Release Notes for VRGS Version 3.2

📦 VRGS 3.2 Release Notes

3.2 Build 49-54 : 2025-12-19 → 2025-12-27

✨ New Features

Stereonet Plotting & Analysis (updated)

• Added stereonet tools for plotting and analysing orientation data, including:
  • Equal-angle / equal-area projections
  • Kamb contouring
  • Rose diagrams and circular statistics
  • Great circles and grid lines
  • Stress tools (slip / dilation tendency)
  • Fabric tensor calculations
• Provides a workflow foundation for visualising and analysing fracture orientations.

DFN Tools & Analysis (Expanded)

• DFN Slicer / Cross-Section: interactively slice the DFN along X/Y/Z with intersection lines rendered when active.
• Fracture Propagation (“Grow”): extend DFN tips using a stress-field driven growth command.
• Connectivity Metrics: new analysis outputs and menu options to visualise network connectivity, including:
  • intersection density
  • total intersection length
  • mean intersection angle
  • connected component size / grouping
  • intersection count

🛠 Improvements

Performance & Responsiveness (DFN + Intersections)

• Significant speed-ups for fracture/mesh intersection detection and DFN intersection calculations, improving usability on larger datasets.
• Improved robustness of intersection line generation and merging, reducing fragmentation and artefacts.

Visual Quality (Intersections)

• Improved rendering of fracture intersection lines (higher quality, more consistent appearance).

🐛 Fixes & Stability

External Drive Projects

• Improved reliability when opening/loading projects from external/USB drives, addressing intermittent SQLite misuse errors.

General Stability

• Improved stability during shutdown and embedded web-based panels (reducing crash risk in edge cases).
• Clearer diagnostics when file access fails (more actionable error messages).

3.2 Build 48 : 2025-12-17

✨ New Features

Discrete Fracture Network (DFN)

• Introduced licensed DFN functionality, enabling advanced fracture network workflows.
• Added elliptical fracture support with aspect-ratio control.
• Implemented fracture intersection visualization and a dedicated “Fracture Intersections” context menu command.
• Enabled GPU-accelerated DFN attribute and proximity filtering for interactive exploration.

Segmentation & Image Analysis

• Added full-image SAM segmentation using tile-based inference with automatic merging.
• Introduced segmentation overlay display with label coloring and blending priority controls.
• Added persistent segmentation masks with automatic export to 16-bit TIFF and label management.

Geoscience & Data Import

• Added SEGY (rev2) seismic data loader with full header and trace parsing.
• Introduced GeoTIFF import/export with georeferencing support for orthoimages.

🛠 Improvements

DFN Performance & Usability

• Parallelized proximity distance computation using BSP trees for improved scalability.
• Normalized proximity distances and exposed them directly in GPU VBOs for accurate filtering.
• Improved DFN UI integration, property binding, and stereonet support.

Rendering & Visualization

• Improved shadow map stability and precision using world-space RTE, double precision math, and texel snapping.
• Added debug visualizations for shadow maps and performance metrics.
• Enhanced procedural sky, clouds, snow, fire, and firework particle systems for improved realism.

SAM & Segmentation UX

• Added async encoder creation, undo/redo support, adjustable mask thresholds, and clearer UI feedback.
• Improved click handling to ensure all relevant tiles are encoded before inference.

Code Quality & Architecture

• Introduced modern, type-safe templated systems:
  • THistogram for safe statistical analysis.
  • TColorMapper for high-performance, type-correct color mapping.
• Added extensive unit test coverage (200+ tests) for new histogram and color-mapping systems.

🐛 Fixes & Stability

• Improved robustness of TIN data reading with stream validation, size checks, and allocation guards.
• Hardened OBJ, mesh, texture, and TIFF loading against corrupted or malformed files.
• Fixed race conditions in logging, shutdown, and multi-threaded progress reporting.
• Corrected slip-potential calculations for ENU coordinate consistency with comprehensive test coverage.
• Added safety checks across UI components (WebView, listboxes, early initialization paths).

🧹 Refactoring & Maintenance

• Refactored large subsystems for clarity and maintainability:
  • DFN attribute system and property grid integration.
  • Shadow rendering pipeline and shader parameter handling.
  • Modernized OpenGL usage and rendering state management.
• Removed hardcoded credentials and completed secure build-time injection for LicenseSpring and Sentry.
• Cleaned up project structure, documentation organization, and .gitignore rules.

