News for September 2005

L3DT 2.3b will be entering beta-testing next week, with a full public release expected in late September.

The main improvements over L3DT 2.3a will be:

• The ability to generate and combine alpha images for texture splatting.
• Support for 16-bit PNG image exports (heightfield only).
• A new 'export map' wizard, with options for re-sizing maps and splitting maps into tiles.
• Full native support of Terragen's TER format in mosaic (tiled) heightmaps.
• Shadow anti-aliasing in the light mapping calculation.
• Support for larger texture maps (now up to 524,288 × 524,288 pixels).
• Numerous bug-fixes.

L3DT 2.3b will most likely be forked into two versions, nominally entitled 'baseline' and 'professional'. They will both be free of charge, but 'professional' will contain a few more advanced features, and will require registration. More details will follow at a later date.