Daylon Graphics Releases Leveller 3.0

PRLog (Press Release) - Feb 01, 2009 -
Vancouver, B.C., Canada — Daylon Graphics® Ltd. today announced Daylon Leveller™ 3.0, a raster terrain modeler that now includes vector editing. A second raytracer was also added to visualize vector shapes at full resolution. 2.6.2 is the last version in the long-running Leveller 2.x series, which began in 2001.

“Leveller 3.0 continues the evolution of the program in a key way.” said Ray Gardener, Daylon's administrator. “Vector shape support brings many benefits to heightfield and terrain modeling.

“The challenge was how to factor it in while retaining Leveller's ease of use, which I think has been met. There's a new, extra toolbar and an extra menu. The shape system basically parallels a simple vector illustration facility, except that one can position shapes at altitudes if one wants.”

As the first iteration of Leveller-with-vectors, the things one can do with vectors are somewhat limited: deriving raster masks, generating convex hulls, and diagramming. But that's part of a cautious design approach. “It's easier to put features in than to take them out. As feedback is returned, additional capabilities can evolve gracefully and be well thought-out. One has to be mindful of extra UI elements defeating an application's productivity gains.”

The new raytracer will eventually supplant the old one. It is multithreaded and has a more generalized object model, and does general (as opposed to texture-only) antialiasing.

The licence model has changed to per-seat. “The per-user model was too awkward for commercial customers, and since maintaining two models would have been a lot of work — not to mention confusing — I decided to just switch to the model everyone normally uses. One computer, one licence, straight and simple. If a company has several workstations and experiences staff turnover, it doesn't matter; it's the company that owns the licences.”

A policy change for updates also occurred. “People found it cumbersome having updates delivered as incremental patches, so now full installers are shipped. We can do patches for really small updates, but it's not mandatory.”


Pricing and Availability

Leveller 3.0 is $199.95 USD for new users, a $50 upgrade for existing Leveller 2.x users, and $150 for Leveller 1.x users. Volume discounts are available. To learn more about Leveller 3.0, please visit www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller .