Daylon Leveller(tm) 2.0 Software Product Demonstration
Last updated: April 4, 2001
Copyright 1999-2001 Daylon Graphics Ltd.
Web site: http://www.daylongraphics.com/

________________________________________________________

Welcome to the demonstration version of Daylon Leveller, 
the powerful but easy-to-use terrain/heightfield 
editor from Daylon Graphics. Leveller is great for:

  - Visualizing and editing digital terrain, 
    including flight visualization/animation, 
    and 3D cartography.

  - Exploring the use of heightfields for 
    modeling 3D objects besides terrain, such 
    as bump patterns, text carvings, material spills,
    light fixture encasings, spacecraft hulls, 
    material deposits, cushions, flags, paper, 
    signage, below-ground swimming pools, etc.

  - Quickly developing starting-point meshes of objects 
    that are difficult and/or time-consuming to otherwise 
    model, such as rocks, asteroids, caves, tree trunks, etc.


To save download time, The OpenGL libraries are 
not included. If you get error messages relating 
to these files when starting Leveller, please 
vist our website for information on obtaining 
these files.

The DOCS\LEGAL folder contains legal/warranty notices 
pertaining to this distribution. In addition, 
the Leveller demonstration materials (this file 
included) may not be redistributed by third parties 
without the express permission of Daylon Graphics Ltd.

________________________________________________________

We thank you for giving Leveller a try and 
hope that it meets your requirements. If you 
are interested in licencing Leveller, please visit 
http://www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller/licence.htm 
for more information.

The licenced version of Leveller does everything
the demonstration does plus the following:

  - Full documentation included.
  - Documents can be saved.
  - Raytracer supports unlimited scene pane sizes.
  - Unlimited heightfield size.
  - Unlimited number of plug-ins can be used.
  - 16/24/32-bit TGA bitmaps can be imported.
  - Custom colormaps are loaded.
  - Defloating selections can be done with the
      Subtract, Union, Intersect, etc. styles.
  - Unlimited number of reference shapes can be 
      attached to a view.
  - Unlimited heightfield size for RIB export.
  - Elevate filter included.
  - Slide filter included.
  - Window Properties dialog included.
  - The entire heightfield can be rotated.
  - Undo buffer can be selectively paged to disk.
  - Work area can be set, saving memory.
  - Overview map can be exported to a bitmap file.
  - Scene view can be exported to a bitmap file.
  - Flight recordings can be saved and loaded.
  - Raytracing to disk supported.


________________________________________________________


Changes since the previous demo (v1.4.013):

- Polyray export doesn't include water object unless 
  it actually exists.

- If a plug-in DLL can't be initialized, the offending 
  DLL file is identified in the error message instead 
  of saying "Unknown error". Leveller loads whatever it 
  can instead of quitting.

- File, Mail To... command added.

- Shape tools report mouse location during mousemove 
  up and down events.

- VRML export's water object supports world units.

- Resize HF command supports scaling the elevation 
  data to match the new HF dimensions, and choosing 
  the resampling style.

- Pressing Enter in a settings panel edit field 
  updates the value to the tool, instead of having 
  to press Tab to move the focus away from the field.
  This is handy if you want the focus to remain in 
  the field to try out different values.

- Added 'Selection, Rectify' command.

- Off-by-one pixel problem in texture mapping in OpenGL fixed.

- Single pixels on bottomost row of HF can be selected.

- Folder prefs save themselves after being edited.

- Window, Toolbars, Plug-in Tools command added.

- Mouse map position's elevation is reported nicer.

- Filter, Span dialog makes it more obvious if the span 
  is for the selection vs. the whole HF.

- Filter, Span supports selected areas better.

- Filter, Smooth More (Shift+F3) command added. 
  This uses a 5 x 5 kernel like Heavy Smooth and 
  fixes its averaging divisor bug. It also uses 
  much less memory.

- Filter, Invert now has a dialog; lets one choose 
  the inversion point.

- Doubled size of colormap CLUTs; made mapping of 
  colors to elevations more precise.

- Made span readout in Span filter dialog more readable.
  Same for Clip filter dialog.

- Scale dialog offers world unit choices for vertical axis.

