versions.txt

动态模拟飞鸟的群体行为

3D Boids Version Information
============================

v0.92     Start Date: 08/02/2004   Finish Date: 08/02/2004
        - Produced an optimized build effectively tripling the frame
          rate.
        - Updated the about box to direct to www.navgen.com.

v0.91     Start Date: 26/12/2001   Finish Date: 27/12/2001
        - Removed the frame rate regulation/timing.  This allows the
          user to specify perfect frame synchronization or not by using
          their graphic card's advanced settings (OpenGL vertical sync).
          This solution provides the best performance across all the
          versions of the Windows platform.
        - Created and implemented a small black crosshair into the
          OpenGL view in the MFC Document/View Architecture.

v0.9      Start Date: 27/09/2001   Finish Date: 05/11/2001
        - Improved the about dialog so that the cursor and hyperlinks do
          not flicker unnecessarily.
        - Renamed the boid behaviours to cohesion, alignment and
          separation as now used by Craig Reynolds.
        - The V-Formation behaviour is now set to off as default.
        - Changed the colouring of the towers to a natural looking brown
          colour.
        - Changed the landscape collision avoidance representation from
          dots to lines.  This gives greater visibility at higher
          resolutions and also looks more appropriate.
        - Changed the maximum number of possible boids from 100 to 200.
        - Fixed a subtle bug where the flocking radius was wrongly used
          instead of the flock forming distance for the cohesion
          behaviour calculations.
        - Inverted the 'Camera Zoom' slider to become the 'Camera Distance'.
        - Added values to the control panel to display the current camera
          distance with also its elevation and rotation angles.
        - Corrected the 'Set Window Size' menu function to ONLY set the
          window size, instead of also repositioning it.
        - Added an new option of having a coastline as the landscape.
        - Added an new option of having a pier structure on the landscape.
        - Increased the gap of the landscape's wireframe overlay to prevent
          some minor stitching.
        - Added a fantastic speed optimization for when the user has the
          mouse over the OpenGL viewport to select a boid.  This almost
          doubles the frame rate =)
        - Added the flyer size to the control panel above the size slider.
        - Added an extra condition to prevent the camera from being
          incorrectly moved when the menu bar is activated and then the
          viewport is clicked.
        - Improved the menu bar so that each menu item is only represented
          by a single word.  This is the convention used by most GUI
          applications.
        - Created a colour selection dialog and added menu options for the
          user to change the colour of the boids or the background.
        - Added an option to animate the sea.
        - Made the sea slightly transparent.

v0.82     Start Date: 22/06/2001   Finish Date: 15/07/2001
        - Enhanced the simulation's timing by using a much better system,
          a high-resolution performance counter to be precise.  This
          produces very smooth timing in all versions of Windows, so
          all the previous jerkiness has at last been removed  :-)
        - Improved the frame rate regulation by using the above counter
          with an even more efficient and accurate algorithm.
        - Slightly reduced the size of the animated bird mesh to be more
          proportional to the other meshes.
        - Fixed a minor bug that prevented the wireframe landscape from
          being recalculated or flattened.
        - Improved the underlying object oriented design, making more use
          of inheritance and generic classes.
        - Improved the orientation calculations used for positioning the
          text to face the camera.  The generic classes were invaluable
          for this enhancement.
        - Reproduced all the flyer meshes so that their orientation points
          towards the positive z axis.  This enables all meshes to be
          oriented the same way, especially with the 3D text.  Doing this
          also optimized the mesh definitions, providing a more compact
          executable file for the final release.
        - Improved the timing of the wing flapping, so to prevent any
          jerkiness when the simulation is repeatedly stopped and
          restarted.
        - Changed internal colour representations to all use the same
          system, which is now floating point numbers.
        - Fixed a little juddering that occurred with the new V-formation
          behaviour.  Also removed the blue lines that showed the vector
          calculation offsets.
        - Added a bit more speed control to the boids, making them
          accelerate in certain circumstances, like when leading a
          V-formation.
        - Added an extra behaviour control option to fix the boids speed,
          this makes the boids behave purely by steering themselves, as
          in the original model defined by Craig Reynolds.  The fixed
          speed of the boids is set as the average of the maximum and
          minimum speed limits.
        - Improved the effectiveness of the random orientation for newly
          created boids.

