Blender 2.48 includes all the work done on the Blender Game Engine and the Apricot Open Game "Yo Frankie!", with much better functioning game logic editing, character animation, and Blender Material based real-time shaders. And as last minute surprise a Bullet physics update with Softbody support.
We also included a lot of new development in this release; Windows 64 bits support, Grease Pencil for sketching annotations, Sun/Sky/Atmosphere rendering, new modifiers, and an improved text editor with Python API support. And last but not least, an enormous list of open bug reports were handled.
October 2008
The Blender.org team
Blender is one of my favorite 3D programs out there. It's free, and extremely powerful! Version 2.48 was a great improvement mostly with the new text editor. Good job Blender!