- Informational tooltip added to map view, when 
  moving mouse over map (but not when dragging mouse).

- Build number included as part of ID string.

- One-bit Windows BMP bitmaps were not being 
  read correctly as selection masks; fixed.

- Superfluous file handle no longer used when 
  importing bitmaps as elevation data.

- Tip of the Day dialog antialiases its text better.

- 8-bit bitmap output supports arbitrary span output.

- Zoom tool supports arbitrary area selection.

- Selection tools don't display out-of-bound marquees 
  when starting a mousedrag outside the heightfield.

- JPEG I/O works properly.

- The fullscreen mode properly redraws itself if the 
  document has its "After flying...", "Draw the scene..."
  setting enabled.

- Zooming out can be animated. Zooming in is more proper.
  Zooming can be done in large steps.
  
- App prefs are saved when changed, not just when Leveller exits.

- If a plug-in couldn't be initialized because it requires 
  a newer version of Leveller, the user is informed better.




Changes since v1.4.007:

- Intel JPEG DLL updated to 1.5 from 1.1. Hopefully 
  this will fix problems where we were getting 
  zero-sized bitmap files being output.

- Made the zoom animation option work regardless of 
  map pane size.

- Dragging a floating selection, if you bump into a 
  slim area bounding the map, will cause autopanning.

- Selection mask is now a member of the document, not 
  the view, so we save lots of memory when using 
  multiple views on large documents.

- Finally fixed that @#%!$@#!% problem with maximized 
  windows being badly positioned when switched to when 
  multiple view windows existed.

- When the monitor was in 32-bit mode, OpenGL animations 
  would write bad frame bitmaps because their content was 
  24-bit while their headers suggested 32-bit data. Fixed.

- Raytracer a little faster. Colorizer eye rays are 
  computed quicker when doing perspective projection.

- HF normals computed better. 'Best' option produces 
  normals that show almost no artifacting at all.

- Smoothing option provided in raytracer for HF.

- Stored viewpoints were not being read, now they are.

- Sliding/banking no longer cut off other nav keys.
  E.g., you can pitch and roll at the same time.

- VRML export's Translation node now honors 
  world spacing.

- Selection marquee remains visible when using Ramp and Shape tools.



Changes since v1.4.006:

- JPEG image support added. JPEG images can be used for textures, and 
  the scene and map panes can be saved in JPEG format. Note: some 
  renderers, such as POV-Ray, may not support JPEG textures.

- Scene and map pane contents can be copied to the 
  clipboard in bitmap format. The commands are available 
  from the Edit menu, or from the pop-up menus that appear 
  when right-clicking on the scene/map panes.
  
- "Edit, Copy Camera, To VRML" command available. The current scene camera 
  is copied to the clipboard in VRML format, ready for pasting into 
  a VRML file.

- If a selection is present, the pop-up menu for the overview map 
  pane supports floating/defloating it.

- GetCurrentView(), DrawHFmap(), StartHFselChanges(), and EndHFselChanges() 
  plug-in APIs added.

- Terragen files can be opened with the "File, Open..." command.
  Vertical exaggeration may occur in some cases, but this can be 
  fixed with the "Filter, Span..." command.

- POV-Ray export supports both TGA and BMP formats 
  when browsing for heightfield file name. Heightfield 
  bitmap is no longer generated if doing mesh export, 
  or if heightfield object is not included in the export.

- You can choose the Camera tool with the spacebar if you 
  set the corresponding preference in the File, Preferences, 
  Other... command.

- Text tool works in both grid and world units.

- Filter menu plug-in items now grouped into 
  four alphabetic areas (A-F, G-L, etc.) to keep 
  the menu from getting overcrowded.

- Viewer plug-ins supported. They can be accessed through 
  the 'View, Plug-ins' submenu. These plug-ins modify 
  the current 3D scene view by inserting additional 
  OpenGL objects. The callback argument to the 
  plug-in API's DrawHFscene() function is now supported. 
  Plug-ins can also use the new DrawHFmap() 
  function to easily draw their own overview maps.

- Camera more precise; using the Camera tool 
  with enlarged map zoom levels provides increasing precision.

