Delta3d
Encyclopedia
Delta3D is an Open Source Software gaming/simulation engine
API. Primarily managed and supported by the Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (MOVES) Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School
in Monterey, California. Alion Science
has also been a major contributor to enhancements and features.
Delta3D is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License
(LGPL). The external modules
have their own licensing. Some modules, such as Qt
, require the user to download and install separately for use with Delta3D.
As a cross-platform
"application" different operating systems and development environments are supported.
Delta3D can be used to create a game/simulation — it is not a "finished product" ready for release/deployment. Tests, examples, and other support applications are provided. The "user" (developer) is expected to "leverage" these as resources and technical references in order to create their own custom implementation.
In order to make "full" use of Delta3D you will need a compiler/development environment. Additionally, you will need a Source Control application to access the source code for the latest versions of Delta3D and the related libraries/modules. This is necessary in order to make use of changes in support libraries as well as ongoing updates to Delta3D that may not be available in the "release package", or covered in the current product documentation.
Simulation, Training, and Game Editor (STAGE).
application using Delta3D. SimCore is developed primarily by Alion Science and Techology. The first version of SimCore was developed as part of the Deployable Virtual Training Environment (DVTE) project for USMC which started in 2006. Although Alion is still the primary developer of SimCore, it is now used by a number of other companies and organizations across the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) community.
In order to build and "run" SimCore many additional libraries are required, including additions to the core Delta3D build.
Physics — special effects and particle system capabilities. A "Physics Abstraction Layer" (PAL), is used to provide a standard API to various physics libraries. As part of the early development of SimCore, Alion obtained a license with Ageia (now NVidia) that allowed integrating Delta3D with NVidia PhysX — named dtAgeiaPhysX. Though dtAgeiaPhysX is still available it is no longer officially supported.
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
API. Primarily managed and supported by the Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (MOVES) Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School
Naval Postgraduate School
The Naval Postgraduate School is an accredited research university operated by the United States Navy. Located in Monterey, California, it grants master's degrees, Engineer's degrees and doctoral degrees...
in Monterey, California. Alion Science
Alion Science and Technology
Alion Science and Technology is an employee-owned technology solutions company delivering technical expertise and operational support to the United States Department of Defense, civilian government agencies and commercial customers....
has also been a major contributor to enhancements and features.
Delta3D is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
(LGPL). The external modules
Modular programming
Modular programming is a software design technique that increases the extent to which software is composed of separate, interchangeable components called modules by breaking down program functions into modules, each of which accomplishes one function and contains everything necessary to accomplish...
have their own licensing. Some modules, such as Qt
Qt (toolkit)
Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers...
, require the user to download and install separately for use with Delta3D.
As a cross-platform
Cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...
"application" different operating systems and development environments are supported.
Delta3D can be used to create a game/simulation — it is not a "finished product" ready for release/deployment. Tests, examples, and other support applications are provided. The "user" (developer) is expected to "leverage" these as resources and technical references in order to create their own custom implementation.
In order to make "full" use of Delta3D you will need a compiler/development environment. Additionally, you will need a Source Control application to access the source code for the latest versions of Delta3D and the related libraries/modules. This is necessary in order to make use of changes in support libraries as well as ongoing updates to Delta3D that may not be available in the "release package", or covered in the current product documentation.
Features
Delta3D is an API to other open source modules; providing features to take advantage of the capabilities in the modules that make up the "package". Therefore, the features available for any given implementation are limited to the modules integrated and the support applications available to access them.Simulation, Training, and Game Editor (STAGE).
Simulation Core
Simulation Core, commonly referred to as SimCore, is a "collaborative" implementation of Delta3D functionality — providing the "base" capabilities for an MMORPGMMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
application using Delta3D. SimCore is developed primarily by Alion Science and Techology. The first version of SimCore was developed as part of the Deployable Virtual Training Environment (DVTE) project for USMC which started in 2006. Although Alion is still the primary developer of SimCore, it is now used by a number of other companies and organizations across the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) community.
