Changeset 1915 for OpenSceneGraph/trunk/doc/introduction.html

Timestamp:

04/24/03 21:54:03 (10 years ago)

Author:

robert

Message:

Updates to the introduction.html documentaition.

Files:

• OpenSceneGraph/trunk/doc/introduction.html (modified) (14 diffs)

OpenSceneGraph/trunk/doc/introduction.html

@@ -36 +36 @@
 <h2>
 <u>Introduction to the OpenSceneGraph</u></h2>
-Welcome to OpenSceneGraph project!
-<p>The OpenSceneGraph is an Open Source <a href="../LICENSE.txt">(OSGPL)</a>, Cross Platform (Windows,
-Linux, Mac OSX, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris and HP-UX), Standard C++ and OpenGL based
-graphics development library. Uses range from visual simulation, games,
-virtual reality, scientific visualization and graphics research. This page
-introduces what scene graphs are, why graphics developers use them, and
-details about the OpenSceneGraph project, how to learn how to use it and
-contribute to the OpenSceneGraph community.
-<p><i>Robert Osfield, Project Lead. July 2002.</i>
-<br>
-<hr>
+
+<p>The OpenSceneGraph is an portable, high level graphics toolkit for the development of high peformance
+graphics applications such as flight simulators, games, virtual reality or scientific visualization.  
+Providing an object orientated framework on top of OpenGL, it frees the developer
+from implementing and optimizing low level graphics calls, and provide many additional utilities for 
+rapid development of graphics applications.  
+</p>
+<p>
+The project was started as a hobby by Don Burns in early 1999, as means of porting a hang gliding simulator written on top of the 
+Peformer scene graph running on IRIX to what was then a humble Linux PC. In mid 1999, Robert Osfield began helping out with 
+the simulator development and ported the scene graph element to Windows.  In september 1999 the source code was open sourced, 
+and the openscenegraph.org website was born, with Robert taking over as project lead and Don remaining focused on the hang 
+gliding simulator.  In April 2001, in response to growing interest in the project around the world, Robert went fulltime 
+on the project, setting up OpenSceneGraph Professional Services, 
+with the mission:
+<ul>
+<li><b>Source</b>
+<br>To develop a high performance, high quality visualization toolkit which
+is freely available and accessible to all.</li>
+
+<li><b>Community</b>
+<br>To nurture a world-wide community of graphics professionals and enthusiasts
+for development, support and promotion of best practices in software engineering
+and real-time computer graphics.</li>
+
+<li><b>Service</b>
+<br>To provide consultancy and development services for clients projects to
+allow them to maximize the benefits of real-time 3D graphics and to facilitate
+the rapid, yet seamless adoption of latest graphics technologies.</li>
+</ul>
+</p>
+
+<br>
 <h3>
 <u>What is a Scene Graph?</u></h3>
@@ -58 +80 @@
 The leaves of the graph represent the physical objects themselves, the
 drawable geometry and their material properties.
+</p>
 <p>A scene graph isn't a complete game or simulation engine, although it may
 be one of the main components of such an engine; it's primary focus is
@@ -67 +90 @@
 markets from games, visual simulation, virtual reality,
 scientific and commercial visualization, training through to modeling programs.
-<br>
-<hr>
-<h3>
-<u>Why use a Scene Graph - Performance, Productivity, Portability and Scalability</u>.</h3>
-
-<ol><b><i>Performance</i></b> - scene graphs provide an excellent framework for
+</p>
+
+
+<br>
+<h3>
+<u>Advantages that Scene Graphs provide</h3>
+
+The key reasons that many graphics developers uses scene graphs are  <i>Performance, Productivity, Portability and Scalability:</i>
+
+<ul>
+<li><b><i>Performance</i></b></li>
+Scene graphs provide an excellent framework for
 maximizing graphics performance. A good scene graph employs two key techniques
 - culling of the objects that won't be seen on screen, and state sorting
@@ -79 +108 @@
 swamped by many times the amount of data than they actually require to
 represent your work accurately. The hierarchical structure of the scene
-graph makes this culling process very efficient with whole town being culled
+graph makes this culling process very efficient, for instance a whole city can be culled
 with just a few operations! Without state sorting, the the buses and GPU
 will thrash between states, stalling the graphics pipeline and destroying graphics
 througput. As GPU's get faster and faster, the cost of stalling the graphics
 is also going up, so scene graphs are becoming ever more important.
-<p><b><i>Productivity</i></b> - scene graphs take away much of the hard work required
+
+<li><b><i>Productivity</i></b></li> 
+Scene graphs take away much of the hard work required
 to develop high performance graphics applications. The scene graph manages
 all the graphics for you, reducing what would be thousands of lines of
@@ -97 +128 @@
 very little coding. A dozen lines of code can be enough to load your data
 and create an interactive viewer!
-<p><b><i>Portability</i></b> - scene graphs encapsulate much of the lower level
+
+<li><b><i>Portability</i></b></li>
+Scene graphs encapsulate much of the lower level
 tasks of rendering graphics and reading and writing data, reducing or even
 eradicating the platform specific coding that you require in your own application.
 If the underlying scene graph is portable then moving from platform to
 platform can be as simple as recompiling your source code.
-<p><b><i>Scalability</i></b> - along with being able to dynamic manage the complexity
+
+<li><b><i>Scalability</i></b></li>
+Along with being able to dynamic manage the complexity
 of scenes automatically to account for differences in graphics performance
 across a range of machines, scene graphs also make it much easier to manage
