VulkanSceneGraph-1.0.3 release

[vsg-dev]

Major changes in this release are:

• Building of glslang source code directly into the VulkanSceneGraph library, avoiding the need to link against glslang and SPIRV-Tools as external libraries. Now the only dependency is Vulkan, C++17 and CMake and ensures that all platforms have the same shader compilation features available at all times.
• Instanced billboards with scaling support, all managed in the vertex shader with no CPU overhead.
• Rendering whole earth Bing Maps paged imagery.
• Support for aliasing extensions when loading data.
• New .txt Reader for reading ascii files as vsg::stringValue making it easier to read configuration files etc. in a coherent way that fully supports use with http and local file caching.
• Improvements to Windows and macOS keyboard mappings that ensure the same mappings are used on all platforms.
• Improved handling of two sided lighting.

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This discussion was created from the release VulkanSceneGraph-1.0.3 release.

[vsg-dev]

Full details of changes since 1.0.2 can be found in the PR #737.

I have also tagged stable releases for the main companion libraries:

• https://github.com/vsg-dev/vsgXchange/releases/tag/vsgXchange-1.0.2
• https://github.com/vsg-dev/vsgXchange/releases/tag/vsgExamples-1.0.2

[vsg-dev]

In the new vsgtiledatabase example there is a code path the illustrates load Bing Maps imagery, this uses the new vsg::createBingMapsSettings(..) function declared in TileDatabaseSettings.h:

    /// convenience function for creating a TileDatabaseSettings for reading Bing Maps imagery
    /// Bing Maps official documentation:
    ///    metadata (includes imagerySet details): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/bingmaps/rest-services/imagery/get-imagery-metadata
    ///    culture codes: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/bingmaps/rest-services/common-parameters-and-types/supported-culture-codes
    ///    api key: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/create-a-bing-maps-key
    extern VSG_DECLSPEC ref_ptr<TileDatabaseSettings> createBingMapsSettings(const std::string& imagerySet, const std::string& culture, const std::string& key, ref_ptr<const Options> options);

Here a quick couple of examples of what it looks like: