OMNeT++ 5.3 Released

[Rudolf Hornig]

Dear OMNeT++ Users,

we are happy to announce OMNeT++ 5.3. Go to the download area to read about the details, and grab the package for your platform.

Highlights of this release are an improved message compiler (required for INET 4), much improved histogram support, a more powerful cMessagePrinter API and its implementation in Qtenv, and better support for smooth animation in Qtenv. Details follow:

Core:

• Revised message compiler, added import support and more. See src/nedxml/ChangeLog for details. Use --msg6 to turn on the new features.

• cPar: integer representation changed from long to int64_t. See src/include/omnetpp/ChangeLog for details.

• Evaluation of NED expressions now uses integer arithmetic when operands are integers. Conversions that incur precision loss should now be explicit: converting a double to integer requires the int() cast; also, converting an int to double will raise an error if there is actual precision loss, and you can suppress that error by explicit double() cast. There are many smaller-scale changes related to this change — see include/omnetpp/ChangeLog for details.

• cHistogram has been replaced with new implementation. (The old one is still available under the name cLegacyHistogram.) The new cHistogram is more general (supports arbitrary bins), more configurable, and produces much higher quality histograms even in the default setup due to newly introduced techniques such as adaptive precollection, bin size rounding and bin edge snapping, auto-extension with new bins, bin merging to keep the number of bins optimal, etc. Histogram operation can be customized via histogram strategy classes (cIHistogramStrategy); several histogram strategies are provided.

• In recording histograms with @statistic, the number of bins can be specified by adding numBins=nn: @statistic[x](record=histogram;numBins=100). The actual number of bins produced might slightly differ, due to auto-extension and bn merging during result collection.

• cMessagePrinter: API was extended with tags and column names

• cCanvas: added getAnimationSpeed(); better documentation for setAnimationSpeed() and holdSimulationFor().

• cHistogram, cNedValue: minor changes in the public API

• Result recorders: Added "timeWeightedHistogram" recorder

Qtenv:

• Implemented support for the improved cMessagePrinter Options API, and added a respective configuration dialog.

• The log viewer now supports ANSI control sequences for text styling: foreground/background color, and bold/italic/underline text. Styling is supported in both message history view and log view, i.e. it can be used in text returned from cMessagePrinter and logged by the EV and other logging macros.

• Rewritten the controller for smooth animation. The new algorithm is now able to scale linearly, as long as the simulation can keep up.

• Usability improvements in the Animation Parameters dialog, e.g. it now also displays the current simulation speed, and it is colored red if the simulation cannot keep up with the requested animation speed.

• Histogram inspector: visualize outlier bins (drawn with a different color than normal bins), and show info about them. Fix numeric overflow when large numbers (>= 2^64) are shown.

• Histogram inspector: visualize outlier bins (drawn with a different color than normal bins), and show info about them. Setting up the bins while in the precollection phase can be forced from the GUI. Fix numeric overflow when large numbers (>= 2^64) are shown.

• Histogram result objects are easier to locate on the GUI, and are now also found by the Find/Inspect dialog.

• Made statistic recorders "findable" from Qtenv

Tkenv:

• The Tcl/Tk based runtime interface is now deprecated and turned off by default. It will be removed in future OMNeT++ versions. You can still enable it in configure.user by setting WITH_TKENV = yes, but we strongly suggest using Qtenv instead.

Toolchain and dependencies:

• Updated toolchain on Windows (clang 5.0.1, gcc 7.3, gdb 8, osgEarth 2.7)

• Updated toolchain on macOS (OpenSceneGraph 3.2.3, osgEarth 2.7)

• OMNeT++ now requires osgEarth 2.7 or later (check the Install Guide for further instructions on how to upgrade osgEarth.)

Tools:

• opp_runall, opp_fingerprinttest, opp_test: portability fixes for Windows and macOS

• opp_fingerprinttest: fix: error messages from the simulation did not appear

• 'march=native' and 'mtune=native' compiler options are no longer used by default for a release build, because on certain CPUs this caused rounding differences so simulations ran on a different trajectory depending on the actual CPU used.

Samples:

• canvas: Added smooth animation with CarAnimator::refreshDisplay().

• osg-earth, osg-satellites: Switch from ObjectLocator to GeoTransform. The former was removed after osgEarth 2.8, and the latter has been around for quite some time now.

Documentation:

• Documented smooth animation in detail, and updated the section on statistical data collection classes (cStdDev, cHistogram) in the Simulation Manual.

Plus several bug fixes.

[Michael Kirsche]

Is the INET (v4) integration branch patch still needed? I'm guessing not...

[Rudolf Hornig]

It's no longer needed since preview 2. when the new message compiler was included in OMNeT++

[Hervé Diedie]

The documentation is still  for the 5.2 version

[Rudolf Hornig]

Updated now. Thanks.

[Insaf Ismath]

HI,

Im facing a errors when im trying to install INET through the help->install simulation models. Its running on Ubuntu 18.04. Any idea why this error pops up?

[Michele Garau]

I recently obtained the same error as Insaf Ismath, also with OMNeT++5.3 on Ubuntu 18.04