The latest version of Microsoft's robotics programming platform is version 2008, but it isn't finished yet. The first Community Technical Preview (CTP) was released in April for Windows CE, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, and Windows XP. The final version is scheduled for release later this year, and the next milestone to getting there is the July CTP, available for download as web (92.2MB) and full (333.2MB) installers from the Microsoft Download Center. The new version includes the following new features and improvements:
- New samples and tutorials for: DSS Node Discovery using UPnP, Transport Extensibility, LINQ, Silverlight, Embedded Simulation Environment, Simulated Pursuit Camera, and Simulated 4x4-drive
- Global Assembly Cache: Core CCR and DSS assemblies are put into the Global Assembly Cache which means that they are a shared resource for all installations on a single machine.
- Simulation on 64-bit machines: Simulation now runs on 64-bit systems using the Microsoft Windows-32-on-Windows-64 (WOW64) subsystem (make sure to use dsshost32.exe which forces the WOW64 mode).
- Visual Studio Project Wizards: The Visual Studio Project Wizards have been rewritten to make it much simpler to create new service projects directly from Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. Project wizards are provided for VB.Net and C# targeting .NET Framework.
- Much Faster DSS Proxy Generation: The DssProxy tool has been completely rewritten to simplify the generation of service proxy assemblies and to make it much faster to compile services. In addition, the tool chain for writing services for .NET Compact Framework has been simplified to no longer need a companion service project targeting the desktop version of .NET Framework.
- DSS Log Analyzer: The DSS Log Analyzer is a preview of a powerful new debugging and monitoring tool that can visualize and analyze message exchanges between services sent within a DSS node or across nodes. In addition to showing the actual messages that have been sent it also provides message correlations, time lines, and illustrates how multiple message interactions are causally linked over time.
- Embedded Visual Simulation Environment: In addition to having a stand-alone UI, the Visual Simulation Environment can now be embedded in other applications.
The full changelog can be seen in the What's new document on MSDN. As usual, Microsoft is asking for comments, suggestions, and bug reports via the Microsoft Robotics forums.
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