It feels like a long time since LIME v1 was released for download, way back in September 2016. In that time, we’ve been overwhelmed with the number of people who have downloaded the software and shared their exciting applications. It has been inspiring to be in contact with so many researchers and professionals from around the world who see the value of LIME in their own academic, commercial and public sector work.

Of course, the development of LIME did not stop in 2016. The team has just been flat out with development within ongoing projects (and associated stream of deadlines…) to get a public release together. LIME has been constantly evolving, and we are now close to releasing version 2 of the software. Early versions have been out for testing and the feedback has been very positive so far.

In the next release you can look forward to some cool new features as well as general improvements:

• 3D Points, with labels, to mark points of interest in 3D models
• Digital elevation model (DEM) import
• New Modify Location tool to apply transformations to any 3D element(s). Great for dropping in other 3D or 2D content to supplement your 3D scenes
• New Presentation Elements for showcasing your projects during presentations, ease preparation of figures, movies etc.
• Project exporter for centralising all those files you link to into one central folder. Yes, that makes it much easier to share projects…
• General refresh of the graphical user interface and a whole load of bug fixes

And there is even a long-awaited North arrow. Some tutorials and documentation are also coming soon.

Refactoring for reuse

As well as adding features, the development team has worked hard to professionalise the underlying codebase of LIME. Rooted in academia, we know that researchers have the same needs for stable and flexible software as the rest of the world! As well as the developers of LIME, we are (we hope…still), the #1 users of the software. And we have high expectations😊.

This has been a large and “invisible” task. But it needs some recognition. Thanks to this refactoring (rewriting if we are honest), LIME becomes a more professional piece of software that is suited to more use cases and situations, is more future-proof, and is ready to receive the long list of features on our roadmap and wish list. This work is still going on, but we can be confident that LIME v2 is a stepwise increase in code quality over v1.

LIME v2 is just the start

We have exciting plans for short-term additions to the software to facilitate accessibility and reuse of 3D models, as well as collaboration. And over the coming months there are further developments in the pipeline that we think will open a whole new world for showcasing virtual environments.

Watch this space for updates as we ramp up to LIME v2 and beyond!

LIME team, March 2020