This release includes Fully fully automatic Shader Generation. So if you don't know shader math but still want to use shader take a look! Other features - there is so many its hard not to make it look like a laundry list: Main features for me are: complete python support out of the box working everything on linux supper stable + debugging + performance monitoring I am sure you will find some thing you need: Full Python Integration Automatically-generated wrappers expose full functionality of engine. * Highly optimized: all core functionality in C++ * Thoroughly-tested: two commercial MMOs in python * Panda3D structures garbage collected when using Python * Manual and sample programs use python Exposes Full Power of Graphics API Modern OpenGL features exposed directly to Panda3D user: * High-level shader language: Cg * Powerful interface between shaders and engine * Render-to-texture, with ARB_draw_buffers * Use of depth/shadow textures Just Works, Right out of the Box No-hassle install: * Convenient installer package for Windows * Only one external dependency: working graphics driver * Sample programs run right out of Start Menu * No compilation step needed * Installers (rpm & deb) for Linux too Debugging Tools Heavy emphasis on error tolerance and debuggable code: * Extreme resistance to crashing, even when errors are made * More than 5000 assertion-checks to catch errors early * Reference-counted data structures minimize memory leaks * Many tools to examine internal state (one shown here) Performance Monitoring Powerful performance monitoring and optimization tools: * Identifies bottlenecks, both CPU and GPU * CPU time use decomposed into more than 250 categories * Counts meshes, polygons, textures, transforms, state changes, etc * Allows user-defined CPU-usage categories * Tools for batching and state-change minimization * Toos to merge textures and minimize texture switches Mature, Complete System Mature system used to deliver several commercial games. Contains everything you need, not just the "sexy" stuff: * Converters for older file formats * Font file importers * Tool to package games into redistributables * Means to pack art assets into encrypted bundles * Lots of other boring but essential stuff Commercial Games Already done with panda3d: * Disney's Toontown * Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online * SimOps Studios: Code3D * MSA's Thermal Enforcer * Little Mermaid Pinball, Aladdin Pinball, and Pirates Pinball

How is OS X support coming along? I was able to get the last version to compile after a lot of gymnastics, but the process seemed to be broken for Leopard.

Well because our maintainers have no mac OS X as you see for your self it can compile on mac OS X and the commercial games also distribute mac binaries. So unfortunately mac remains source only.

Quote:Original post by eiforall
Well because our maintainers have no mac OS X as you see for your self it can compile on mac OS X and the commercial games also distribute mac binaries. So unfortunately mac remains source only.

I more meant whether Mac patches were working their way into the trunk. To compile the last time (version 1.2 I think), I had to rewrite a fair portion of the build process, and heavily patch the source (though luckily their were a couple of community guides on the process which could be adapted).

Here is an alpha mac release build by one of the community. The version 1.5.0 build on mac fine yet is a little untested and openAL support for macs still sux so fmod is used.

http://public.nouser.org/~rspoerri/Development/python/panda3d/projects/p3dapp/0.8.0-alpha-1-1.5.0/

Quote:Original post by eiforall
Here is an alpha mac release build by one of the community...

Pure gold - just what I was looking for, a recent and easily customised relocatable binary with all dependencies included. Thanks!

swiftcoder, you just saw the big problem with panda. Its a fantastic engine but relatively unknown so there is not that many people asking for stuff like mac builds or linux64 builds. But as the community grows there is more people to provide this.

Quote:Original post by eiforall
swiftcoder, you just saw the big problem with panda. Its a fantastic engine but relatively unknown so there is not that many people asking for stuff like mac builds or linux64 builds. But as the community grows there is more people to provide this.

I think it will definitely grow, and the lack of binaries isn't a real problem. A major problem is that it takes a group of users with months of experience with the engine to get it building on a fairly major platform - thus my question about Mac patches working their way in.

Because Panda is using a pair(!) of homegrown build systems, it hugely complicates what should be a simple process. I am not even sure why ppremake and makepanda are used - I build hybrid C++/Python projects using Scons or CMake, both with great ease and portability.

I like Scons too but that is what we have its kinda dumb to change into some thing most of other developers don't know. CMake makes my puke though.

I never had a major problem building panda3d. I am sure most problem can be solved with a couple of days and then they don't really have to be solved again. We are getting more and more configurations to the platforms build every day.