@@ -109 +144 @@
 will allow the developer to concentrate on developing their own application
 while the rendering framework of the scene graph handles the different
-underlying hardware configurations.</ol>
-
-<hr>
-<h3>
-<u>So what about the OpenSceneGraph project?</u></h3>
-The OpenSceneGraph is an Open Source Scene Graph, and our goal is make
-the benefits of scene graph technology available to all. Our scene graph
-is still in development, but has already gained a great deal of respect
+underlying hardware configurations.
+</ul>
+
+
+<br>
+<h3>
+<u>The OpenSceneGraph - <i> a robust, high peformance Open Source scene graph</i></u></h3>
+With the OpenSceneGraph our goal is make the benefits of scene graph technology 
+freely available to all, for both commericial and non commericial users. Whilst our scene graph
+is still in development, it has already gained a respect
 amongst the development community for its high performance, cleanness of
 design and portability. Written entirely in Standard C++ and OpenGL, it
@@ -124 +161 @@
 the four key benefits of scene graph technology outlined above using the
 following features:
-<ol><b><i>Performance</i></b> - supports view frustum culling, occlusion culling, small feature culling,
+<ul>
+<li><b><i>Performance</i></b></li>
+Supports view frustum culling, occlusion culling, small feature culling,
 Level Of Detail (LOD) nodes, state sorting, vertex arrays and display
 lists as part of the core scene graph. These together make the OpenSceneGraph
@@ -135 +174 @@
 be found at Vterrain.org and TerrainEngine.com, both of which integrate
 with the OpenSceneGraph.
-<p><b><i>Productivity</i></b> - by combining lessons learned from established
-scene graphs like Performer and Open Inventor, with modern software engineering
-boosts like Design Patterns, along with a great deal of feedback early on
+
+<li><b><i>Productivity</i></b> </li>
+Combining lessons learned from established scene graphs like Performer 
+and Open Inventor, with modern software engineering
+methods like Design Patterns, along with a great deal of feedback early on
 in the development cycle, it has been possible to design a library that is
 clean and highly interpretable. This has made it easy for users to adopt
 to the OpenSceneGraph and to integrate it with their own applications. With
-a full feature set in the core scene graph, utilities to set up the scene
-graph and viewers and a wide range of loaders it is possible to create
-an application and bring in user data with a very small amount of code.
-<p><b><i>Portability</i></b> - The core scene graph has also been designed to
+a full feature set in the core scene graph, utilities (osgUtil) to set up the scene
+graph and viewers (osgProducer).
+</p>
+<p>
+For reading and writing databases an addition database library (osgDB) adds support for a wide
+variety of database formats via a extensible dynamic plugin mechansim - the distribution now includes 33
+seperate plugins for loading various 3D and Image data formats. 3D Database loaders include OpenFlight (.flt), 
+TerraPage (.txp) including multi-threading support, LightWave (.lwo), Alias Wavefront (.obj), 
+Carbon Graphics GEO (.geo), 3D Studio MAX (.3ds), Peformer (.pfb), Quake Character Models (.md2). Direct X (.x), 
+and Inventor Ascii 2.0 (.iv)/ VRML 1.0 (.wrl), Designer Workshop (.dw) and AC3D (.ac) and the native .osg ASCII format.
+Image loaders include .rgb, .gif, .jpg, .png, .tiff, .pic, .bmp, .dds (include compressed mip mapped imagery), .tga and qucktime (under OSX).  A whole set of quality fonts 
+can also be loaded via the freetype plugin.
+</p>
+<p>
+The scene graph also has a set of <i>Node Kits</i> which are seperate libraries
+that be compiled directly or loaded in at runtime to add support for particle systems (osgParticle),
+high quality anti-aliased text (osgText) and navigational light points (osgSim).  
+
+<li><b><i>Portability</i></b></li>
+The core scene graph has also been designed to
 have minimal dependency on any specific platform, requiring little more than
 Standard C++ and OpenGL. This has allowed the scene graph to be rapidly
 ported to a wide range of platforms - originally developed on IRIX, then
 ported to Linux, then to Windows, then FreeBSD, Mac OSX, Solaris, HP-UX and 
-even a report of successful porting to PlayStation2! 
-<p>
+we even a report of successful porting to PlayStation2! 
+<br>
 The core scene graph library being completely windowing system independent makes 
 it easy for users to add their own window-specific libraries and applications on top.
 In the distribution there is already the osgProducer library which integrates with <a href="http://www.andesengineering.com/Producer/">OpenProducer</a>, and in the Bazaar
 found at openscenegrph.org/download/ one can find examples of applications
-written on top of Qt, MFC, WxWindows and SDL. Users have also integrated it
+written on top of GLUT, Qt, MFC, WxWindows and SDL. Users have also integrated it
 with Motif, and X.
-<p><b><i>Scalability</i></b> - the scene graph will not only run on portables all
-the way up to Onyx Infinite Reality Monsters, it supports the multiple
+
+<li><b><i>Scalability</i></b></li> 
+The scene graph will not only run on portables all
+the way up to Onyx Infinite Reality Monsters, but also supports the multiple
 graphics subsystems found on machines like a mulitpipe Onyx. This is
 possible because the core scene graph supports multiple graphics contexts
@@ -167 +226 @@
 subsystems. Support for multiple graphic context and multi-threading is all
 available out of the box via osgProducer - all the examples in the distribution
-can run multi-pipe just by use a simple configuation file.</ol>
+can run multi-pipe just by use a simple configuation file.
+
+</ul>
 
