Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 CTP April Available

Microsoft announces the first Community Technical Preview (CTP) of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008. The preview contains a large number of new features and improvements including items such as:

1. Improved security model with support for Message Level Authorization using Role-based access control allowing to fine-grained control of who can access services and how.

2. Support for LINQ queries in DSSP subscriptions enabling applications to create complex queries that can be executed close to the data source instead of requiring moving data across the network 

3. Support for creating applications that run on multiple DSS nodes using Visual Programming Language and DSS Manifest Editor. This makes it much simpler to create applications that run across nodes, either on the same machine or across the network. When an application containing multiple nodes is to be started, VPL creates individual deploy packages for each node and fires them up across the network.

4. Support for record and playback functionality in Visual Simulation Environment enabling it to record the position and orientation of each entity and save that information to a file which later can be replayed.

5. Support for storing simulation media resources such as texture maps, bitmaps, and mesh files directly as part of the CLR assemblies in the form of embedded resources rather than as external files.

6. New Simulation floor plan editor which allows the user to put together walls, doors, windows, etc. to represent the interior of a room, house, or other building.

You can also check out our detailed description of changes from previous versions.

Please help us making this release better by trying it out and send your comments, suggestions, and bug reports to our MSDN forums.

Henrik