- Opening and saving heightfield documents uses the 
  newer "easy navigating" file dialog.

- Clicking "Browse..." to fill in a filename field 
  ends up focusing the field, not the Browse button. 
  This makes it easier to click Browse, and then pressing
  Enter to fill in a dialog.

- Status panel shows heightfield span in both grid and world 
  units, not just world units. The dimension readout area was 
  also enlarged to avoid clipping big values.

- The "Edit, Set Grid Spacing..." (Alt-E, S) command was renamed to 
  "Set World Spacing..." (Alt-E, W).

- Water level dialog supports grid and world units.

- Legacy format documents open much faster.

- The "Help, Test OpenGL Driver..." command was added to 
  make it easier to benchmark and diagnose OpenGL performance.

- When running for first time, a message saying 
  that the Preferences file is getting created appears
  instead of "Unknown error occurred."

- POV-Ray exports now have camera information precise 
  enough to avoid "camera rays not perpendicular" errors 
  when rendering in POV-Ray.

- Working in world units is now much better supported.

- Exporting raytraced animations to a bitmap file sequence 
  supports captioning, if used.

- The 3D cursor is now perfectly accurate; grid 
  vertices are highlighted without the 1/2 grid unit offset error.

- Smooth/sharpen tool panel now reads 'Smooth/Sharpen' 
  instead of just 'Smooth'. When using the tool, 
  the Edit, Undo command correctly reads 'Undo Smooth Tool' 
  or 'Undo Sharpen Tool' depending on which version of the tool was used.

- Colorizing shaders (in the raytracer) can have their effects masked. 

- The flattening feature of the Resize Grid command 
  no longer has world units inverted.

- The "Navigate, Straighten Roll/Pitch/Both" commands now work correctly. 

- Previewed animations now support automatic LOD reduction correctly.

- POV-Ray groundpoint export now works if normals included.

- POV-Ray export now excludes the heightfield object if it's not asked for.

- 'Apply' button in Colormap dialog has correct tab order.

- When exporting to POV-Ray as a mesh, colormaps are 
  correctly Y offset, the mesh object is not miscentered, 
  and the new texturing transforms (scaling, arbitrary rotation, 
  offsetting, tiling) are fully supported.

- Z-axis texture offsets are no longer inverted when exporting 
  to POV-Ray as a heightfield object.

- The 'blend with colormap' attribute of the view 
  now gets saved in view files.

- The shape tools now use grid units for the stroke width 
  parameter instead of world units, and the stroke width 
  field now correctly handles out-of-range inputs.

- The union/intersect modes in the text tool are no 
  longer swapped.

- The "Selection, Show in 3D Scene" command was updating the 
  selection marquee if the application's rendition preferences 
  were okay, instead of the current window's preferences, and the 
  selection wouldn't show at all if a texture was present. 
  This has been fixed.



Changes since v1.4.005:

- Vertical axis placed first in Scale dialog, to 
  make it operate closer to the old Scale dialog, 
  which had the focus immediately in the vertical
  field.

- Sections of the heightfield were sometimes not rendered.
  This usually appeared as fringe sections vanishing 
  while flying, and rendering only when the section was 
  fully in view. This has been fixed.

- Shader choice comboboxes in raytracing dialog increased 
  in height.

- Internal bitmap processing object was not being 
  disposed after animation frame bitmaps were exported.
  This has been fixed.

- Relative path references are converted to absolute form 
  when attaching textures to reference shapes.

- Changing the application's color prefs no longer 
  invalidates raytracer depthmaps.

- Loaded views were not refreshing attached texture transform 
  data correctly. This has been fixed.

- Internal raytracing buffer optimized, saving memory.

- Orthographic (parallel) projection mode added to raytracer.

- Selector plug-in type added. These plug-ins are used 
  to create, modify, or otherwise use the current 
  document's selection mask.

- The picture resource plug-in API callbacks were 
  supported for all plug-in types, not just shaders.

- Tests for directory existence (used by some 
  file routines) work properly on read-only
  media.

- Folder prefs added, for setting default directory 
  locations for various files. In file open/save 
  dialogs, these folders can be quickly navigated to.
  File dialogs also auto-change the filename's 
  extension if the "Type" combo box is used.

