PixelLight

Free open-source 3D application framework



Roadmap

Although we're already working on PixelLight since 2002, there are still many things to do and even complete sub-projects that we haven't managed to implement yet. Due to the nature of such an engine/framework, it's more like a living creature that evolves during time in order to fulfill new requirements - the world is rotating on and on, and so is PixelLight as well.

On this page you'll can find our roadmap, things the PixelLight team has in mind for the future development. The points are mainly ordered by PixelLight components instead of concrete calendar dates when a point has to be finished - the development of PixelLight is a dynamic process and as such the requirements and priorities evolve together with the project. (... beside to the fact that this kind of software development requires a lot of research and experiments and is in general a creative process instead of assembly line work...)

Web browser plugins

  • Work on the currently experimental web browser plugins to make it possible to run PixelLight applications inside a web browser (combine with PLScript to run complete programs)

PLGui

  • Implement standard widgets
  • Implement more widgets esp. for modern UI types (simple UIs)
  • Create a nice ingame GUI theme

PLRenderer

  • Make DirectX 9 backend usable (really low internal priority)
  • Make DirectX 11 backend usable (really low internal priority)

PLMesh

  • Add OpenCL based skinning implementation for multi-core processor and GPU support

PLScene

  • Visibility system refactoring, especially SQCull is a little bit out of date

PLCompositing

  • Post processing refactoring
    • Make it more universal so it can be applied to meshes as well (for example for refracting windows)
    • Add support for GLSL
  • Make elements like ingame GUI, ingame console and load screens to compositing layers
  • Add tessellation and displacement mapping support
    • Using GL_AMD_vertex_shader_tessellator
    • Using OpenGL 4.0 and DirectX 11 (currently we have no hardware capable of this)
  • Add more shadow mapping techniques, especially for directional light sources (for example "Parallel Split Shadow Maps" "Cascated Shadow Mapping" and/or "Variance Shadow Mapping")

PLPhysics

  • Finish Bullet backend implementation (... has OpenCL support...)

PLEngine

  • Add realtime edit dialogs and features to enable a comfortable scene manipulation during runtime