3.2 Build 37–47 : 2025-11-25 → 2025-12-14

✨ New Features

• Procedural sky system replacing texture-based skyboxes, with dynamic sun, turbidity, clouds, and animation.
• Post-processing framework with bloom, grid overlay, edge detection, depth fog, fade, and VR comfort vignette.
• Snow, fire fountain, and fireworks particle effects with GPU-based simulation and visual presets.
• Pix4D navigation profile and enhanced navigation behaviors.

🛠 Improvements

• Major shadow rendering upgrades: slope-scaled biasing, tighter frustum fitting, debug overlays, and higher stability.
• Enhanced metadata handling, solar angle calculations, and EXIF parsing.
• Improved UI consistency across property grids, menus, dialogs, and project trees.
• Better performance and precision through double-precision math in large scenes.

🐛 Fixes & Stability

• Fixed texture serialization, multi-texture handling, and MipMap issues.
• Corrected coordinate conversion, camera movement, snapping, and Gaussian splat sorting artifacts.
• Improved OAuth, Basic Auth, and StraboSpot integration reliability.

🧹 Refactoring & Code Quality

• Broad modernization of rendering, navigation, and attribute systems.
• Improved logging consistency and exception safety throughout the codebase.
• Expanded documentation, tooltips, and internal developer references.

3.2 Build 33-36 : 2025-10-06

✨ New Features

• Fracture Scanlines – new tools for creating, editing, and analyzing fracture scan lines with statistics and spreadsheet integration.
• I3S and SLPK Improvements – support for I3S 1.7+ and point cloud compression (LEPCC), enabling larger and more complex scene layers.
• IVE Import Plugin – import IVE models directly into VRGS.
• Plugin System – load and manage external plugins dynamically, including context menu integration.
• Enhanced Chat with AI – redesigned LLM Chat Bar using WebView2 for better formatting, streaming replies, and local LLM (Ollama) support.
• GeoTour Login with OAuth2 – new secure login flow with avatar support.
• WebView2 Log Viewer – new Markdown-enabled log console with color-coded message levels.

🛠 Improvements

• Rendering & Performance
  • Faster LOD transitions, smoother GPU uploads, and improved OpenGL threading.
  • Better handling of large tiled and textured models.
• Stability
  • Thread-safety improvements across rendering and resource loading.
  • Deferred OpenGL cleanup prevents crashes on heavy projects.
• LLM & MCP Tools
  • More reliable query execution with read-only safety.
  • Better error feedback for API, quota, and connection issues.
• User Interface
  • Updated icons and Fluent-style tree views.
  • Improved project tree with visibility toggles and context menus.

🐛 Fixes

• Fixed issues with texture mapping, I3S node parsing, and tile visibility.
• Resolved OpenAI rate-limit handling and improved retry behavior.
• Fixed rare thread synchronization errors when loading large models.
• Corrected versioning inconsistencies and removed unused resource identifiers.

🧪 Other Updates

• Updated dependencies and compiler settings (C++20).
• Numerous quality-of-life refinements, logging improvements, and installer updates.

3.2 Build 28-32 : 2025-08-19

✨ New Features

• Added faiss.dll integration for improved search and indexing capabilities.
• Introduced MCP server for external communication and task execution with LLM planning.
• Added LLMFunctionCaller to enable tool execution and context management.
• Added “Show SQL” option in the LLM Chat Bar.
• Added copy context menu and enhanced chat UI with Athos icon.
• Added FolderMonitor for directory change notifications.
• Added ROI polyline import and improved SVG rendering and ribbon functionality.
• Added motion blur functionality, including toggleable blur and subframe accumulation.

🛠 Improvements

• Enhanced LLMClient and LLMChatBar with richer functionality and SQL command extraction.
• Improved point cloud rendering, LOD logic, and overall stability.
• Refined shader updates, database command handling, and chat interactions.
• Enhanced texture management, UI refresh, and rendering options.
• Improved flight path creation, motion blur handling, and object interaction.
• Enhanced Kriging and DipAzimuth calculations, orthographic view handling, and JSON import.
• Optimized stereonet and 3D model performance, including clip plane and object rendering improvements.
• Improved UTM zone detection and GeoJSON coordinate transformation.

