Its always a good practice to think about what you have done over the past year, and of course to think about what is coming in the next year. I have found this to be a good way to gain perspective about my various projects and activities, so I will indulge in some thinking out loud here.

2015

This year I was extremely busy at work. Normally this would be to the detriment of my passion outside of work (3D software development) but in fact I have been incorporating my 3D work into the daily job. There is a program at work that allows us to pitch ideas for new products and services, and I have had some success in pitching concepts related to 3D programming. So while I have been relatively quiet on GameDev.net, I have in fact been working harder than ever on my craft of choice.

With that said, I have had the opportunity to use Hieroglyph 3 in some of these projects. It is interesting to go from a single developer working on the rendering framework to a larger organization having to use it as well - there are lots of things that I take for granted that have to be explained to other developers, and this provides some insight into what can be improved. There are a number of areas that I will indeed be iterating over, including the following:

1. NuGet Support: After over a year working with NuGet, I think it is time to remove its use from Hieroglyph. It reduces the source needed for building the library, but it also causes a delay in updating to new compiler versions due to the need for the NuGet package owner to update. I would like to find a better solution here, possibly with something like a source code version of NuGet.
   
2. Static Library Management: Over the years I have added some dependencies, some of which are integrated (Lua, DirectXTK) and others that are optional (MFC, WPF, OculusSDK, Kinect SDK, etc...). I'm not currently happy with the way these libraries are managed, and there are some cases where static libraries are handled differently depending on the source. I would like to improve optional library support, preferably also improving the project support system in Visual Studio as well.
   
3. Moving to Git: I have used SVN for Hieroglyph from the start, but it is time to move to Git - I think there isn't much more to be said about that one...
   
4. Scene Management: My original scene management system was loosely based on the Dave Eberly style scene graph, and it has evolved from there. However, with modern C++ coming of age, there are a number of new topics to explore. For example, the Actor system is inheritance based, but it could just as easily use static interfaces with templates. Object ownership is also an interesting area that I previously baked into a usage pattern, but it could be more explicitly defined as well.
   
5. Less Framework for more Flexible Framework: There are many times when I wished it was easier to use pieces of Hieroglyph without needing the whole thing. I would also like to move more in a less connected usage pattern whenever possible, to make each piece more standalone.
   

Overall I am really happy with the experiences I have gained over the past year, and I really look forward to applying some of those experiences to the points above in 2016...

2016

There are a lot of exciting things that will be happening in 2016 for the world of 3D programming. First and foremost is the arrival of the head mounted displays that we have been building up to over the past couple of years. On the VR side I have been working mostly with the Oculus developer kits, but some colleagues are also using the HTC Vive. Whichever side you choose to work on (or both) you will be happy with the arrival of the final headsets.

The one that I am most interested in though, is the Hololens. Even with the limited field of view, I see the potential use cases for Hololens as significantly more broad than with closed off VR headsets. Of course, nothing is really known about the development support, so there is lots to be seen if they get it right or not. In any case, I can't wait to get a developer kit and see what can be done with it!

There are other things that I would like to explore related to AR and VR on the engine side as well. In the past, you always built your engine to produce a 2D output image. This is technically still true for the new HMDs (albeit with two output 2D images) but they make you think about designing more for 3D content. There has been lots of discussion about managing GUIs in 3D, but I think there are still lots of areas to investigate where we can take advantage of keeping our content in 3D deeper into the pipeline.

There are lots more areas that I'll be exploring over the coming year, but I'll just have to write about them when we get there. I think it is going to be a great year, so happy new year and lets take advantage of the time we have to make some great stuff!