[SirKnightly]

It's finally here!

With this release we decided to drop the "3.Major_revision.Minor_revision" versioning scheme in favor of a year based scheme since the Major and Minor versions did not have much meaning anymore. Instead the scheme will now be "..0". The last 0 is still there because some of our systems expect that. It will be gone at some point.

Change log: (chronologically ordered)

• Various OpenGL optimizations for better graphics performance:
  
  • Animations now use texture arrays
  • Model uniforms get sent to the GPU using uniform buffers for less overhead
  • Various other, minor changes/li]
    
• After just 17 years, full Unicode text support! You can finally use non-ASCII characters without having to worry about special fonts and special characters. This is an opt-in mod flag.
• Added various translation features for making it easier to only distribute one version of a mod which includes all languages.
• OpenAL Soft is included by default in binary distributions of FSO now.
• Added system for dynamically adding new SEXPs. With this a Lua script can expose functionality to the mission which can be used exactly the same as a standard SEXP with all the usual editing features in FRED.
• Replaced Blinn-Phong BRDF with GGX BRDF
• Added support for displaying decals on the surface of an object.
• Refactored bitmap slot handling and removed the fixed upper limit on the number of bitmaps. No more bmpman corruption!
• Exposed the movie player to the scripting API for advanced display features
• Integrated support for the Discord Rich Presence API
• Added new, markup based user interface system using libRocket.
• Converted pilot files from custom binary format to JSON

Launchers, if you don't have one already:
All platforms: For every day use, we recommend Knossos, an integrated solution for downloading and launching mods.

Hidden Text: Alternative Launchers • Show

Cross-platform: wxLauncher 0.12.x Test Build (ongoing project for a unified launcher, you should upgrade to the latest RC/test build if you have not yet)
Important: For best compatibility with FSO 3.8 and later you should use at least wxLauncher 0.12.

Windows:  Launcher 5.5g (Mirror) (Mirror) Not compatible with Windows 8+, use wxLauncher above
OS X:  Soulstorm's OS X Launcher 3.0
Linux:  YAL or by hand or whatever you can figure out.

Windows (32/64-bit)
Compiled by Appveyor on Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit, Visual Studio Community 2015 with Update 3

64-bit: fs2_open_19_0_0_RC3-builds-Win64.zip

32-bit: fs2_open_19_0_0_RC3-builds-Win32.zip
This one is based on the SSE2 Optimizations from the MSVC Compiler.

Hidden Text: Alternative builds • Show

64-bit AVX: fs2_open_19_0_0_RC3-builds-Win64-AVX.zip
This one is based on the AVX Optimizations from the MSVC Compiler (fastest build if your CPU supports AVX instructions).


32-bit AVX: fs2_open_19_0_0_RC3-builds-Win32-AVX.zip
This one is based on the AVX Optimizations from the MSVC Compiler.

What are those SSE, SSE2 and AVX builds I keep seeing everywhere?
Your answer is in this topic.
Don't want to deal with that? Use Knossos and it will download the best build specifically for your PC!

OS X Universal (32/64-bit Intel)
Compiled on OS X 10.11.4, Xcode 7.3 (Apple LLVM version cross-reference)

fs2_open_19_0_0_RC3-builds-MacOSX.tar.gz

Linux 64-bit
Compiled on Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS 64-bit, GCC 5
fs2_open_19_0_0_RC3-builds-Linux.tar.gz

These builds use a mechanism called AppImage which should allow these builds to run on most Linux distributions. However, we recommend that you compile your own builds which will result in less issues.
Alternatively, if there is a package in your software repository then you should use that. If you are the maintainer of such a package for a distribution then let us know and we will include that here.

Hidden Text: Other Platforms, Source Code • Show

Source Code Export
Source Code (Unix line endings)

Source Code (Windows line endings)

Hidden Text: TrackIR Users • Show

Important!!
An external DLL is required for FSO to use TrackIR functions.  The following DLL is simply unpacked in to your main FreeSpace2 root dir.
TrackIR is only supported on Windows.
TrackIR SCP DLL (Mirror) (Mirror)

Known issues:

• Github issues and pending pull requests
• See the list of Fix for next release bugs - mark a bug as an elevated priority (high, urgent, immediate) to get it included in that filter.

[Goober5000]

This release is substantially similar to RC2, but with a few additional tweaks and refinements.

Please note that the following command-line flags options have been recategorized: -window, -fullscreen_window, -nomotiondebris and -noscalevid are now Gameplay; and -fps is now HUD.  Also, post-processing now defaults to on, so the flag has been changed to -no_post_process.

[AV8R]

[Minor Bug Report]

When starting RC3 using latest MVPs, I get a "-post_processing flag is invalid' popup error - although the game still starts after the error. If you check the box for "No Post-Processing" (which adds the -no_post_processing flag) then you get no errors on startup.

Seems that either RC3 or Knossos is needlessly putting a "-post_processing" flag into the startup options even though it's now on by default. I "fixed" the error by going into the user.json file in the MVPs folder and editing out the offending flag and now it starts without the error.

[/Minor Bug Report]

[Mito [PL]]

Take a look at what used to be in your "Full commandline" box. It's possible that RC3 used a config copied over fully from RC2, which included the offending flag.

[AV8R]

Most likely. I looked under the Global settings in Knossos before I edited the user.json file and the -post_processing flag was there. But no amount of turning Post-Processing on and off would make the post processing flag go away - which is why I had to forcefully edit it out of the user.json file.

In Knossos, you can save Global configurations and apply them to some or all of your mods, but you can't delete or clear global settings - and as such, old settings can carry over from an old EXE to a newly downloaded EXE after they're installed.

[Mito [PL]]

This is definitely something that'd need refining when ngld manages to emerge from the depths of real life. To be fair, did anyone expect frequent flag changes between different FSO builds?

[m!m]

Normally we add removed flags to a "deprecated" list so that they don't cause a warning to pop up when the flag is passed to the build but that was missed in these changes. It will be fixed for the final release.

[Mito [PL]]

You mean, the 20.0.0 release?

[m!m]

It will still be 19.0 since that's how we named all the RCs. The next release will then be 20.1 since 20.0 will be the nightly builds.

Also, at the moment the plan is to release the final next weekend if no game breaking bugs are found.