Axiom 3D Rendering Engine returns to SourceForge

[Michael Cummings]

Axiom 3D Rendering Engine returns to SourceForge

Details

For the past 6 months, the main development on Axiom has taken place within the project structure of RealmForge, which graciously accepted stewardship of the project after the original developer stepped down. In recent months, a new Axiom team has come together to revitalize the project and take responsibility for moving the project forward in a more public forum. Many thanks to the RealmForge team for their stewardship for it is now time to return Axiom to its original home on SourceForge.

Over the past few weeks the Axiom Team has spent some time getting the SourceForge site up and running again. At this point, it is set up and configured and ready to unveil to the general community. The main site is running MediaWiki with phpBB running the forums. To make the site easier to use, several modifications have been made to MediaWiki and phpBB to facilitate using a single username and password for authentication. Registration is required to post on the forums or to edit the wiki. To register for an account visit the forums and use the register link. Once you have verified your account you will be able to log into the forums and the wiki.

With Axiom having moved before, there is a dissemination of information. There are no plans on migrating any of the forum posts from the RealmForge forums or RealmForge Google Group. Any relevant information on the various wiki's will be slowly transered into the new wiki. There are only a few forum areas but additional areas will be created when needed. The old CVS repository on SourceForge was converted into a SVN repository. The branch from the RealmForge SVN repository on Tigris was moved over as HEAD in the new SVN repository. The previous versions from CVS and Tigris SVN have been placed in a folder called 'historic_archive'. The directory structure under 'trunk' was reorganized to accommodate supplemental projects and the new build environment.

It is important to note that at this time the source is in a general state of flux. It will be several days before the build environment and IDE projects are working satisfactorily again. An announcement will be made when the tree is compiling again, and ask that everyone wait until then to get the trunk from SVN.

The SourceForge Project site has also been updated and new mailing lists have been created. Each of these lists has distinct and well defined purposes, so a brief description of each follows.

• axiomengine-administration

Low volume private list for project administrators, use this for problems with the SF.Net site

• axiomengine-users

General discussion list for Axiom users and contributors

• axiomengine-developers

High volume technical list for Axiom Engine developers, Source Code Contributors (current and past) are encouraged to subscribe to the this list for engine design and related discussions. This list requires authorization, so please don't try to subscribe unless you are a contributor.

• axiomengine-svn

Subversion commit notification list. Use this list to get notified of changes in the SVN repository.

With this announcement, all Axiom related discussions should move to either the forums or the mailing lists. The RealmForge Google Group and Forums will continue to be monitored for some time to facilitate a smooth transition.

On the Axiom Wiki you will find some documentation detailing the future direction of Axiom development. There are currently two planned releases. There are no set dates for these releases - they will occur when the development goals are met. The team would like to start releasing early and releasing often, but the goals for the first release are quite ambitious. Subsequent releases should be more focused and follow a predictable cycle.

High Level Project Goals

• Target CLR 2.0

Both Mono and .Net have support for generics. Mono's implementation is currently incomplete but the Team feels that Mono will be a viable platform by release time.

• Support major CLR implementations and associated platforms

The Team is committed to ensuring that the engine continues to run on all Mono and .Net supported platforms. There are no plans to support any other CLI implementation such as DotGNU Portable.NET at this time.

• Cross-platform Rendering support

To ensure cross-platform compatability, the Team is committed to support both DirectX and OpenGL rendering systems.

• Provide Universal Build Environment

To maximize cross-plaform build support, the Team has chosen NAnt as the primary non-IDE build system. NAnt has proven itself to be a very robust and reliable build environment across supported platforms. Support for major IDEs is also provided via auto-generation of project files using .NET Prebuild.

'Bree' Release Goals

• Convert all collections to Generic versions, where appropriate.
• Update base engine functionality to be OGRE 1.06 compatible.
• Implement New Object Registry for Dynamic Injection ( Plugins )
• Implement New Virtual File System for easier access to resources ( materials, sounds, textures, etc )
• Implement New Plugin subsystem which utilizes the Object Registry.
• Implement New Configuration subsystem to manage engine settings.
• Use MDX 2.0 for DirectX Renderer

'Amon Sul' Release Goals

• Update to OGRE v1.1
• Performance Analysis

These goals are subject to change so it is advisable check the wiki for updates.

We thank the community for their continued support and look forward to seeing everyone on the new forums and mailing lists.

The Axiom Team
http://axiomengine.sf.net

Retrieved from "http://axiomengine.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Axiom_3D_Rendering_Engine_returns_to_SourceForge "

[Dan Moorehead]

Great to see things progressing.

Btw, it seems that your forums link is broken.

--
Dan Moorehead
_____________________________________________
Sophomore in Business Administration: Entrepreneurship
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Project Manager and Software Architect
Visual3D Architect .NET (www.RealmWare3D.com)

Resume (http://realmware3d.com/Resume.pdf )
Business Card (http://realmware3d.com/BusinessCard.jpg)

[Michael Cummings]

Bugger me, just remove the trailing 's'.

Resume ( http://realmware3d.com/Resume.pdf )
Business Card (http://realmware3d.com/BusinessCard.jpg

 

[Rob Loach]

Looks great, guys. Keep it up!

[andris]

Say how is the Performance Analysis for Amon Sul being intended to
happen?
Early thoughts but am curious..:)

[Michael Cummings]

There are several tools that I have used in the past that will help analyze the execution path of the engine to pinpoint hotspots in the code. Additionally I am going to pay particularly close attention to the GC and it's activities during the execution of samples.

[andris]

>Additionally I am going to pay particularly close attention to the GC and
>it's activities during the execution of samples.

Great to hear that, is exactly what I've been thinking about recently
as I get too variable FPS sometimes (But don't want to start the
discussion right now :)

>There are several tools that I have used in the past that will help analyze
the execution path of the engine to pinpoint hotspots in the code.

Can you put here some link to the tools? Just a google search word is
enough.Some time ago (year or so) all the tools I found were only
commercial...

[Michael Cummings]

Most of the good tools are commercial. However there is NProf and ProfIt that do a reasonable job as well.

On 3/10/06, andris <and...@seznam.cz> wrote:

[andris]

Thanks coz I think I can use NProf soon..

ProfIt
http://www.productivity-measurement.com/

doesn't seem to be usable with executables...wrong link?