Rui Wang - OpenSceneGraph 3 Cookbook

Rui Wang is a software engineer at Beijing Crystal Digital Technology Co. Ltd., and the manager of osgChina, the largest OSG discussion website in China. He is one of the most active members of the official OSG community, who contributes to the OSG project regularly. He translated Paul Martz's "OpenSceneGraph Quick Start Guide" into Chinese in 2008, and wrote his own Chinese book "OpenSceneGraph Design and Implementation" in 2009. And in 2010, he wrote the book "OpenSceneGraph 3.0 Beginner's Guide" , which is published by Packt Publishing, along with Xuelei Qian. He is also a novel writer and guitar lover in his spare time.

Id like to express my deepest respect to Robert Osfield and the entire OpenSceneGraph community for their continuous contribution and support to this marvelous open source project. Many thanks to the Packt team for the great efforts to make another OpenSceneGraph book published. And last but not least, Ill extend my heartfelt gratitude to my family, for your timeless love and spiritual support.

Xuelei Qian received his Ph.D. degree in applied graphic computing from the University of Derby in 2005. From 2006 to 2008, he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Dept. of Precision Instrument and Mechanology at Tsinghua University. Since 2008, he has been appointed by the School of Scientific Research and Development of Tsinghua University. He is also the Deputy Director of Overseas R&D Management Office of Tsinghua University and Deputy Secretary in General of University-Industry Cooperation Committee, Tsinghua University.

I will dedicate this book to my family because of all the wonderful things they do for me and supporting me all the way.

Vincent Bourdier , a twenty-six years old developer, is a French 3D passionate. After self tuition in 3D modeling and programming, he went to the UTBM (University of Technology of Belfort Montbeliard) in 2003 and received an engineering degree in computer sciences, specializing in imagery, interaction, and virtual reality. A computer graphics and passionate about image processing, he remains curious about new technologies in domains such as AI, Cmake, Augmented reality, and others.

He has been working as a 3D developer at Global Vision Systems (Toulouse, France) since 2008. He is now technical leader on a 3D real-time engine using OpenSceneGraph.

Global Vision Systems (http://www.global-vision-systems.com) is a software developer and publisher, offering innovative Human Machine Interfaces for Aeronautics, Space, Plant, and Process supervision.

I would like to thank my parents for their encouragement even if they don't understand a word of my job, my employers for this opportunity to live my passions and to give me challenges to meet, and all the people from the OpenSceneGraph mailing list for their help and advices, especially Robert Osfield, the OpenSceneGraph fundator.

Torben Dannhauer was born in Germany in 1982 and has been working as a freelancer in software development since 2000. He has also provided web and e-mail hosting since 2005. From 2003 until 2009, he studied mechanical engineering, specializing in flight system dynamics and information technology at University of Technology in Munich.

In his term thesis, he developed an airport traffic simulation tool that was also his first experience with OpenGL with which he visualized the simulation results. In his diploma thesis, he analysed the usability of game engines to serve as visualization software for full flight simulators considering qualification requirements. During the thesis, he decided to start the development of a rudimentary but open source visualization framework, which is based on OpenSceneGraph: osgVisual (www.osgvisual.org).

osgVisual is designed to provide all necessary elements for implementing a visualization software with multiple rendering hosts, projected on curved screens with multiple video channels. After finishing his studies, he still developed the tool, initially as a freelancer, later on as a hobby; nevertheless osgVisual is still under construction and will be for long time.

During his studies, he also started in 2006, to develop software for Chondrometrics GmbH (www.chondrometrics.com), a company providing medical data processing. At the end of 2009, he moved to Ainring (Germany) which is located near to Salzburg (Austria) to join Chondometrics part time and do a Ph.D. in medical science at Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg (www.pmu.ac.at).

Torben is experienced in C/C++ with and without Qt. He programmed PHP for a long time and has expertise in Linux and Windows operating systems. Due to his web and e-mail hosting, he knows Postfix & Co in detail and speaks SQL. Last but not least, he develops OpenSceneGraph applications, mostly related to osgVisual.

In his spare time he loves rowing, mountain biking, and skiing with his partner and friends.

I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Holzapfel (Institute of Flight System Dynamics, University of Technology, Munich) for the initial funding of the osgVisual project. It is great to learn OpenSceneGraph and develop an open source application on a paid basis.

Chris 'Xenon' Hanson is co-founder of 3D and digital imaging companies, 3D Nature and AlphaPixel, and is a veteran of the OpenSceneGraph community. Chris has worked on the OpenGL SuperBible, OpenGL Distilled, and OpenCL in Action. His goal in life is to ski all seven continents and build giant intergalactic fighting robots.