v0.8      Start Date: 23/01/2001   Finish Date: 22/04/2001
        - Improved the flock forming algorithm.  So instead of moving to
          the nearest boid, the boid moves to the average position of the
          other boids in its visible range.
        - Added a new wing flapping offset variable for each boid, this
          allows the boids to have individual wing stroke phases.
        - Reduced the sizes of the tetra meshes to make them more
          proportional with the sizes of the other meshes.
        - Implemented behaviour weights so that no particular behaviour
          can override an other.  These weights are hard-coded into the
          source code.
        - Added a random behaviour option.  This allows the boids to
          behave in a chaotic fashion, in accordance with the current
          hard-coded weightings.
        - Added some very versatile camera control via dragging the mouse
          pointer over the OpenGL view-port.
        - Added an elevation slider to provide full 3D camera control.
        - Improved the landscape avoidance to prevent the boids clipping
          the tower as they fly past it.
        - Added the option of showing the boids landscape avoidance
          behaviour.
        - Added input validation to the flyer behaviour attributes dialog.
        - Added three new GUI buttons to Move camera to the next or
          previous boid and change the type of camera view.
        - Added the ability for the user to select a boid by using the
          mouse.  The camera moves to the selected boid when the left
          mouse button is single or double clicked.  Additionally the
          boid changes colour to orange when the mouse is over it, this
          assists the user in correctly selecting it.
        - Added smooth camera transitions when the position of the camera
          is changed by moving to another view type or boid.
        - Added three options for numbering the boids: full, mouse-over
          and no numbering.
        - Added four new main menu options for setting the number of
          towers in the landscape: 0, 1, 2, or 4.  The default number of
          towers has now been set to 2.
        - Added option to render the boids as sets of points.
        - Added option to render the landscape as a flat plane.  This
          facility makes the chequered colouring look quite good.
        - Added V-formation behaviour to the boids.  This can be activated
          or deactivated via the main menu and keyboard as with the
          other behaviours.
        - Added an extra menu item, to toggle the display of formation
          calculations as lines in OpenGL.
        - Improved the 'about' dialog box to be a proper dialog box
          complete with icon, coloured hyperlinks and mouse-over effects.
        - Added frame rate regulation, to limit demands on the hardware.
          The starting vertical refresh rate is used as the upper limit
          and the lower limit is set to 20 frames below this.  In
          Windows 9x, the upper frame rate limit is set to 85Hz as default.
        - Fixed a bug that caused the full screen mode not to be displayed
          properly, when the control panel was hidden on changing modes.

v0.7      Start Date: 18/04/2000   Finish Date: 16/07/2000
        - Converted the boids project to use the OpenGL graphics API.
          This sometimes produces just over 12x the performance as compared
          to D3DRM, using the same testing conditions.
        - Converted the internal class structure of the application to
          use the MFC Document View architecture.  This allows a splitter
          window to be used.  A splitter window is needed with OpenGL
          to prevent the MFC controls from flickering when double
          buffering is performed.
        - Added some nice colour interpolation to the tower.
        - Improved the camera view to the first boid.  Giving more
          independence of its orientation.  This makes the view seem
          more stable and also shows the boids turning motion quite well.

v0.54     Start Date: 04/03/2000   Finish Date: 18/04/2000
        - Simplified and optimized the code that generates the landscape,
          this produces a worthy performance increase of up to 33%.

v0.53     Start Date: 31/01/2000   Finish Date: 04/03/2000
        - Implemented a new Windows multitasking system that keeps
          consistent good performance and responsiveness in NT and 9x.
        - Reordered the sequence of the multitasking flags to a safer order.
        - Made the multitasking data members volatile to prevent any errors
          that could be caused by compiler optimizations.
        - Moved the window size member to the windows class from the
          application class.  To improve the object oriented design.
        - Fixed a slight bug which caused a crash in Win98 when sometimes
          resizing the main window.
        - Improved the responsiveness in Win2000 when the window is resized.
        - Improved the responsiveness of the control panel controls when
          redrawn in Windows 2000.
        - Improved the overall update frequency of the control panel's