We just released Irrlicht version 1.7. New features are:

• Added Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
• Added support for geometry shaders (OpenGL)
• Addes possibility to access texture mipmaps and to provide custom mipmaps
• Ogre .mesh format animations now supported, and Ogre 32bit indices as well
• NPK (Nebula device archive) support added
• New VertexManipulator interface for simple creation of vertex manipulation algorithms
• Added Separate TextureWrap modes for U and V coordinates and the option to mirror wrap
• Added Bzip2 and LZMA support and AES encryption
• Added options to 2D drawing like thickness, anti-aliasing and filtering.
• VBO Support for skydomes and similar
• Support for external windows in Mac OS X
• Lots of other improvements and bug fixes

We just released Irrlicht version 1.6.1. This version contains a lot of bugfixes and corrections, like improvements with the GUI Environment, Lightmap rendering and DMF loading, and keyboard mapping under Linux.

On a related note, a new version of CopperCube has been released today as well, which now supports exporting scenes to .irr files. It also features a special property window to edit Irrlicht scene node properties and materials and can be used as world editor for Irrlicht.

We just released an update to the 1.5 branch of the Irrlicht engine, version 1.5.2. It contains several updates and bugfixes, related to terrain smoothing, joystick support, OS/XCode updates and MS3D loader fixes. Happy downloading!

We just released Irrlicht version 1.6. As always, this version contains a lot of bugfixes and corrections, but also some new features:

• New mesh and image loaders (.PLY mesh loader, .RGB, .RGBA, .SGI, .INT, and .INTA textures)
• New Material properties ColorMask, Mipmap LOD, Depth test function, AlphaToCoverage, selective Anti-Aliasing
• New console device and possibility to create different devices from the same library
• OverrideMaterial for changing material properties globally
• New Filesystem with tighter integration of different archive types
• Improved Software rendering engine

We are happy to announce that we just released Irrlicht version 1.5.1. This version contains a lot of bugfixes and corrections, but also some few new features:

• Support for Range Fog in OpenGL
• Improved X11 support
• Better .x, STL and Collada file loading
• 32bit indices for large meshes
• Terrain rendering using hw buffers
• A lot of bug fixes and corrections

We have agin winners of our Screenshot of the Month contest. This time for June and July 2009. The winners are godfather86 with Heaven City in June and wing64 with gothic in July. Both of you made an awesome job, and wing64 seems to already have a fixed place in the top three each month! Congratulations to the two winners and of course also the rest of the participants. You can check the submissions at the forum and the gallery. As always you can submit pics for the August contest for some more days.

In order to give this news update a little more content I wanted to remind of an interesting add-on which was posted some time ago on the Code Snippets forum. It perfectly fits into the current hype of stereoscopy. Luke made this post which uses some useful features from the upcoming Irrlicht 1.6 release to create an anaglyph rendering. Really fun to play with it, and easy to integrate with your next project!

Okay, this took longer than anticipated. But here are some more winners. First those of the Screenshot of the Month contest for April and May 2009. These are three in total, because the voting in May resulted in two winners for that month: wing64 with God Tower in April and wing64 with Middle East and xhrit with Sol, from Terra in May. Congrats to both of you. As always, you can find the screenshot and all other contestants in the forum and the gallery. And don't forget to submit your pics for the June contest, there are only a few days left for submitting on the forum.

An even more important news, also some days old already: We have two new dev team members. Please welcome BlindSide and CuteAlien. You should know both from many submissions and activity on the forum, on IRC, and everywhere you can meet Irrlicht users. It's really cool to have you in the team!

A more recent news: Irrlicht was chosen as an approved project of the BeagleBoard Sponsored Projects Program. This means that we got a BeagleBoard for further development of the OpenGL-ES drivers. I already have the board here, trying to set everything up and get Irrlicht running. I'll post some pics once I have it rendering. Thanks a lot for this grant.

With some delay we can proudly announce the first winner of the Screenshot of the Month contest for March 2009. It's Suvi with Gekkeiju Online. You can find the screenshot and all other contestants in the forum thread. I'll update the gallery next.

Another important thing. The SourceForge Community Awards 2009 are nominating again. Please vote for Irrlicht..

One of our latest Irrlicht features, the OpenGL-ES 1.x driver, has made some important advances. The code allows for iPhone development, cell phone apps, and handheld consoles. Read the latest success stories for the Pandora console - Irrlicht is the first reportedly working 3D engine for the Pandora and the OMAP processor series.
More winners to come in the next days ;-)

Update from Google: We didn't make it into this year's Google Summer of Code. What a pity. Let's hope for next year :-)

This year, Irrlicht applied for participation in Google Summer of Code^(tm). In case we are elected by Google, we will host some Irrlicht related development projects, e.g. those listed on our Ideas list. Students who want to work on one of those projects have to apply as well, starting on March 23rd until April 3rd at Google Summer of Code 2009 site. In case of successful finalization of the project, the student is paid $4500 from Google for about 3 month of work - much more than I was paid as a student :-).

In case you're interested in joining this program, just contact us immediately, and discuss issues in the forum.

The winners of the Irrlicht In Motion competition are found.

1. randommesh: Flocking boids
2. omaremad: Coin jump
3. strong99: The Island
4. blindside: Against the tide
5. fmx: Miku in Motion
6. zillion42: irrSolarSystem
7. Ion Dune: WarEngine RTS
8. night_hawk: Power Pong
9. 3dmodelerman: Demo
10. eye776: Platform

CONGRATULATIONS!
Thanks to all participants! It was really much fun to play around with your submissions.

We are happy to announce that we just released Irrlicht version 1.5. This version contains a lot of new features, here are some few highlights:

• Vertex Buffer Objects, i.e. storing meshes on the GPU
• Joystick support on all platforms
• Added support for collada 1.4 and LWO files
• 32bit indices for large meshes
• Added an .obj writer
• Improved software rasterizer (burning video)
• Improvements for dynamic lights, particle systems, LMTS, PNG and PCX loading and writing
• Added FSAA for OpenGL
• OGRE .mesh loader improvements
• Nicer and faster terrain rendering
• Volume lights
• Various improvements for the WindowsCE port
• Shared depth buffers for RTT in D3D
• Added a font creation tool for Linux