The Jahshaka development team has been hard at work on the Jahshaka 0.5.0 Alpha Release and its now available for download. In addition to a major code cleanup, we have updated the player, editor and world manager with new features, added an asset module and launched JahFX (www.jahfx.com) so you can download free worlds and models.

Download Jahshaka

You can download Jahshaka for both Windows and OsX via the links below.

Jahshaka 0.5.0 Alpha for Windows

Jahshaka 0.5.0 Alpha for OsX

You can also fork Jahshaka and build it on the latest Linux operating systems over at gitHub.

Key Improvements

This release was focused on cleaning up our code to make it easy to add new features moving ahead. A big part of this was moving over to the CMake system of managing projects at a source code level, which when combined with Git Submodules will allows us to integrate 3rd party libraries with ease.

This was used to integrate breakpad into the application, for crash monitoring, so users can now easily submit crash reports and help us build a better application. It will also be used for our upcoming ‘Bullet’ physics engine support.

We have also moved away from using the filesystem to store and manage assets, and cleaned up our database structure so we are now fully powered by SQLite. This will make it much easier when it comes to managing large projects and to syncing your virtual worlds online.

New Features

The most notable feature in this release is the Asset module, which makes it easy for users to manage 3d assets so they can easily use them in their virtual worlds. The asset module comes complete with a 3D viewer, the ability to download and import models, and one click ‘add to project’ functionality.

“Currently, the asset module’s primary uses are allowing users to organize, import and share models across projects. Future features will be allowing users to share assets and download assets from our soon-to-be-build asset store. To get our desired results we integrated breakpad for crash handling.” Nicolas Brown, Developer

This feature is powered by our new JahFX website (www.jahfx.com), so users can browse a large collection of free 3D models that have been curated for use in Jahshaka and easily download and import them.

Added Functionality

We have a host of functional improvements, from better support for 3d outlines to better and more realistic shadows. We also now have support for animated materials, which you can see in the water used in the villa house world.

We got rid of the traditional menu-bar completely, and are starting move all functionality into dialogs within the app to prepare for a “In VR” world workflow. We also cleaned up our Oculus support so users now have richer, more realistic VR rendering.

We have also updated the jahshaka,com website to use Discourse for our forums, to better support users – now you can easily get help online and look up information to help you learn how to use Jahshaka.

What’s instore for the future?

We are always seeking new ways to bring our users a better experience while using Jahshaka and we have so much more instore as we continue to build a world class VR platform. Features to look forward to in future releases are bullet physics integration, adding support for OpenVR, the ability to publish worlds online and sync them, and better integration with the JahFX website.

Join our Community!

Remember to keep in touch with Jahshaka’s development by visiting our blog page at https://jahshakafx.wpengine.com/blog. Also, follow us on twitter @jahshakafx and like our Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/jahshakafx