No update for a long time here, eh? But much has happened behind and also in front of the scenes, and since it shouldn't be too long until release is due (should be short after the bugfixed version of NGD 1.5 is released), I decided to give some update.
So here are some new screenshots. They are all in 1280x960 in size and over 100k big, so beware when you're on a slow connection. Just click on a thumb to see the bigger version :
And here are the descriptions, in case you're still interested (from left to right) :
Shot 1 : This is the most recent scene, and I just finished it some minutes ago. It's a model of our solar system and all the planets are connected to disks that are connected with each other using the new custom gear joint. This means that when you rotate a disc, all planets will rotate according to the gear ratio that was set up. Looks fun and also is fun.
Shot 2 : You already saw the catapults, and this is just the graphically spiced-up version of that scene. The environment is loaded from an .X-file for which I wrote an importer to use Direct3D .X-files with OpenGL. And instead of simple spheres, the catapults now throw some real stones which make for a much more interesting flight-path.
Shot 3: New scene to demonstrate all the joint types included with Newton/Playground. Nothing too different from the scene that was in the old PlayGround, but this one shows how many joints Newton actually has (no Upvector in there!), though you could do all the joints you ever need with the custom joint interface.
Shot 4: Convex-hull madness at it's best. This is a bowl full of famous teapots that are maed up using convex hulls. Though it get's slow at times, framerates still are not too bad for Newton (and rendering also takes it's time, especially with shadows enabled).
Shot 5: As already posted on my blog, one of the new Features is a character controller included in the PlayGround, and that house is the scene to show it off. Using it is simple : Just open up the dialog and set up the size, forces and position of the character controller and off you go. Oh, and you can also grab stuff like in the ego-mode, just think of HL².
So much for this media-update, hope you like it. There have been many other additions/changes and dozens of bug-fixes that were done in the last weeks, which actually can't be shown in any screenshots. And to accomodate with the naming of the new NGD-release, the PlayGround will also be called NewtonPlayGround 1.5 instead of just 1.3!