HUD has been added.
  For now it has a reduced set of widgets but you can add your owns, don't
  forget to share them with us on the Xith3D forums, we will be happy to include
  them in the toolkit.
  Thanks to Marvin Froehlich (original creation) and Amos Wenger (other widgets,
  event system)
  
- Several classes to make your development life easier have been added,
  like the Canvas3DWrapper / Canvas3DPanel,
  the (Ext)RenderLoop with all the scheduler thingies,
  and (Ext)Xith3DEnvironment which wraps all the necessary objects to build up
  your scene.
  
  Watch the org.xith3d.scenegraph and org.xith3d.render packages.
  This is a Marvin Froehlich contribution.

Major compatibility-breaking changes :

- The ASE loader has been moved from the core (com.xith3d.loaders) to the
  toolkit (org.xith3d.loaders)
  Change package names in your import accordingly to avoid compile errors.
  
- The TextureLoader (version 1) has been totally removed. The class named
  TextureLoader now is what used to be called TextureLoader2, which doesn't use
  com.sun.* classes.
  You will have to change
  TextureLoader.tf.loadTexture(String fileName, "RGB" (or "RGBA), boolean mipmap)
  calls to
  TextureLoader.getInstance().getTexture(fileName, TextureLoader.RGB (or TextureLoader.RGBA), boolean mipmap).
  If you used other variants of the loadTexture() method just watch the source
  of the new TextureLoader.
  (Note: to create textures from buffered images, use the method
  TextureLoader.createTexture(BufferedImage).)

Minor changes :

- All the tests have been moved from the core to the toolkit, but that may not
  bother you :)
  
- The Batch files used to launch tests have all been removed as they were not
  up-to-date at all. Just run org.xith3d.test.Xith3DTestStarter to run any test.
  If you really miss them drop us a line and we'll see what's possible.

Contact :

You can contact the whole Xith3D team on our website : http://xith.org/
See our forums, they are the most valuable source of information about Xith3D
(apart from source code, maybe).