[vworld-tech] Graphics engine question

[Megan Fox]

CrystalSpace3D is an ok engine, but definately take a look at it before you
seriously consider it... something about the way the game engine worked
rubbed me the wrong way, and the structure didn't seem very friendly to user
modification (but this was an early impression, before I abandoned it for
another engine).

OGRE seemed to be purely a rendering engine - which may not be a bad thing
at all, given that you (the original thread starter) had mentioned wanting a
rendering engine.  Somewhat distressing was that I couldn't find anything in
particular that had been done with it, beyond basic beginner demos and very
low-polygon "man in world built of boxes playing a chainsaw noise when you
press the left mouse key with no animation"-type test apps.


Of those out there, I would tend to recommend either Torque or The Nebula
Device
(http://nebuladevice.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Nebula/WebHome)...
and of those two, Nebula Device, because it's the one I really like (and
use), while I've only talked with other folks that happened to have used
Torque.  Torque does have the edge on Nebula with tools, but that may change
in the somewhat near future - really, you should look at both, and see which
engine/etc would suit you best.  If you decide you like Nebula, there is
usually someone in the IRC channel (freenode.net, #nebula) that can help you
with any questions.

-Megan Fox

> There's also some open-source engines out there worth looking at.
> CrystalSpace3D (http://crystal.sourceforge.net) is being used successfully
> on an open-source MMORPG called Planeshift
> (http://www.planeshift.it/). The
> demo looks very respectable. OGRE (http://www.ogre3d.org/) is pretty
> popular, but I don't know of any mainstream commercial projects using it
> yet. I've heard of a few immature projects using an engine called
> NeoEngine
> (http://neoengine.sourceforge.net/) but I'm not sure how mature it is.
>
> As you can expect, most of these open source engines are in a
> constant state
> of flux so you should probably be pretty flexible and forgiving if you
> choose to go this route.