- When no documents are open, the File, Preferences
  menu now provides access to all the app prefs.
  
- The perpendicularity of the camera's orientation 
  vectors is enforced for all native renderer exports.

- Polyray export supports new texturemapping transforms.
  The export dialog was also tweaked a bit to disable
  controls when appropriate.

- The heightfield's bounding box wasn't drawing 
  at the right dimensions. This has been fixed.
  The raytracer's output of the heightfield 
  geometry also corresponds more precisely 
  to the OpenGL view.

- The Texture Properties dialog interpreted the 
  breadthwise offset in the opposite direction 
  as the ST texture coordinate generator did, 
  making the raytracer and the OpenGL output 
  conflict with the dialog's texture preview. 
  This has been fixed.

- VRML export supports new texturemapping transforms.

- RIB export includes fog, and water is not output 
  unless it existed in the Leveller scene.
  New texturemapping transforms supported also, 
  except that Renderman's paintedplastic shader 
  shows untiled textures as tiled.

- Raytracer resolves small one-pixel gaps that
  would sometimes appear in flat areas of heightfield.
  The fix occurs for eye rays only; reflections 
  of the heightfield may still show these gaps.



Changes since v1.4.004:

- Fixed bug in raytracer where transparent gaps 
  would appear in heightfield.

- About Plug-ins dialog lists plug-ins using a 
  treeview control instead of a list box.
  Shader plug-ins are included in the list.

- 'Flat 1.0' background shader added, which 
  paints the current sky color onto the 
  background when raytracing.

- Background scene object uses coloring shaders only.
  Colorizing shaders are broken down further into those 
  that apply to the background object and those that do not.

- App prefs include option to draw colored wireframes as 
  polygons or actual lines. Some OpenGL drivers, like 
  Microsoft's software OpenGL implementation, are very 
  slow at drawing multi-colored lines.

- Fixed bug where colored wireframing forgot 
  to include lines on slab boundaries.

- Fixed bug where flat slabs would switch to 
  general wireframe color instead of using 
  actual terrain coloration, when doing colored wireframing.

- DX server supports the 'levdx_saveHF' message, 
  which lets client apps receive notification of 
  'File, Save' commands (and if a modified document 
  is being closed).

- DX server supports all elevation data value formats.



Changes since v1.4.003:

- Data exchange support added. Lets other applications 
  exchange heightfield data with Leveller, usually 
  to let them make Leveller act as their heightfield editor.
  Leveller can be made to startup without its splash 
  screen and Tip of the Day dialog by using the "-server"
  argument on its command line.

- POV-Ray export supports bitmap texture 
  tiling options.



Changes since v1.4.002:

- Improved handling of shader initialization errors.

- Duplicate shaders can no longer be accidentally loaded.

- Fog supported in raytracer. Attenuation of light 
  rays is currently always linear; this may change 
  for the final release.

- Using XZ (horizontal) scaling in the 'Filter, Scale...' 
  dialog would result in a vertical span that was 
  lower than requested. This has been fixed.

- Modifying a heightfield or resizing it 
  now correctly invalidates the depth maps 
  of associated view windows.

- Raytracing depth map information is separately 
  maintained for each view window.

- Fixed problem where a flat heightfield could not 
  be raytraced (i.e., all ray intersections failed).

- Untiled textures show colormap in uncovered areas
  of heightfield.



Changes since v1.4.001:

- If the Windows registry specifies an invalid 
  Leveller startup folder, Leveller says so, 
  tells which resource item is missing, and asks 
  for a replacement startup folder, which it 
  then patches the registry with.

- When asking for a replacement startup folder, 
  Leveller verifies that it contains the 
  minimum required resource items. If any are 
  missing, the folder is prompted for again 
  until the user cancels or succeeds.

- URLs are opened by checking the opener for HTM files, 
  and only if that fails, the HTTP opener is tried. 
  This should fix some situations where documentation 
  files or Web access was not working.

- If the Leveller startup folder is valid, but 
  is missing a prefs.dat file, Leveller simply 
  creates it instead of asking for a replacement 
  startup folder. The ability to easily move Leveller 
  to a different folder, however, is now unavailable
  (it was more trouble than it was worth, basically).



