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Delta3d is an
open source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
gaming/simulation engine
API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...
. Delta3d is managed and supported by Caper Holdings LLC. Previously the Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (MOVES) Institute at the
Naval Postgraduate School Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a Naval command with a graduate university mission, operated by the United States Navy and located in Monterey, California. The NPS mission is to provide "defense-focused graduate education, including clas ...
in Monterey, California managed and supported delta3d. Alion Science has also been a major contributor to enhancements and feature
,
Delta3d is released under the GNU LGPL-2.1-or-later. The external
modules Module, modular and modularity may refer to the concept of modularity. They may also refer to: Computer science and engineering * Modular design, the engineering discipline of designing complex devices using separately designed sub-components ...
have their own licensing. Some modules, such as Qt, require the user to download and install separately for use with Delta3d. Delta3d is a widely used, community-supported, open-source game and simulation engine. delta3d is appropriate for a wide variety of uses including training, education, visualization, and entertainment. Delta3d is unique, because it offers features specifically suited to the Modeling, Simulation and DoD communities, such as the High Level Architecture (HLA), After Action Review (AAR), large scale terrain support, and SCORM Learning Management System (LMS) integration.


The Delta3d engine

Delta3d is an open source engine which can be used for games, simulations, or other graphical applications. Its modular design integrates other well-known
Open Source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
projects such as Open Scene Graph,
Open Dynamics Engine The Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) is a physics engine written in C/C++. Its two main components are a rigid body dynamics simulation engine and a collision detection engine. It is free software licensed both under the BSD license and the LGPL. OD ...
, Character Animation Library (CAL3D), and
OpenAL OpenAL (Open Audio Library) is a cross-platform audio application programming interface (API). It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three-dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those o ...
. Rather than bury the underlying modules, Delta3D integrates them together in an easy-to-use Application programming interface (
API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...
) -- always allowing access to the important underlying components. This provides a high-level API, while still allowing the end user the option of having low-level functionality. The Delta3D engine renders using the Open Graphics Library (OpenGL) that imports a whole list of diverse
file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...
s ( .flt, .3ds, .obj, even more so). For a full list of features, please see the Delta3d Feature List pag
here


Supported platforms

Delta3d is developed and tested on
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
using
Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms ...
,
OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
using
Clang Clang () is a compiler front end for the programming languages C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, and the software frameworks OpenMP, OpenCL, RenderScript, CUDA, SYCL, and HIP. It acts as a drop-in replacement for the GNU Compiler ...
, as well as
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
using GCC. All the underlying dependencies are cross-platform as well, so just about any platform should be compatible with a few minor modifications to the source.


Delta3d-Extras

Delta3d-Extras is a project housed on
SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...
which contains numerous projects related to the Delta3d Engine. Delta3d-Extras is not necessarily developed or maintained by the delta3d Development Team. However it is available for the community to share their delta3d-related projects with the world.


Simulation Core

Simulation Core, commonly referred to as SimCore, is a "collaborative" implementation of delta3d functionality — providing the "base" capabilities for an
MMORPG A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...
application using delta3d. SimCore is developed primarily by Alion Science and Technology. The first version of SimCore was developed as part of the Deployable Virtual Training Environment (DVTE) project for USMC which started in 2006. Although Alion is still the primary developer of SimCore, it is now used by a number of other companies and organizations across the
Modeling A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the Plan_(drawing), plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French language, French and Italian language, Italian ult ...
and Simulation (M&S) community. In order to build and "run" SimCore many additional libraries are required, including additions to the core Delta3d build. Physics — special effects and
particle system A particle system is a technique in game physics, motion graphics, and computer graphics that uses many minute sprites, 3D models, or other graphic objects to simulate certain kinds of "fuzzy" phenomena, which are otherwise very hard to rep ...
capabilities. A "Physics Abstraction Layer" (PAL), is used to provide a standard API to various physics libraries.


Libraries

Several open-source products are part of the Delta3d package. One can build them or use the provided binaries/libraries to build and run Delta3d based applications on one's own computer system. The current version of a product may not be compatible with delta3d. *
Boost Boost, boosted or boosting may refer to: Science, technology and mathematics * Boost, positive manifold pressure in turbocharged engines * Boost (C++ libraries), a set of free peer-reviewed portable C++ libraries * Boost (material), a material b ...
*
Bullet A bullet is a kinetic projectile, a component of firearm ammunition that is shot from a gun barrel. They are made of a variety of materials, such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax; and are made in various shapes and constru ...
* Cal3D *
CEGUI Crazy Eddie's GUI (CEGUI) is a graphical user interface (GUI) library for the programming language C++. It was designed for the needs of video games, but is usable for non-game tasks, such as applications and tools. It is designed for user flexi ...
*
CppUnit CppUnit is a unit testing framework module for the C++ programming language. It allows unit-testing of C sources as well as C++ with minimal source modification. It was started around 2000 by Michael Feathers as a C++ port of JUnit for Windows a ...
*
expat An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person who resides outside their native country. The term often refers to a professional, skilled worker, or student from an affluent country. However, it may also refer to retirees, artists and ...
(optional) * FreeType
Game Networking Engine
(GNE) *
GDAL The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a computer software library for reading and writing raster and vector geospatial data formats (e.g. shapefile), and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the ...

HawkNL
*
libpng libpng is the official Portable Network Graphics (PNG) reference library (originally called pnglib). It is a platform-independent library that contains C functions for handling PNG images. It supports almost all of PNG's features, is extensible, ...
*
OpenAL OpenAL (Open Audio Library) is a cross-platform audio application programming interface (API). It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three-dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those o ...
Utility Toolkit (ALUT) *Open
Distributed Interactive Simulation Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) is an IEEE standard for conducting real-time platform-level wargaming across multiple host computers and is used worldwide, especially by military organizations but also by other agencies such as those inv ...
(DIS) *
Open Dynamics Engine The Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) is a physics engine written in C/C++. Its two main components are a rigid body dynamics simulation engine and a collision detection engine. It is free software licensed both under the BSD license and the LGPL. OD ...
(ODE) *
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...
*
OpenSceneGraph OpenSceneGraph is an open-source 3D graphics application programming interface (library or framework), used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, computer games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling. Th ...
(OSG) *Physics Abstraction Layer (PAL) *PLIB *Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) * Xerces *
Zlib zlib ( or "zeta-lib", ) is a software library used for data compression as well as a data format. zlib was written by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler and is an abstraction of the DEFLATE compression algorithm used in their gzip file compre ...


References


Further reading

* IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
Projects in VR: the Delta3D open source game engine
* Halldale Media Ltd: Published in MS&T Magazine Issue 5/2009
The Delta3D Game Engine is Reaching Maturity
(Broken Link on Sep 2019)


External links

* *
Archive of Official website

Archive of Caper Holdings LLC

MOVES institute

Physics Abstraction Layer (PAL)
{{DEFAULTSORT:delta3d Free game engines Game engines for Linux Python (programming language)-scriptable game engines