LuciadCPillar Release notes

Fixed an issue where min/max altitude values in some tactical graphics labels were fetched from the 'Additional Information' modifier instead of from the 'Altitude/Depth' modifier.

Affected symbols:

• libcurl: updated to version 8.19.0

It is now possible to configure the icon type of the "Antitank Obstacles, Tetrahedrons, Dragon's Teeth and Other Similar Obstacles" symbols in APP-6A and APP-6B. These symbols can have different icons depending on their type: "Fixed And Prefabricated", "Movable" or "Movable And Prefabricated". Unfortunately the APP-6A and APP-6B specifications do not indicate how this obstacle type should be encoded in the symbol.

The approach taken here is similar to other Luciad products: the obstacle type is encoded in the TypeLabel text modifier of the symbol. The value should either be one of the following values (casing is not important):

Resolved an issue where the value of the 'Additional Information' modifier was used instead of the 'Width' modifier in the labels of following symbols:

• The outline of the area is now drawn with a solid stroke instead of a dashed stroke
• The hostile indicator ("ENY") is now rendered in the outline stroke, when the symbol's affiliation is set to 'Hostile'

The main geometry type of a number of APP-6A/B "Minefield" symbols has been changed. These symbols were modeled as polygons, which required the symbol to have at least 3 anchor points to define the symbol's shape. To better align these symbols with the NVG geometry bindings specification, the geometry has now been changed to a point, which requires only a single anchor point to define the symbol's shape. The following symbols are affected by this change:

• 2.X.2.2.1.6.1 "Planned Minefield"
• 2.X.2.2.1.6.2 "Completed Minefield"
• 2.X.2.2.1.6.5 "Antitank (AT) Minefield"
• 2.X.2.2.1.6.6 "Scatterable Mines"
• 2.X.2.2.1.6.7 "Antipersonnel (AP) Minefield Reinforced With Scatterable With Self-Destruct Date-Time-Group"
• 2.X.2.2.1.6.8 "Scatterable Minefield (Antitank Mines) With Self-Destruct Date-Time-Group"
• 2.X.2.2.1.7 "Executed Volcano Minefield"

• The class RectangleRectangleRectangle had a few properties with internal visibility where a public visibility was intended.
• The class LicenseExceptionLicenseExceptionLicenseException now has public visibility. It did wrongly have the default C# internal visibility.

• libpng: updated to version 1.6.55

LuciadCPillar transitioned from OpenGL to WebGPU for graphics rendering. Because of this transition, Qt applications integrating LuciadCPillar now require a version of Qt greater than or equal to 6.8 (LTS). From this version on, Qt has sufficient support for the Vulkan graphics API, which is used as a backend for WebGPU.

The LuciadCPillar samples have been updated to use Qt version 6.8 (LTS). See the installation instructions and requirements page for details. Note that the VulkanSDK 1.4.321.1 also needs to be installed on your system to compile the samples.

The change to WebGPU and the upgrade to Qt 6.8 have no effect on the use of (most of) the LuciadCPillar API itself, but it requires changes to the Qt integration code. If you have an application that uses Qt, you will need to copy the integration code from the LuciadCPillar samples to your own code base again. Additionally, you will need to make a few modifications:

• The QQuickMapObject class has been renamed to QQuickMapItem.
• The QMapWidget class has been removed and replaced by the new QMapWindow class. Note that the new class is not a QWidget anymore. You can adapt it to a QWidget using the QWidget::createWindowContainer function. This is demonstrated in the Qt Widgets sample.

• The Map::Renderer::destroy function has been replaced by the Map::destroyRendererMap::destroyRendererMap::destroyRenderer function.
• The Map::createRendererMap::createRendererMap::createRenderer function was added. This function is used to create a Map::RendererMap::RendererMap::Renderer instead of creating it implicitly using Map::getRenderer (in older versions). This new function takes a WebGpuContextWebGpuContextWebGpuContext as input, which is used to pass WebGPU information to the new renderer.
• The Map::getRenderer function has been removed from the API. Users of Map::RendererMap::RendererMap::Renderer (UI integration code for example) are now expected to keep a reference to the renderer that was created using Map::createRendererMap::createRendererMap::createRenderer.

• Blending of (semi-)transparent colors now happens in linear color space whereas it happened in gamma color space (sRGB) in previous versions. This change resolves blending artifacts, but it can make blended colors slightly brighter. This is especially noticeable when LuciadCPillar renders thin lines or thin text.
  
• Texture sampling now happens in linear color space whereas it happened in gamma color space (sRGB) in previous versions. Similarly to blending, this change resolves minor artifacts, but it might look slightly different from before.
  

• GDAL: updated to version 3.10.3+1
• PROJ: updated to version 9.6.0
• libwebp: updated to version 1.5.0
• libjpeg: updated to version 9f
• json-c: updated to version 0.18
• expected-lite: version 0.9.0
• eigen: version 3.4.1
• abseil: version 20240722.0
• protobuf: version 5.27.0
• glu: version 1.3+7

• expat: version 2.7.1
• xerces-c: version 3.3.0

• abseil
• directx-shader-compiler
• directx-headers
• jsoncpp
• spirv-headers
• spirv-tools
• vulkan-headers
• vulkan-loader

• OpenGL
• GLAD

• openssl: updated to version 3.4.4