In order to build and "run" SimCore many additional libraries are required, including additions to the core Delta3D build.
Physics — special effects and particle system capabilities. A "Physics Abstraction Layer" (PAL), is used to provide a standard API to various physics libraries. As part of the early development of SimCore, Alion obtained a license with Ageia (now NVidia) that allowed integrating Delta3D with NVidia PhysX — named dtAgeiaPhysX. Though dtAgeiaPhysX is still available it is no longer officially supported.
Libraries
Several open-source products are part of the "Delta3D package". You can build them or use the provided binaries/libraries to build and run Delta3D based applications on your "system". The current version of a product may not be compatible with Delt3D.- Boost
- BulletBullet (software)Bullet is an open source physics engine featuring 3D collision detection, soft body dynamics, and rigid body dynamics. It is used in games, and in visual effects in movies. The Bullet physics library is published under the zlib license. Erwin Coumans, its main author, worked for Sony Computer...
- Cal3DCal3DCal3D is a skeletal animation based 3D character animation library written in C++ in a platform-/graphic API-independent way. Originally designed to be used in a 3D client for Worldforge, it evolved into a stand-alone product which can be used in many different kinds of projects...
- CEGUICEGUICrazy Eddie's GUI system is a graphical user interface C++ library. It is designed particularly for the needs of videogames, but the library is usable for non-game tasks...
- CppUnitCPPUnitCppUnit is a unit testing framework module for the C++ programming language, described as a C++ port of JUnit. The library is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The library can be compiled for a variety of POSIX platforms, allowing unit-testing of 'C' sources as well as C++ with...
- expat (optional)
- FreeTypeFreeTypeFreeType is a software library written in C that implements a font rasterization engine. It is used to render text on to bitmaps and provides support for other font-related operations.-Details:...
- Game Networking Engine (GNE)
- GDALGDALGDAL is a library for reading and writing raster geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats...
- HawkNL
- libpngLibpnglibpng is the official Portable Network Graphics reference library . It is a platform-independent library that contains C functions for handling PNG images...
- OpenALOpenALOpenAL is a cross-platform audio API. It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those of OpenGL.- History :...
Utility Toolkit (ALUT) - Open Distributed Interactive SimulationDistributed Interactive SimulationDistributed Interactive Simulation is an IEEE standard for conducting real-time platform-level wargaming across multiple host computers and is used worldwide, especially by military organizations but also by other agencies such as those involved in space exploration and medicine.-History:The...
(DIS) - Open Dynamics EngineOpen Dynamics EngineThe Open Dynamics Engine is a physics engine in C/C++. Its two main components are a rigid body dynamics simulation engine and a collision detection engine...
(ODE) - OpenGLOpenGLOpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
- OpenSceneGraphOpenSceneGraphOpenSceneGraph is an open source 3D graphics application programming interface, used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, computer games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling....
(OSG) - Physics Abstraction Layer (PAL)
- PLIBPLIBPLIB is a suite of Open Source portable computer game libraries, originally written by Steve Baker in 1997 and licensed under the LGPL.PLIB includes sound effects, music, a complete 3D engine, font rendering, a simple windowing library, a game scripting language, a GUI, networking, 3D math library...
- Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE)
- XercesXercesXerces is a collection of software libraries for parsing, validating, serializing and manipulating XML. The library implements a number of standard APIs for XML parsing, including DOM, SAX and SAX2. The implementation is available in Java, C++ and Perl programming languages.-External...
- ZlibZlibzlib is a software library used for data compression. zlib was written by Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler and is an abstraction of the DEFLATE compression algorithm used in their gzip file compression program. Zlib is also a crucial component of many software platforms including Linux, Mac OS X,...
Further reading
- IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications: Projects in VR: the Delta3D open source game engine
- Halldale Media Ltd: Published in MS&T Magazine Issue 5/2009: The Delta3D Game Engine is Reaching Maturity