New Features

General performance improvements

• Improved depth computation performance by 20%. Reduced memory usage.
• Improved positional tracking speed by 15%.
• Updated internal SDK architecture to reduce and stabilize overall grab() time. 2.3 will further improve grab() time, especially for applications using depth and positional tracking.

Major update of Unity plugin

• The plugin has been completely refactored to simplify the creation of interactive AR applications.
• Added Spatial Mapping to enable physical interactions with the real-world environment.
• Updated VR Green Screen sample. Improved chroma key, VR controller support, general usability and fixed various bugs.

SDK version detection

• Applications that use the ZED SDK are now able to identify the installed SDK version before loading it.
• When loaded by an executable, the ZED SDK now detects the expected ZED SDK version and self-adapt to ensure runtime compatibility.

External CUDA context

• SDK CUDA context can now be retrieved to allow context sharing within an application.

Gravity orientation estimation

• Real-world gravity orientation can now be estimated after mapping an area.
• The dominant floor plane is extracted from the mesh and its normal is used to estimate the gravity vector.

SDK

Updated Video API

• Improved real-time SVO playback mode. SVO will now always play at their capture frame-rate, not faster.
• Fixed FLIP mode on NVIDIA Jetson boards
• Fixed an issue affecting SVO recording on Linux.

Updated Depth API

• Reduced depth computation time by 20% and improved stability.
• Reduced GPU memory usage by x2 in PERFORMANCE mode.

Updated Positional Tracking API

• Updated positional tracking behaviour. Tracking now always returns a camera pose, even when tracking state is "Searching..." or when saving an area file.
• Fixed tracking reset. Reset tracking no longer freezes the application when calling disable/enable in a row.
• Fixed tracking bug at high velocity. Tracking now correctly returns a pose when moving at high speed.
• Fixed bug in Spatial Memory that would sometimes make the pose jump to an incorrect location.
• Added Camera::saveCurrentArea() function to save an area file without having to disable tracking.

Updated Spatial Mapping API

• Improved Spatial Mapping API stability.
• Added Mesh::getGravityEstimate() to estimate gravity vector using mesh.
• Renamed SpatialMappingParameters::RESOLUTION parameter as MAPPING_RESOLUTION to avoid confusion with sl::RESOLUTION.
• Renamed SpatialMappingParameters::RANGE parameter as MAPPING_RANGE.
• Renamed MeshFilterParameters::FILTER parameter as MESH_FILTER.
• Renamed SpatialMappingParameters::keep_mesh_consistent as use_chunk_only. This parameter allows to disable mesh update and speed up applications which only use chunk lists.
• Renamed SpatialMappingParameters::invert_vertex_order as reverse_vertex_order. This parameter allows to retrieve mesh vertices in clockwise or counterclockwise order.

General SDK changes

• Simplified CMake files by using find_package().
• Added Camera::getZEDSDKBuildVersion() and Camera::getZEDSDKRuntimeVersion() functions to allow SDK version detection at runtime. Applications on Windows are now able to check if a compatible version of the SDK is available before loading the SDK libraries.
• Added InitParameters::sdk_cuda_ctx input to allow context sharing within an application.
• Improved thread safety.
• Improved ZED USB device detection on certain Windows 10 configurations.
• Removed keep_occluded_point parameter in savePointCloudAs(). New behavior is set to keep_occluded_point = false.
• Deprecated independent string conversion functions *2str() in favor of a new universal toString() one.
• Fixed "Corrupted SDK" error message that would sometimes appear when opening the camera.

Plugins

Unity

• Refactored plugin organization and architecture.
• Added Spatial Mapping module to allow physical interactions between the virtual and real-world.
• Improved chroma key in Green Screen sample. Matte edges are now much cleaner and sharper.
• Improved PBS lighting in forward rendering mode.
• Added AR post-processing shaders to enable realistic integration of virtual objects in video.
• Added OpenGL support.
• Added camera loading screen with error reporting.
• Added callbacks reporting the camera status.
• Fixed SVO reading speed when playing back recorded videos in Unity.
• Fixed multithreading issue leading to crashes on computers with low resources.

ROS

• Updated wrapper to ensure compatibility with ZED SDK 2.2.
• Removed X11 dependency to allow usage of remote ROS nodes without display.

MATLAB

• Updated interface to ensure compatibility with ZED SDK 2.2.

Python

• Added new interface to ZED SDK in Python (beta). Available on GitHub.

Samples and Tutorials

• SVO Export sample is now able to save 16-bit images of the depth from an SVO file.
• ZED Depth Viewer: Fixed point cloud rendering and export issues leading to empty files.
• Updated Diagnostic tool.

Dependencies

• Removed X11 on Linux to allow SDK access and control from a remote SSH connection.

Platform Support

• Added support for CUDA 9. Next updates will support CUDA 9 only, which drops support for Fermi cards.
• Added support for JetPack 3.1.

Known Issues

• On certain configurations, VRCompositor in SteamVR can freeze when using HTC Vive and ZED. Disabling Async Reprojection in SteamVR can fix the issue.