[Development] Status of Qt3D in 5.5

[Sean Harmer]

Hi all,

Although we are closing in on a stable API for Qt3D there are still a few of 
areas that we'd like to change/expand upon a little. These are:

* Mouse input. At present this is a bit of a hack (via a Configuration{} 
element) used to get the mouse to control a camera. Of course the mouse may 
also be required to control other objects and also to trigger picking 
operations etc.

* Buffer/Attribute API. Currently we have a convenience method of specifying 
geometry to be rendered but we have identified several use cases where this 
falls a little short. Peppe is in the process of refactoring this following a 
design review but is not ready just yet.

* Replacement for Threadweaver to allow commercial licensing. This is underway 
thanks to Mika and is under review on gerrit at present.

* Few other rough edges probably warrant another quick API review to make sure 
no big nasties crept in or are languishing in dark corners.

As these parts of the API are not finished just yet and the feature freeze is 
today, I'd like to request that we ship Qt3D with Qt 5.5 having the Technology 
Preview status. This will also allow us to gather a round of feedback from a 
wider audience on the APIs we have which will be valuable before setting them 
in stone.

How should we action this in practise? Carry on working on the dev branch or 
move to the 5.5 branch and periodically merge to dev? Something else?

Thanks for any advice you can give.

Sean

ps I'd also like to thank Laszlo and Konstantin for their efforts in helping 
review and improve Qt3D. We've now seen Qt3D running on Android and various 
embeded linux boards. I hope to get proof of it working on QNX and iOS 
shortly.
-- 
Dr Sean Harmer | sean.harmer at kdab.com | Managing Director UK
Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, a KDAB Group company
Tel. Sweden (HQ) +46-563-540090, USA +1-866-777-KDAB(5322)
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