Babylon.js/dist/preview release/what's new.md

4.1.0

Major updates

• WIP: Node Material (NEED DOC OR SAMPLES) (Deltakosh)
• WIP: Node material editor (NEED OR AND VIDEOS) (Deltakosh / TrevorDev)
• WIP: WebGPU support (NEED DOC OR SAMPLES) (Sebavan)
• .basis texture file format support Doc (TrevorDev)
• WIP: Recast navigation mesh and crowd of moving agents Demo (CedricGuillemet)
• Classes decoupling ending up with smaller bundle sizes Blog (Deltakosh)
• Babylon.js controls Doc (Sebavan / Deltakosh)
• WebXR updates:
  • WebXR updated to spec as of July 10th (TrevorDev)
  • WebXR webVR parity helpers (Vive, WMR, Oculus Rift) (TrevorDev)

Updates

General

• Added support for dual shock gamepads (Deltakosh)
• Support Vive Focus 3Dof controller (TrevorDev)
• Planar positioning support for GizmoManager (Balupg)
• Individual gizmos can now be enabled/disabled (Balupg)
• Unify preparation of instance attributes. Added MaterialHelper.PushAttributesForInstances (MarkusBillharz)
• Added support for PBR irradiance map
• Ability to set render camera on utility layer instead of using the latest active camera (TrevorDev)
• Move normalizeToUnitCube to transformNode instead of abstract mesh and add predicate to exclude sub objects when scaling (TrevorDev)
• Method to check if device orientation is available (TrevorDev)
• Added support for sound sprites Doc (Deltakosh)
• Display Oculus Quest controller when using a Quest in WebVR (TrevorDev)
• Added startAndReleaseDragOnPointerEvents property to pointerDragBehavior which can be set to false for custom drag triggering (TrevorDev)
• Effect renderer to render one or multiple shader effects to a texture (TrevorDev)
• Added url parameters to web request modifiers (PierreLeBlond)
• Added VRExperienceHelper.exitVROnDoubleTap (Deltakosh)
• Added Scene.getTextureByUniqueID (aWeirdo)
• Added optional parameter to use Euler angles in planeRotationGizmo (CedricGuillemet)

Engine

• Morph targets now can morph UV channel as well (Deltakosh)
• Added MorphTarget support to the DepthRenderer, GeometryBufferRenderer and OutlineRenderer (MarkusBillharz)
• Added preprocessors for shaders to improve how shaders are compiled for WebGL1/2 or WebGPU (Deltakosh)
• Added enterPointerlock and exitPointerlock (Separated from enterFullscreen) (aWeirdo)

Inspector

• Added support for Euler edition only for angles (can be turned off in the new inspector settings) (Deltakosh)
• Added an option to ignore backfaces for picking (can be turned on and off in the new inspector settings) (Deltakosh)
• Added support for ShadowGenerator (Deltakosh)
• Added support for scene normalization (Deltakosh)
• Added support for morph targets (Deltakosh)
• Added context menu to add SSAORenderingPipeline and SSAO2RenderingPipeline (Deltakosh)
• Added support for texture creation and assignments per material (Deltakosh)
• Added support for occlusion properties (Deltakosh)
• Texture channels are now displayed in grayscale (Deltakosh)
• Ambiant and metallic maps are displayed correctly on PBR material even when using ORM packed texture (Deltakosh)
• Added support for inspectable strings (Deltakosh)

Tools

• Added Tools.CreateScreenshotAsync and Tools.CreateScreenshotUsingRenderTargetAsync (mehmetoguzderin)
• Added Color3.toHSV(), Color3.toHSVToRef() and Color3.HSVtoRGBToRef() (Deltakosh)
• Added ShadowGenerator.onAfterShadowMapRenderObservable and ShadowGenerator.onAfterShadowMapMeshRenderObservable (Deltakosh)
• Added support for side by side and top bottom images in the PhotoDome (Deltakosh)
• Added playground ts-local (TypeScript support for local playground) (pjoe)