Changes since v1.3.003:

- View, Raytrace submenu added. This lets you render 
  the current scene pane (up to 500 x 400 pixels) 
  using raytracing. Some sample shader plug-ins are 
  included to try out. Note that the 'Picture Backgrounder' 
  shader is only meant to colorize the background object.

- View, Texture submenu simplified; rotation commands moved 
  to Texture Properties dialog.

- 24-bit bitmaps which are square and that measure a 
  power of two (e.g., 128 x 128) and fit in the OpenGL 
  driver's texture size limit make the water plane 
  render much faster.

- Overview map display when using Quick Shading speeded up slightly. 

- Flight/edit and normal rendition styles accesible from toolbar.

- Bitmap textures can be arbitrarily rotated, scaled, offset, 
  and tiled.

- Exported POV scenes using HSV color blending now parse
  without requiring '//' to be inserted on the HSV comment line.

- Preferred bitmap format can be set. This makes it 
  appear first in the filetypes combo box on the 
  File Open/Save dialogs when using bitmap files.

- Scale filter supports XZ (horizontal) scaling.
  If not scaling the entire heightfield vertically, 
  the results are placed in a floating selection.

- Heightfield centers itself in the map whenever it is resized, 
  and also when a new document is created.

- Straigthening the cam roll requires Alt-5, not '5' by itself.
  The '5' keys (numpad and normal) can be assigned in the 
  keyboard setup.

- Both the normal Return key and the numeric keypad's Enter key 
  could be used to navigate. The keys are now differentiated, 
  and the default keyboard setup leaves the Return key 
  unused.

- Leaving the heightfield size unchanged in the 
  Resize Heightfield dialog did nothing, even if 
  'Flatten' was chosen. This has been fixed.

- Bicubic interpolation used when resizing and 
  preserving heightfields (and also when XZ scaling).

- Help, Keyboard Navigation command removed
  (superceded by File, Prefs, Keyboard Controls... command).

- Set Grid Size command renamed to Resize Grid.

- Enlarge Canvas command (Shift-E) added.

- Light object shown on map (if made visible using View, Show Light).

- Animations exported to bitmap sequences 
  can be raytraced, and if so, an optional FPS 
  (frames per second) rate can be provided so that 
  animation-capable shaders can produce 
  time-realistic effects.

- Rotating entire heightfield forgot to invalidate the Undo buffer.

- Rotate command GPF bug fixed.

- Colormap dialog has an 'Apply' button. This makes 
  trying out different colormaps much faster, since 
  the dialog stays open.

- Exported scene bitmaps are written much faster 
  to disk. Exporting a series of bitmaps during 
  an animation is particularly improved.

- Internal USGS DEM import removed, 
  because the DEM Import plug-in works better.

- Selection masks can be saved in Windows BMP format 
  in addition to the LVS and TGA formats.

- Overview map can be saved in Windows BMP format,
  if it doesn't use an alpha channel.

- Tip of the Day dialog displays tip message in 
  antialiased Times New Roman 14pt for easier 
  readability.

- Reduced executable size by almost a megabyte, by 
  simplifying the splash screen and discarding unused 
  bitmap resources.

- Automatic LOD (level of detail) option available in the 
  render settings. When enabled, the foreground is drawn 
  using the point sampling rate, and LOD reduction 
  lowers that level of detail for farther areas. Auto LOD 
  only works if partial grid drawing is turned off.

- Colored wireframing possible. For best colored wireframing 
  speed, turn off polygon smoothing and quick shading in 
  the solid rendering options.

- A useless 'Help' menu item would sometimes appear in pop-up menus. 
  This has been fixed.

- After an unselected non-180 degree rotation, the heightfield 
  became internally corrupt, which caused subsequent things 
  to screw up. This has been fixed.

- Light source gets saved with view.

- Light source positioning tool added. Y-value of 
  light pos can be changed using tool's panel.

- Rect and ellipse sel tools support selection 
  shape constraining to perfect square/circle 
  and variable width lines/ovals. The axis of 
  the ovals is always a multiple of ninety degrees.
 
