The HOOPS 16 development cycle was one of most feature packed releases ever. Highlights from the 60+ new features in HOOPS v16.0 include:

Major Performance Improvements: There have been a variety of improvements which dramatically boost performance, particularly with very large models. One of the more notable enhancements is that developers may now ask HOOPS to create a compiled draw tree from an existing segment hierarchy. This enables HOOPS to achieve frame-rates that can be orders of magnitude higher than with previous versions - without any reduction in the amount of geometry being drawn to the screen! Additionally, there have been significant speed improvements in the areas of selection, highlighting and general interactivity.

New Shader-Based DirectX 9 Driver: This new driver offers significant performance gains over OpenGL, particularly on Windows Vista and on XP systems with advanced video card support. As a shader-based driver, performance is consistently fast when drawing primitives such as lines and edges which are inconsistently supported in OpenGL. Also, the driver fully supports shadow maps, which allow developers to insert fully interactive shadows into their scenes.

Improved C# Support: Our initial release of C# bindings proved highly popular with .NET developers. Our latest C# bindings have been enhanced to encapsulate MVO logic that was previously unexposed. In addition, the C#/WinForms example has been extended to showcase more HOOPS capabilities and make it even easier for a C# programmer to jumpstart their development.

DGN Import and Bentley Microstation Plug-in: HOOPS now has the ability to import DGN files. A Bentley Microstation Plug-in also makes it possible to export HSF files directly from within Microstation.

Reflection Plane Support: Developers may now use HOOPS to insert a reflection plane underneath the model which can result in much more compelling and realistic rendering. The reflection plane automatically updates as objects move around in the scene.

Full Support of Vista: With this release HOOPS is fully supported on Vista. On this platform developers are encouraged to take advantage of the new DirectX driver which can offer significant performance improvements over OpenGL..

OBJ and STL Export: For applications needing to export to common formats, HOOPS now offers export for the OBJ and STL formats.

Further information about these and other R16 features will be available once it is released to the public in late October.