Roadmap for v3.1, Upcoming Release

[erlend-sh]

This is our open roadmap for a v3.1, due to be released in early 2015.

Non-blocking items may be moved to "Future Release" - #198 - if the upcoming Stable Release is imminent. (Make them bold after moving).

Legend

Bold - Must-have.

Infrastructure Improvements

• New build system for the engine based on Gradle as opposed to ant.
• New repository stored on GitHub
• Move plugins repositories to GitHub
• Embed version number & GIT version into jars’ manifest and into the JmeVersion class - this must occur automatically on every build.
• Rolling nightly builds (no need to manually delete old builds), nice web UI to show releases.
• Nightly build updates online javadoc - no more outdated javadoc

Core Engine Improvements

• Physically Based Rendering
  • Energy-conserving blinn-phong specular
  • Gloss map support
  • gamma correct rendering
  • HDR with filmic tone mapping
  • FXAA post-process
• Native libraries to perform functions which require native code for performance (especially for embedded platforms like Android / iOS)
  • Vorbis audio decoding
  • Texture decoding
  • Software skinning
  • Bullet Physics
  • OpenGL binding
  • OpenAL binding
  • JInput (static linking could potentially be limited by license)
  • WebM (VP9 / Vorbis) video decoding (optional)
• Shift the render-system abstraction away from the Renderer interface into a GL interface which can then be implemented in a much more lean manner. URA!
  • The GL interface can be implemented by various classes such as LwjglGL, JoglGL, AndroidGL, IOSGL. Do the same for OpenAL.

com.jme3.post

• HDR really should be required for any post processing system.

com.jme3.system

• Native extraction should be completely controlled by the context implementation, it should occur when Application requests it. JmePlatform.initialize() must not extract natives (maybe remove completely?).

[shadowislord]

Closing since 3.1 is already released