About this release
This 2023.1 release of LuciadLightspeed brings a structural improvement to the 3D Tiles Engine, also called Meshup. This engine was added with our 2018 product release. After five years, we decided to refresh it to make it leaner and more powerful.
This release also includes important security upgrades and bundles a set of specific enhancements, all based on user feedback. Please also read our advanced notice of the minimum Java version for LuciadLightspeed for next year and beyond.
Benefits of the new features
Faster and more compact 3D Tiles
The 3D Tiling Engine, also referred to as “Meshup”, has been structurally improved.
As a result, tiling your data in the 2023.1 release:
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Is faster
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Uses less memory
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Produces smaller output results, using fewer tiles
This not only improves processing time, but also decreases time spent downloading the data in the client.
The difference is most noticeable in large datasets, as well as datasets with repeating textures.
Articles to get you started
The updated algorithms are enabled by default. If you are new to this topic, the article Processing meshes into OGC 3D Tiles will help you get started.
MBTiles vector decoder
MBTiles is an open format for storing tile sets, based on the SQLite database. MBTiles can contain raster or vector tile sets. LuciadLightspeed already supports MBTiles raster data. This release adds support for MBTiles vector data. Typically, the MBTiles vector format stores data like administrative boundaries, road networks, or points of interest.
Articles to get you started
The MBTiles vector data format description has been added to the article Working with MBTiles data. The section Visualizing vector tiles is your starting point.
In addition, some code snippets are available in the API documentation for TLcdMBTilesModelDecoder.
Minimum supported Java version
For many years, we have fixed the minimum Java version for LuciadLightspeed to 8. With this release, we are giving advanced notification that the LuciadLightspeed 2023.x releases will be the last releases supporting Java 8. For the LuciadLightspeed 2024.0 release, we plan to raise the minimum version to Java 17. We will continue supporing both the Oracle JDK and OpenJDK.
Going forward, we aim to support the latest Java LTS version in our latest release. The minimum JDK/JRE requirements will never change with a minor upgrade, an upgrade from 2022.0 to 2022.1, for instance, or with a patch release of LuciadLightspeed.
This also applies to LuciadFusion.
If you have any further questions or feedback on this topic, please contact the Luciad Product Management team at product.management.luciad.gsp@hexagon.com.
Articles to get you started
The documentation on Hardware and software requirements includes a new section that describes our policy and includes an overview of the supported Java versions for the various LuciadLightspeed product versions.
Security upgrades
This 2023.1 release of LuciadLightspeed includes many security upgrades. The release notes provide full detail on the upgraded, removed, and added dependencies. Please look for "security updates" in the upgrade considerations.
Product license versioning
Starting from the 2031.1 release, you only need a new product license for a major LuciadLightspeed product version.
More specifically, for version 2022.0 and 2022.1, you still need separate licenses. If you use your license file for LuciadLightspeed version 2023.0 with LuciadLightspeed version 2023.1, it will work. Of course, both product versions must have matching configurations, with an equivalent product name, product tier and options list.
Other improvements
- DAFIF Path Point record support
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DAFIF Path Point records are now supported. These records are used to store the path to be followed to land on the runway. In the past, a radar (ILS) was used for the final part of the approach before landing on the runway. GPS-based systems rely on a lateral and vertical path that needs to be followed, which is the information stored in Path Point records.
- Support for Asterix Category 34
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This release adds support for radar status messages encoded as Asterix Category 34. This category and its description have been added to the Overview of the ASTERIX specifications for the supported categories in the product documentation.
- AutoCAD DWG 2018 support
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LuciadLightspeed now supports DWG 2018 files.
- SLD road styling documentation
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The documentation section on OGC SLD/SE styling has been extended with a new example for styling road data. See the article How to style roads and SLD road styling for an illustration.
Figure 3. Road styling with world-sized road widths and labels inside the roads.