Regards,
Quino

X-Plane does have a "Home rolled" scene graph, but I use the term very loosely – it doesn't look like a scene graph – rather it is a set of optimized data structures we use to cram the scene down the GPU as fast as we possibly can.

See also Tom Forsyth's comments on the gap between formal scene graphs and what you really need to talk nice to the GPU.

http://home.comcast.net/~tom_forsyth/blog.wiki.html#%5B%5BScene%20Graphs%20-%20just%20say%20no%5D%5D

Anyway, there is zero chance of getting direct SG access (because the API is too weird for words) but it is possible that in the future the SDK might provide higher level abstractions that _leverage_ the SG for you.

For example, we could have "insert persistent scenery object" which places the obj in the scene graph so you don't have to maintain it. For VERY large numbers of unrelated objects, this might be a win. But we'd talk to the SG for you so you don't have to worry about the API being strange or unstable.

In other words, we have an SG, but it is a _low level_ API. 🙂

(There is a high level wrapper around the SG but it too looks a bit weird. Basically as soon as you go from the file formats to inside the ren engine, things stop looking like the abstractions we expose fairly quickly.)

Just curiosity. Does X-Plane use a scenegraph (like openscenegraph)? I suppose you have written your own OSG. I used to work with OpenGL Perfomer, which had tons of useful features, and was easy for the programmer to manage the scene graph objects. I don't know if you are referring to offer in the future access to that kind of high level api, in order to manage the scenery objects.

Regards,

Quino