Point Grey announced the official release of its FlyCapture 2.0 software development kit (SDK), the next generation of its popular FlyCapture image acquisition and camera control library.

FlyCapture 2.0 is the result of an extensive development and beta testing process that has yielded Point Grey's most stable and feature-rich software package ever. A key feature of the new release is cross-platform support for both 32- and 64-bit Microsoft Windows and Linux Ubuntu operating systems, using a common application programming interface (API).

The SDK's simplified object-oriented interface is designed to make application development faster and easier for software developers, and the new hardware abstraction layer (HAL) enables the seamless connection of any Point Grey FireWire or USB 2.0 camera product to the host system. The HAL will also allow FlyCapture to work with future Point Grey Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 products. Further enhancements include support for new IIDC 1.32 features, such as frame buffering and lookup table functionality, and thunking functionality, which allows applications built using the 32-bit versions of the SDK to communicate with cameras that run on 64-bit operating systems.

"We are very excited to see a significant increase in FlyCapture 2.0 installs over the last couple of months," says Malcolm Steenburgh, Director of Software Development at Point Grey. "They account for more than 30% of all FlyCapture installs over the last couple of months, and the response has been very positive so far, especially when it comes to the overall stability of the new SDK. We have put substantial effort into making the migration from version 1.8 as easy as possible for our users. The numerous source code examples that we have provided in previous releases have been upgraded to the new interface, enabling users to view the parallels between versions."

A translation layer is currently available that allows existing 1.8-based applications to run in the 2.0 interface, and additional documentation for helping developers to migrate their code will be available in Point Grey's online knowledge base by the end of December 2009. An updated version of FlyCapture 2.0 with support for Microsoft Windows 7 is planned for January 2010.

The FlyCapture SDK comes free with every Point Grey camera and provides a common software interface to control all FireWire and USB 2.0 cameras using the same API. FlyCapture supports ActiveX, TWAIN and DirectShow, and includes the FirePRO low-level 1394b interface driver, which enables users to grab images at full 800 Mbit/s transfer rates. A complete software API library, ready-to-use demo programs, and comprehensive source code examples enable users to easily build custom imaging applications. FlyCapture 2.0 is now available for download to all Point Grey users.