XPI Simulation, announces the launch of Tempest 5.4, its latest version of the sophisticated vis-sim API. This version contains the first of many improvements planned for Tempest by its new owners XPI Simulation, the most significant being the ability for users to add their own code (Plug-ins) to the rendering system within Tempest. Many users have their own library of specialist functions to differentiate their products in competitive markets. This new feature enables developers to take control over the calculation and rendering of parts of the 3D scene. As a result they are able to utilise all the powerful features of Tempest in conjunction with their own specialist code.

The key benefit of this technology is that it enables customers to create new features, unique to their specific simulation requirements, which would not normally be supported within a generic simulation API. It also enables the developer to integrate other software packages into Tempest offering the combined benefits of multiple packages. This ability has previously only been possible by the customer creating the complete rendering system and thus repeating a vast amount of work that has already been completed and tested over many years within a generic API such as Tempest. As the system also allows the rendering of any objects to be performed by the developers own code it is possible to incorporate very specific shader rendering for the object, without effecting the rendering of the other objects.

Tempest provides a number of access points for the user’s plug-in code. In the simplest application of the plug-in supplies polygons for Tempest to perform the culling, sorting, lighting, fogging and shader effects. And at the other extreme the plug-in takes over the complete calculation and rendering solution. This allows any effect to be created and added to the scene, but does require a higher workload on the application programmer. In both cases Tempest provides a number of support functions, which include retrieving details of the current internal rendering state and more importantly dealing with the transmission of the plug-in and its associated data across the internal network interface.

David Fulker, Technical Director said, “XPI Simulation is committed to the continuing development of Tempest and we have a number of new features that will allow our customers to develop even more exciting simulations with greater ease. With our ‘plug-in’ interface we believe that we have created a simple and yet effective method of integrating customer code into the world of complex rendering software and it has been achieved in way that the developer only needs to consider the effect he is trying to create and not how his code will effect the rest of the scene.”

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For more information contact:
Alan Davenport
[email protected]