Silk.NET's 2020 outlook
Last year in June, I started Silk.NET with some great friends to build a set of fresh bindings to OpenGL (and related libraries) built for modern C#. And in August, we achieved that goal after only 2 months of development. That's crazy! Needless to say, 2019 was a very crazy year for me and Silk.NET but this next year is going to be even crazier!
Upcoming releases
In case you're not following the progress of Silk.NET using our progress tracker, we have 1 more preview (Preview 4) planned with an optional follow-up preview (Preview 5) if any bugs are found before the 1.0 release. The Silk Working Group has finalized the dates for the next releases and they are as follows:
- 1.0 Preview 4: Friday 28th February
- 1.0 Preview 5: N.E.T. Friday 24th April (it may release any time before 1.0 if bugs are found)
- 1.0 Full Release: Friday 12th June
- 2.0 Preview 1: Q4 2020/Q1 2021
WHAT? Is that a 1.0 release date announcement?!?! I hear you saying. Yes, yes it is. Only 3 days after our 1st birthday will be the 1st full release of Silk.NET, which we're all very excited about. Silk's philosophy from the start has been rapid evolution in an accelerated timeframe, and we will continue on the path we've paved all the way to 2.0.
Silk.NET 2.0
Silk.NET 2.0 is the next big release after 1.0 (shocker, right?) and will include many awesome features, such as expansion beyond Khronos APIs. We still don't know what'll be in this release ourselves, but this will be our first release targeting .NET 5 exclusively. This is so we aren't held back by the limitations of .NET Standard as we have been a couple of times during the development of 1.0. Current plans include bindings to assimp, DirectX, Metal, and I'm sure we'll come up with more stuff to bind to when the time comes ;)
Project Hedra
Project Hedra is the first commercial project that uses Silk.NET and it's truly beautiful. It's an ambitious open-world, low-poly RPG. Choose your class, explore endless procedurally generated worlds, unlock different skills and complete quests. 2020 truly is starting off strong with a January 24th release date, so be sure to check out its website and/or Steam page.
Closing
This past year has been a great year for Silk.NET and Ultz as a whole, and I'm really excited about what happens over the course of this next year and, heck, over the course of this next decade! Thank you all for joining us on the journey from preview to release, and we can't wait to see what happens next for Silk.NET.
Dylan Perks
Chief Executive at Ultz Limited
Maintainer at the Silk Working Group