Since the release of LibGDX Version 0.1 back in March 2010, a lot of work has been contributed in order to improve this library. The latest stable release of LibGDX is Version 1.2.0 from June 2014, which we are going to use throughout this book.
Here is a list of features taken from the official website (http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/features.html).
The graphic features are as follows:
Render through OpenGL ES 2.0 on all platforms
Custom OpenGL ES 2.0 bindings for Android 2.0 and higher versions
Low-level OpenGL helpers:
Vertex arrays and vertex buffer objects
Meshes
Textures
Framebuffer objects (GLES 2.0 only)
Shaders, integrating easily with meshes
Immediate mode rendering emulation
Simple shape rendering
Automatic software or hardware mipmap generation
ETC1 support (not available in JavaScript backend)
Automatic handling of OpenGL ES context loss that restores all textures, shaders, and other OpenGL resources
High-level 2D APIs:
Custom CPU side bitmap manipulation library
Orthographic camera
High-performance sprite batching and caching
Texture atlases with whitespace stripping support, which are either generated offline or online
Bitmap fonts (does not support complex scripts such as Arabic or Chinese), which are either generated offline or loaded from TTF files (unsupported in JavaScript backend)
2D particle system
TMX tile map support
2D scene-graph API
2D UI library, based on the scene-graph API, fully skinable
High-level 3D APIs:
The following are the audio features:
Streaming music and sound effect playback for WAV, MP3, and OGG
Direct access to audio device for PCM sample playback and recording (unsupported in JavaScript backend)
The various input features are as follows:
Using abstractions for mouse and touchscreen, keyboard, accelerometer, and compass
The gesture detector that detects taps, panning, flinging, and pinch zooming
The following are the features for the file I/O and storage:
Filesystem abstraction for all platforms
Read-only filesystem emulation for JavaScript backend
Binary file support for JavaScript backend
Preferences for lightweight setting storage
The math and physics features for LibGDX are as follows:
Matrix, vector, and quaternion classes. Matrix and vector operations are accelerated via native C code where possible.
Bounding shapes and volumes.
Frustum class to pick and cull.
Catmull-Rom splines.
Common interpolators.
Intersection and overlap testing.
JNI wrapper for Box2D physics. It is so awesome that other engines use it as well.
JNI wrapper for bullet physics.