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L3DT version 2.6 beta releaseHi Everyone, The beta release of L3DT version 2.6 is now available for download, in both Standard and Professional flavours. The expected release date for the final build of L3DT version 2.6 is nominally mid-September. If you're not sure how to download updates, please see the updates FAQ. ChangesThe main changes from the previous stable release (v2.5c) are listed on the development plan, but I've included some of the highlights below: MultithreadingThere have been major changes to the multi-threaded calculations to fix stability issues with mosaic-map builds. I've now logged hundreds of hours of testing of L3DT's multi-threaded mosaic-map calculations on a quad-core Intel Q6600, and I'm completely satisfied that the cache bugs have all been fixed. For multi-core performance benchmarks, please see this page. TGEA supportAll versions of L3DT now include the Atlas2 exporter plugin, which supports both blended and unique textured Atlas generation. The exporter is now accessible using the 'Atlas' button on the toolbar. Please refer to the TGEA tutorial for more info.
Blended Atlas terrain can't be made in the Standard Edition at present, because this edition doesn't support RGBA alpha maps. This may be changed in the future.
Spring supportThere are lots of new goodies for Spring mappers in the new Professional Edition, including:
Vista supportThe required changes have been made to allow L3DT to run properly under Vista's User Access Control (UAC) system, including moving volatile settings from protected folders and registry keys to non-protected ones (i.e. HKLM→HKCU, PROGRAMFILES→APPDATA, etc.) Extensive testing has been performed under 32- and 64-bit versions of Vista Business and Enterprise, and no further issues were identified. Linux supportChanges have also been made to improve support for L3DT in Linux using the WINE compatibility layer, including the disabling by default of a plugin that is not available in non-NT operating systems (ZeoPerfMonNT). I and others have successfully installed and run L3DT Standard and Professional in Ubuntu 8.04. However, some users have reported (easily fixable) problems with file paths under Ubuntu 8.04 and Slackware 12.1, as as seen in this forum thread. For more information, please refer to the L3DT in Linux page. Map editing
User interface
Other changesPlease refer to the development plan for the full list of changes. Testing and feedbackTo the best of my knowledge and testing, this beta release is more stable, usable and bug-free than the previous stable release of L3DT 2.5c. However, I can't be sure of that until more users have downloaded it and tried it out. Thus, I would greatly appreciate it if you would do so, and report any bugs that you find. I would also appreciate any feedback that you'd care to give, either good or bad. Best regards, Aaron. Except where otherwise noted, content on this wiki is licensed under the following license:CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
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