PCZSM its still in use?

[Wolfmanfx]

Recently i worked a bit through the patch tracker and encountered a bug related to this scene-manager. Afaik nobody from team is maintaining it actively and i am not sure if the original author (chaster) is still using it (long time since he did the last visit - 2 years ago).
I also think when we start with OGRE 2.0 we should remove it from the 2.0 branch so it will still there inside the 1.9 branch.

what do you think?

[spacegaier]

While we are on that: What is with that?

https://bitbucket.org/sinbad/ogre/src/3 ... at=default

Can that also be removed from core to addons?

[Kojack]

EXRCodec isn't built by default, and apparently FreeImage contains EXR support. The codec might have been added back when we used Devil.
I'd say we should do some testing to make sure there's not a problem with the FreeImage version (like how ogre needs it's own dds plugin because freeimage always decompresses DXT textures), then we can probably drop the codec plugin altogether.


Some of my students tried to use the PCZSM a few months ago, but even simple tests just crashed. They ended up writing their own portal system instead. I haven't had time to sit down and play with it to see if they were using it wrong or it broken on latest ogre.

[sparkprime]

Was it ever good enough for widespread use? In principle it's a great thing to have, if it is simple enough, general enough, fast enough, etc.

[TheSHEEEP]

I don't think a PCZSM can ever be truly simple
If it works, we should keep it.
This doesn't seem to be the case, so someone should have a look what it would take to fix it. If it would take too long, then I'd also vote for removal.

Since the SceneManager is going to get a face lift for 2.0 anyway, we should focus on the best/most used SceneManager-Plugins. And I guess that those are Octree and BSP.

[bstone]

I think PCZSM is actually more useful compared to BSP since it's easier to have a scene created with PCZSM and it's more flexible in general.

[bstone]

Was it ever good enough for widespread use? In principle it's a great thing to have, if it is simple enough, general enough, fast enough, etc.

The guys who work on TrackVerse could probably tell you more about whether it's simple, general, and fast enough. From what I've seen they clearly mastered the beast. See the TrackVerse thread in the Showcase forum.

[sparkprime]

I would certainly rather have octree zones separated by portals than the BSP scene manager.

[noorus]

I do use PCZSM, and althought my project hasn't used all the bells and whistles of it yet, so far PCZSM has worked just fine for me. There's the PCZSM sample app as well, which shows that it's a solid SM.

Some of my students tried to use the PCZSM a few months ago, but even simple tests just crashed. They ended up writing their own portal system instead. I haven't had time to sit down and play with it to see if they were using it wrong or it broken on latest ogre.

I'd say that your students were doing something wrong, or more likely leaving something out.
PCZSM isn't the most user-friendly beast - if you forget to do something that's required, or if your portals point the wrong way or whatever, the result is usually a cryptic crash, rather than a nicely formatted error message. But if you use it correctly, it works.

In my opinion, PCZSM truly deserves maintenance and updates, while the BSP should be left in the 1990's where it belongs. PCZSM is the most versatile scene manager out-of-the-box, and well suited for the current trend of games with seamless transitions from large outdoor areas to large indoor areas. Proper documentation wouldn't hurt either.
If there was an initiative to update and document PCZSM, I'd do my best to help.

Both the octree and BSP managers pale in comparison to the power of PCZSM. Those two just happen to be easier to get started with, so that's where people go. PCZSM hasn't got nearly as much recognition and attention as it should have.

It's also worth noting that Ogitor has a working plugin for creating and editing PCZSM portals.