Meshes

• Added new CreateTiledPlane and CreateTiledBox (JohnK)
• Added absolute scaling and rotation getters (haroldma)
• Added BILLBOARDMODE_USE_POSITION flag to billboards allowing use of camera positioning instead of orientation for mesh rotation (delaneyj)

Physics

• Update Ammo.js library to support global collision contact callbacks (MackeyK24)
• Update Ammo.js library to allow native capsule shape impostors (MackeyK24)
• Update Ammo.js library to allow your own broadphase overlapping pair cache (MackeyK24)
• Update Ammo.js library and AmmoJS plugin to support ellipsoid (CedricGuillemet)

Loaders

• Added support for non-float accessors in animation data for glTF loader. (bghgary)
• Support loading cube data in the .basis loader (TrevorDev)
• Load glTF extras into BJS metadata (pjoe)

Materials

• Added ShaderMaterial.setColor4Array (JonathanTron)
• Added ShaderMaterial.setArray4 (JonathanTron)

ScreenshotTools

• Added interface for argument size of screenshot methods (Dok11)
• Implementation usage of precision in combination height and width params (Dok11)

Sounds

• Added ISoundOptions.skipCodecCheck to make Sound more flexible with URLs (nbduke)

Ray

• Added Ray.intersectsAxis to translate screen to axis coordinates without checking collisions (horusscope)

GUI

• Added disableMobilePrompt option to InputText for OculusQuest(and other android base VR devices) (shinyoshiaki)
• Added Button.delegatePickingToChildren to let buttons delegate hit testing to embedded controls (Deltakosh)

Documentation

• Added a note on shallow bounding of getBoundingInfo (tibotiber)

Bug fixes

• Fixed Textblock line spacing evaluation when linespacing > 0 (Deltakosh)
• Fixed Xbox One gamepad controller button schemes (MackeyK24)
• Added support for AnimationGroup serialization (Drigax)
• Removing assetContainer from scene will also remove gui layers (TrevorDev)
• A scene's input manager not adding key listeners when the canvas is already focused (Poolminer)
• Runtime animation goToFrame when going back in time now correctly triggers future events when reached (zakhenry)
• Fixed bug in Ray.intersectsTriangle where the barycentric coordinates bu and bv being returned is actually bv and bw. (bghgary)
• Do not call onError when creating a texture when falling back to another loader (TrevorDev)
• Context loss should not cause PBR materials to render black or instances to stop rendering (TrevorDev)
• Only cast pointer ray input when pointer is locked in webVR (TrevorDev)
• Avoid using default utility layer in gizmo manager to support multiple scenes (TrevorDev)
• Fix bug when adding and removing observers in quick succession (sable)
• Cannon and Ammo forceUpdate will no longer cause an unexpected exception (TrevorDev)
• Loading the same multi-material twice and disposing one should not impact the other (TrevorDev)
• GLTF exporter should no longer duplicate exported texture data (Drigax)
• Avoid exception when disposing of Ammo cloth physics (TrevorDev)
• Make planeDragGizmo usable on its own (TrevorDev)
• Fix useObjectOrienationForDragging for pointerDragBehavior when using a single axis drag (TrevorDev)
• Fix VR button not positioning correctly in canvas (haroldma)
• Fix check for material needing alpha blending in OutlineRenderer (mkmc)

Breaking changes

• Setting mesh.scaling to a new vector will no longer automatically call forceUpdate (this should be done manually when needed) (TrevorDev)
• Tools.ExtractMinAndMaxIndexed and Tools.ExtractMinAndMax are now ambiant functions (available on BABYLON.extractMinAndMaxIndexed and BABYLON.extractMinAndMax) (Deltakosh)
• Tools.QueueNewFrame was removed in favor of Engine.QueueNewFrame (Deltakosh)