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We’ve got a new way of distributing our products on Linux platforms that will make it easier to get up and running on whatever flavor of Linux you’re running. Instead of distributing pre-built binaries of the our libraries for a a select group of distributions, our evaluation SDK’s are now distributed as obfuscated source code that’s built on your own system. This gets around all the issues that can arise from shared library dependencies that may differ from the ones we built against, and opens up our products to Linux distributions we didn’t previously support. It also means we can spend less time building our evaluation SDK’s, and more time developing new features for our customers.

It’s easy – just unpack the SilverLining SDK for Linux from our download page, run make, and you’re done. For Triton, there are a couple of dependencies you’ll need to install first (CMake and FFTSS, plus some optional packages for GPGPU acceleration) but our installer script does the rest.

Customers who purchase full source licenses receive unobfuscated source code along with their license code.

We’ve tested these packages on a wide variety of configurations (mixtures of 32 and 64 bit, ATI and NVidia, and Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Red Hat, Debian, and Fedora,) but please let us know if you run into any trouble building or running on your system.

SilverLining and Triton for Linux are available from our download page.

We’ve updated our Unity engine integration, available now in the Unity Asset Store. We’ve got a webplayer demo if you’d like to see it in action! We also prepared a trailer video below, captured from SilverLining for Unity:

Our Unity package is our answer for indie developers who have always wanted a less expensive option for licensing SilverLining. At $125, it provides the basic features of SilverLining – procedural skies, cumulus clouds, cirrus clouds, and stratus clouds in flat-earth coordinates. It’s been tested on iPad and iPhone in addition to PC. Written from the ground up using C# scripts and Unity’s particle engine, it offers great performance (over 250FPS on PC, and a solid 60 on iPhone 3GS) at a great price.  If you’re looking for realistic 3D volumetric clouds and dynamic time of day effects for your Unity project, check it out!

We’re proud to announce the release of SilverLining 2.36, available now on our download page. It’s got some exciting new features and performance optimizations that you’ll definitely want access to.

Real-time cloud growth and convection effects on cumulus clouds are now available through the CloudLayer::SetCloudAnimationEffects method. Check out this video, captured in real-time, illustrating how these effects can cause cloud coverage to increase over time with shifting, growing clouds driven by a real cellular automata.

We’ve also added a new impostor-based level of detail (LOD) scheme, enabling real-time performance with cloud layers that span hundreds of miles. It’s all automatic – distant clouds will be rendered to a 2D backdrop and updated only when the camera moves by a meaningful distance, or when the lighting conditions change. This screenshot illustrates 100 mile visibility with a cumulus congestus cloud layer configured for 100% cloud coverage – rendering this many clouds at once at real-time frame rates was never possible before. For even better performance, break up your large cumulus cloud layers into a grid of multiple cloud layers, enabling coarse-level culling at the cloud layer level.

SilverLining 2.36 Large Cloud Area Support

Finally, we’ve added a C# wrapper for SilverLining, opening up our 3D cloud, sky, and weather simulation to C# developers under Windows. In the samples folder of the Windows SDK, you’ll find a Visual Studio project to build a DLL wrapper for SilverLining, C# classes to access it, and a simple C# example application illustrating its usage. Refer to the readme file in the C# sample directory for more information.

SilverLining 2.34 is now available from our download page. This updates speeds up the rendering of cumulus clouds by about 10% in our tests, by reducing CPU load. On our test system with an ATI 5850 graphics card, we’re seeing framerates in the high 300′s for scenes with cumulus congestus clouds stretching to the horizon.

This update also introduces finer control over precipitation effects, by exposing some new configuration settings to control the terminal velocity of snow particles, and to allow use of the depth buffer when rendering precipitation particles if your near clip plane is close to the camera. See the full release notes for more details.

There are also a few bug fixes related to stratocumulus clouds included in this update; thank you to our friends at Tree C Technology for sending those our way. Updated commercial game engine integration packages are also now available, built against Havok Vision Engine 8.2.6 and Gamebryo Lightspeed 3.2.

The Triton Ocean SDK version 1.3 is now available for Windows and Linux. We’ve enhanced our support for ship wakes substantially – in addition to tuning the Kelvin wakes behind a ship, which displace the ocean surface in 3D, we’ve added propeller backwash and the turbulent wake resulting from it. This results in visually identifiable trails behind the ships in your scene, which are important for training purposes and for realism. The new WakeGenerator class allows you to specify a ship beam width and ship length, and the trail behind the ship will grow at a realistic rate given these parameters. We’ve also added a configurable distance between the optional spray effects and the wake itself, so you can simulate spray at the bow of a ship, and a wake emanating from the stern.

We’ve also made a lot of improvements to our support for geocentric / ECEF coordinate support in Triton. With Triton 1.3, you’ll get the same visual quality using WGS84 ellipsoids or spherical coordinate systems as you’ll get in flat coordinate systems, free of precision issues. You’ll get more visual detail on the waves and foam, and wind-blown spray effects that move fluidly.

You’ll also find that height tests conducted with Ocean::GetHeight() are much more accurate in choppy seas now. View the full Triton release notes for a complete list of improvements; there are quite a few, so we recommend this update for everyone.

We’ve made a few improvements to our support plans and licensing options – don’t worry, we lowered the cost!

Previously, extended product support was available at $500 for 3 months at a time, which added up to $2,000 per year. We’ve discontinued the quarterly support product in favor of an annual, 12-month extended support product, at $995 per year - over half off.

Product licenses still include 3 months of support as part of the license cost. But, extending your license means you’ll get continued access to SDK updates, as well as up to 10 hours per month of email-based technical support. We’ve also created a new process for obtaining SDK updates for our licensed customers – you’ll be receiving an email soon with the details.

We’ve also added a new binary license for SilverLining at $1500 USD. This creates a less expensive option to the $2500 full source SilverLining license.

Finally, we’re offering full-service integration services now on a contract basis. We can connect you with software engineers who are experts in SilverLining and Triton around the world, to help you get the most out of our products in your application. Contact support@sundog-soft.com to learn more!

A new version of the Triton Ocean SDK for Windows is now available for download. This latest version includes support for Direct3D9Ex devices, alongside our existing support for Direct3D9, 10, and 11 as well as every OpenGL version from 2.0 onward.

This latest release also adds support for shallow water effects under DirectX. Licensed, full source SDK users will also find cmake files that work under Windows, with the option to exclude DirectX dependencies from being linked in if you’re targeting OpenGL exclusively.

The Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division, has purchased a license for the Triton Ocean SDK. We’re really proud that our real-time visual simulation technology for the ocean under specific sea states caught the attention of the Navy itself! NAWC joins the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA, and Lawrence Livermore National Labs among our high-profile government customers that we’ve sold to directly. Thank you, NAWC/WD!

Version 1.21 of the Triton Ocean SDK for Windows is now available. This update includes three main new features:

• Sample code for Gamebryo Lightspeed 3.2 (Core Runtime) is now included with the SDK
• Libraries for Visual C++ 2005 are now included for OpenGL and DirectX9, in addition to Visual Studio 2008 and 2010
• A new Ocean::SetRefractionColor method has been added, allowing you to change the water color at runtime

Let us know of any trouble at support@sundog-soft.com.

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