CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
30 January 2008
PRoduct News
Tech Soft 3D Releases HOOPS v16.0
Tech Soft 3D (TS3D), a leading provider of core graphics components for the engineering and design software industries, announced the availability of HOOPS version 16.0, which delivers Direct3D support and eye-popping performance.
HOOPS is a 2D/3D development platform for creating or enhancing professional-grade applications. Its rich set of application programming interfaces (APIs) enables developers to work from a very high level, and dramatically jump-starting software application development. It also enables programming teams to produce more competitive applications and to accelerate project delivery, while reducing total research and development costs.
"DirectX is raising the bar for experience and productivity by providing increased performance and visual quality with lower support costs on consumer, business and workstation-class graphics hardware," said Simon Floyd, Microsoft's worldwide industry technology strategist for product lifecycle Management. "The new Direct3D-driver in HOOPS offers a high-level programming approach that helps computer-aided design software developers rapidly migrate their applications and benefit from the advantages in DirectX and Windows Vista."
Learn more about HOOPS, Direct3D and Vista at the upcoming Microsoft/Tech Soft 3D web cast: http://www.techsoft3d.com/products/hoopsvista.html
Brian Harrison, Director of SolidWorks Labs, said his company derives large benefits from HOOPS. "We've always been pleased with the value HOOPS provides as a graphics foundation and the responsiveness of the TS3D team," Harrison said. "I was delighted to find that a simple switch to HOOPS v16.0 gave our eDrawings application a startling 6x performance gain."
Ron Fritz, TS3D's managing partner, said HOOPS v16 is a breakthrough release. "It's clear that Direct3D is a powerful force in the graphics community, and now applications using HOOPS can seamlessly handle both Direct3D and OpenGL," said Fritz. "Software applications built only to drive OpenGL should seriously look at migrating to version 16.0 in order to leverage Direct3D and its enhanced performance."
A video highligting what's new in HOOPS v16 (including demonstrations) can be found here: http://developer.techsoft3d.com/video/HOOPS_R16_Review.html
Highlights of HOOPS 16.0 include:
-- DirectX9 Shader-Based Driver: With Vista, a shader-based approach using DirectX9 has proven to be the optimal path for rendering. HOOPS' latest driver gives applications full access to the graphics power of Vista. The shader-based approach enables compelling new visualization capabilities, such as support for reflection planes and dynamic shadow maps.
-- Major Performance Boost: With both our DirectX and OpenGL drivers, HOOPS-based application developers will also see major performance gains.
-- Extended C# Support: As the community of C# developers continually grows, TS3D's HOOPS v. 16.0 actively extends these new bindings to enable even more rapid application development.
-- DGN Support: Access to DGN data is now available either directly into HOOPS-based applications through our integration with the Open Design Alliance's DGNDirect libraries or via HSF with our new Microstation HSF Export plug-in.
-- Animation Support Within 3D PDF: Our U3D Export has been extended to provide support for animations. This allows developers to easily export 3D PDF documents which include sophisticated animations.
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