🧹 Refactoring

• Refactored LLMChatBar, LLMClient, and related components for clarity and maintainability.
• Restructured RAGEngine population and agent logic with embeddings.
• Refactored texture handling, camera calibration, and projection logic.
• Renamed and unified VR display settings and variable handling.
• Simplified SetProjectFolder usage and texture management code paths.

🐛 Fixes

• Added null pointer checks in tree view handling.
• Fixed potential concurrent modification issues in stereonet rendering.
• Fixed EULA handling and version consistency with VRGS_PATCHLEVEL.
• Removed unused DLLs and debug logging functionality.

🧪 Testing & Quality

• Added MSTest coverage for debug log functionality.
• Expanded stability checks for LOD rendering and chat interaction components.

3.2 Build 27 : 2025-06-30

✨ New Features

• Implemented Kriging interpolation, including support for mesh generation.
• Added contour drawing functionality and ability to generate ortho panels from viewpoints.

🧪 Testing & Quality

• Added and expanded unit tests for DipAzimuth, improving functionality and coverage.

🛠 Improvements

• Improved polyline mesh generation for more accurate surface modelling.

🐛 Fixes

• Resolved recursive OnPaint calls in CHistogramViewPane, improving UI stability.

🧹 Refactoring

• Refactored DipAzimuth test suite and related classes for clarity and maintainability.

3.2 Build 2 : 2025-06-26

🛠 Improvements

• Improved tree control and mesh generation logic.
• Enhanced SAM model loading and associated mesh generation processes.
• Improved texture loading and data handling for better stability and performance.

🧹 Refactoring

• Refactored and updated several internal classes to improve maintainability.

🧯 Fixes

• Fixed issues with ProjectInterpTree by correctly calling DeleteItem after cutting or deleting polylines and groups.
• Ensured all application and tile manager threads are properly joined on exit to prevent dangling processes.

3.2 Build 26 : 2025-06-16

🚀 New Features

• Added Texture List support to right-click menu.
• Enabled visibility control for tie points.
• Added DEM extraction.
• Added connected component attribute for meshes.
• Added support for DeepLabV3+ and Segment Anything model loading.
• Accepted multiple point selection for segmentation.
• Included SketchFab Uploader and OPF export tools.
• Added OS and COMPUTERNAME to environment variable list.

🛠 Fixes

• Fixed application crash on close.
• Fixed incorrect triangle count in glDrawElements.
• Fixed locale issues in date formatting.
• Fixed tiepoints missing default values.
• Fixed issues with v1 mesh path checking on import.
• Fixed internal project path handling.
• Fixed saving textures when model was uncompressed.
• Fixed data type issues and improved boundary checks.
• Fixed upgrade path and installer-related issues.

✨ Improvements

• Refactored HistogramViewPane::Render() for improved D2D resource handling.
• Improved TIFF image handling, including NoData value extraction and vertex counting.
• Improved attribute layer deletion and colour handling.
• Improved model limits update handling with debouncing.
• Improved label and trimesh display options.
• Improved camera handling, UAS position setting, and waypoint export.
• Improved coordinate transformation and UI update logic.
• Improved image interpretation and data extraction.
• Improved GeoJSON generation and fault-to-PL conversion logic.
• Improved file format compression and mesh storage layout for performance.
• Updated Python DLLs and ONNX DLL support.
• Removed unused ONNX test code and debug tools.
• Refactored stereonet chart resizing, mouse position handling, and various UI elements.
• Removed On-Premise licensing options from installer.

🔐 Stability & Thread Safety

• Ensured thread safety in mesh operations via mutex locking.
• Handled null returns from projection context more gracefully.
• Refactored and cleaned up unused variables.

🧪 Build Versions

• VRGS 3.2 Builds 3–25 incrementally introduced and tested the above features and fixes.

3.2 Build 2 : 2025-01-24

• Fix to the mesh upgrade pathway causing folders to be ungrouped in some cases.

3.2 Build 1 : 2025-01-22

• Enhanced Polyline & Geopolygon Rendering
• Performance Boost for Tiled Model Rendering
• Photogrammetric Data Import: Bring original images and camera calibrations into your project to interpret at the resolution of the source imagery.