3DF Zephyr Dev Status (Giuggiola)

The next version of 3DF Zephyr (Codename Giuggiola) is already in development.

The tentative release date is Q1 2023.

Here's a brief report of the planned features in development and their status.

Note: this is not the final feature list: new planned features will be unveiled as we get closer to release!

Major features and updates

New floating licensing system	We will be switching from a third-party licensing system to an in-house developed one. The new licensing system will be more flexible, and all the keys will be floating, meaning that you can install zephyr on as many machines as you want, and it will automatically get a lease on open and drop the lease on exit.	Ready for testing (90%)
New meshing algorithm	The new meshing algorithm is entirely based on tetrahedra and has no internal discretization/voxelization step while being completely out-of-core. As a result, the new algorithm will have less moss and better details.	Ready for testing (90%)
New Orthophoto wizard	We completely revisited the orthophoto creations with a more flexible and easy-to-use wizard. Additionally, you can also specify the orthophoto volume visually with a bounding box.	Ready for testing (90%)
Improved photoconsistency	We continue to improve our core algorithms. Photoconsistency has been changed and tuned to better extract fine details.	Ready for testing (90%)
Orient images from fixed seeds	You can now add photogrammetric images, starting from a set of colored laser scans. The laser scans will remain fixed, and the photogrammetric images will be added over.	Ready for testing (90%)
Improved Samantha calibration	Samantha calibration routines have been rewritten and improved, and this will to a generally better orientation result.	Ready for testing (90%)
New GUI icons	The GUI icon have been completely redesigned. The new style will be more uniform and visually appealing.	Ready for testing (90%)
Bundle adjustment constraints revisited	The bundle adjustment with constraints table has been revisited and improved. You will be able also to input distance constraints in the bundle adjustment and set a different accuracy for each control points/camera position.	Ready for testing (90%)
Control points on new project wizard	You can now specify control points from images during the project wizard itself.	Ready for testing (90%)
Speed improvements	SfM, MVS, and Mesh are now noticeably faster.	Ready for testing (90%)

Minor bug fixes and updates

Texture weights	You can now assign different weights to cameras during textures.	Ready for testing (90%)
New gizmo tools	The gizmo has been rewritten, and it's now easier to use	Ready for testing (90%)
New rendering space transform tool	There is a new rendering transform tool that makes it easier to compute transform and navigate between distant objects	Ready for testing (90%)
Advanced import dialog	You can now specify batch actions (such as merging and making structure operations or selecting input coordinate system) before importing multiple files.	Ready for testing (90%)
Text scaling on dem	Dem viewer texts have been improved with dynamic scaling.	Ready for testing (90%)
More random crashes	Just kidding :)	Ready for testing (90%)
Updated Rendering engine	We updated our core rendering engine	Ready for testing (90%)
Updated widgets engine	We update the Qt library to version 6	Ready for testing (90%)
Improved control points from images dialog	Several improvements have been made to the control points from images dialog. Among the several improvements, it's faster to open and manage when you have a lot of images. And it also specifies the hint after the first image has been selected.	Ready for testing (90%)
Restyled wizard page	Project wizard has been restyled for a smoother user experience.	Ready for testing (90%)
More control during new project wizard	Project wizard has been reworked. Control points and camera constraints have been unified.	Ready for testing (90%)
Faster control points auto-matching	The automatic matching of control points has been revisited and is much faster.	Ready for testing (90%)
Automatically scaled text in Dem Viewer	Level of curves altitude texts are now automatically scaled.	Ready for testing (90%)
(Flowengine) Additional features Projected Coordinate System	Additional features and API have been added in Flowengine, such as Projected Coordinate Systems management.	Ready for testing (90%)
New Camera Navigator	New camera navigator on the bottom of the screen with dynamically loaded thumbnail for faster management of huge datasets.	Ready for testing (90%)
Improved decimation filter	The decimation filter has been improved. Edges and details are now preserved better.	Ready for testing (90%)
New custom csv import for control points and constraint	You can now import control points and constraints from custom text files where you specify the role for each column. Supports different separators.	Ready for testing (90%)
Speeded up spherical image decomposition	Spherical/Equirectangular image decomposition has been considerably speeded up.	Ready for testing (90%)
Minimal overlap camera selector	New tool to define the minimal set of cameras that view a point cloud/mesh. Useful to reduce the camera overlap and not consider redundant cameras.	Ready for testing (90%)
Constraints report	New constraints report tool to check the error statistics on control points, cameras, and distances constraints.	Ready for testing (90%)
Custom stylesheet	You can define your own custom color combination of the GUI in addition to the preset ones. The standard stylesheets has been improved for better readability and consistency.	Ready for testing (90%)
Faster autosave	Autosave is now faster, avoiding saving multiple times unnecessarily data.	Ready for testing (90%)
Text drawing elements	You can now add text and annotations to the project as drawing elements.	Ready for testing (90%)
Import geoids	You can now import custom geoids from PGM, XYZ, or ISG data formats.	Ready for testing (90%)
Comments	You can now add custom comments to 3DF zephyr objects.	Ready for testing (90%)