 All the source to the OSG is published under the Open Scene Graph Public License
@@ -189 +250 @@
 have already adopted the OpenSceneGraph for their projects, all over the world.
 <br>
-<hr>
+
+<br>
 <h3>
 <u>Getting started</u></h3>
@@ -199 +261 @@
 via cvs.
 <p>The binary distribution contains just the libraries (.dll's /.so's)
-and demo executables. This is suitable for using the OpenSceneGraph with
+and example executables. This is suitable for using the OpenSceneGraph with
 an application that has already been compiled but depends at runtime on
 the OpenSceneGraph.
+</p>
 <p>The development distribution contains the libraries (.dll's /.so's),
-demo executables, include files, and source to the demos. This is suitable
+example executables, include files, and source to the examples. This is suitable
 for using the developers using the OpenSceneGraph.
+</p>
 <p>The source distribution contains all the source and include files
 required to build the OpenSceneGraph from scratch, and is ideal if you
 want to learn more about how the scene graph works, how to extend it, and
 to track down and fix any problems that you come across.
+</p>
 <p>If you are using a source distribution then read the <a href="install.html">installation</a>
 instructions for how to get the OpenSceneGraph compiling and installed
@@ -214 +279 @@
 OpenSceneGraph depend upon, such as Producer. Check the <a href="dependencies.html">dependencies</a>
 list for further details.
+</p>
 <p>For full instructions of how to run the examples read the <a href="examples.html">examples</a>
 page.
-<br>
-<hr>
+</p>
+<br>
+
 <h3>
 <u>Learning how to use the OpenSceneGraph</u></h3>
-The OpenSceneGraph distribution comes with a reference guide for each of
+<p>The OpenSceneGraph distribution comes with a reference guide for each of
 the component libraries - osg, osgDB, osgUtil, osgText, osgSim, osgParticle and osgProducer, a set
-of examples - the source of which can be found in examples. For questions
-or help which can't be easily be answered by the reference guide and demo
+of 42 examples - the source of which can be found in examples/ directory in the distribution. For questions
+or help which can't be easily be answered by the reference guide and examples
 source, one should join the mailing list (details below). There are also
 the beginnings of a <a href="http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?OpenSceneGraphFaq">Wiki
 based FAQ</a> which may help answer a few of the common queries.
+</p>
 <p>A programming guide will be available in form of a OpenSceneGraph book
 which is being written by Don Burns and Robert Osfield, parts of it will
 be available online.
+</p>
 <p>Although not directly related to the OpenSceneGraph, once can learn
 about scene graph technology from such sources as the <a href="http://www.sgi.com/software/inventor/manuals.html">Open
@@ -237 +306 @@
 as a background to some of the techniques used is a SIGGRAPH <a href="http://www.opengl.org/developers/code/sig99/advanced99/course_slides/vissim/index.htm">Vis-Sim
 course</a>.
+</p>
 <p>The OpenSceneGraph uses OpenGL and does so with a deliberately thin layer,
 making it easy to control the underlying OpenGL and to extend it with OpenGL
@@ -246 +316 @@
 Book`</a> and OpenGL reference guide 'Blue Book'. The main <a href="http://www.opengl.org">OpenGL
 website</a> is also a good source of links and further information.
-<br>
-<hr>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<br>
 <h3>
 <u>Support and discussion - the <i>openscenegraph-news</i> mailing list</u></h3>
 For scene graph related questions, bug reports, bug fixes, and general
 design and development discussion one should join the <a href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/openscenegraph-news">openscenegraph-news</a>
-mailing list, and check the the mailing list <a href="http://www.geocrawler.com/redir-sf.php3?list=openscenegraph-news">archives</a>.
+mailing list, and check the the mailing list <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=4775">archives</a>.
 <p>Professional support is also available in the form of confidential online,
 phone and onsite support and consultancy, for details contact Robert Osfield