Irrlicht - Fast Realtime 3D Engine

Surye writes "Though a few days late on the release, Irrlicht has released version 0.7 of its engine. The site describes it as 'an open source high performance realtime 3D engine written in C++. It is completely cross-platform, using D3D, OpenGL and its own software renderer, and has all of the state-of-the-art features which can be found in commercial 3d engines.' Bindings for java, perl, ruby, and python, and it is platform independent (only implemented currently on Windows and Linux, but when it moves to other platforms, the code will be completely portable). The feature list is simply amazing, and since it's still being quite actively developed, I can see this becoming a major player soon."

Comments

game applications

[Anonymous Coward]

This is neat and all, but they need to make a complete game with it. Without the game, the engine developers don't really know what game developers need, thus insuring that it's never used in commercial games.

Re:game applications

[nofx_3]

Exactly. A project like this is actual one of those instances where a GPL license might be a bad idea. If both commercial and open-source developers all work on one engine, there are bound to be some contributions from both fronts (all from the open source camp) but there is the benefit that if this engine matures we will have games that are playable on any platform. I don't give a damn about my games being free as in beer, as long as developers are willing to make good games that play on linux I will be happy, even if the code is not open source.

I do think that even commercial developers would give something back to a community that provided them with a free, robust, and mature game engine.

-kaplanfx

Re:game applications

[pmjordan]

That's somewhat true. I've selected Irrlicht for graphics in our project, and although it's better than most other engines out there, it's still a pain to integrate into a game and still make it be replacable.

The problem with all game-oriented graphics engines I've seen is that they do more than it says on the box. They handle input, XML parsing, file handling, etc. and you end up re-implementing a lot of stuff to tie it in with your code unless you let yourself depend completely on the engine in question.

~phil

Re:game applications

[Sunnan]

we will have games that are playable on any platform.

Not unless the game developers provide recompiles for all platforms. The only programs that are truly "platform independent" come with source code.

So how is this engine different?

[dsanfte]

Most open-source 3D engines are undocumented messes thrown together in the spare time of otherwise gainfully-employed graphics programmers.

Ever tried coding with Genesis 3D? The documentation is shit. Take for example the explanation for the "GoEngine" function:

GENESISAPI geBoolean geEngine_Activate(geEngine* Engine, geBoolean bActive);

This seems to have something to do with whether the application is the current Active application.

Yeah, hey guys, it seems to have something to do with something! Let's code with it! For fuck's sakes.

Show me a 3D engine with reasonably documented code and I'll jump at it. Until then, you may have all the features in the world Mr. Engine Programmer, but if I can't pick it up and start doing something meaningful within an hour, you've failed miserably at your primary task: making sure the engine is actually usable.

Will It Last?

[chesp3]

I came across this engine once while looking for a good 3D engine for one of my games. It was great but people are afraid of the "iron fist" developer.

Apparently the engine has only one developer who can supposedly drop the project at anytime. Probably not likely though. Maybe there are more developers now, this was weeks ago.

a gamers POV

[j.a.mcguire]

I'm a gamer and that looks like ass. you'd have thought if the demo was capable of it, they'd have come up with something amazing to demonstrate the engine. It's impressive in what it is, an open source cross-platform engine. But it's certainly not competitive with proprietory engines.

Picture Quality...

[i-Chaos]

I have been following the releases of Irrlicht because I've been looking for a good 3D Engine that's easy to use. The only problem that I've found with the Irrlicht Engine is that things just don't look so good, and have a gritty look to them. I don't know what is the problem, but I haven't seen any "nice" renders of anything using Irrlicht yet. Nothing production quality, anyway.

REAL WORLD: Cost of Engine vs Senior Engineers

[adisakp]

First of all, I work in the REAL WORLD of games development.

That said, $250K is not cheap but it's not an exorbitant cost to license a full graphics engine and tool chain. That's the same order of magnitude cost as Criterion Renderware which many companies license (and is what we use at Midway Games for nearly all of our games including the upcoming Mortal Kombat 6). Of course, with Renderware you can license just the engine (without the tools like Renderware Studio / Physics) or the additional packages you like rather than everything and save some $$$.

You just have to put it in perspective that the engine license typically cost less than 2-3 Senior Engineers for a year. Plus most teams only have a couple really senior graphics guys and they tend to also be the senior system level guys as well. Do you want those guys stuck writing the graphics engine and supporting it for the whole game or do you want them making a better game?

Re:OSS needs this.

[Mskpath3]

Don't count on it. The 'engine' bit of 3d games these days is frankly only the tip of a very very large iceberg when it comes to an actual game. Yes, it's high profile and it attacts the fanboys - but it's a triviality compared to the actual work involved in designing and finishing a fun game. Games are starting to regularly cost $15 million to make with teams of 50-100 people or more. It doesn't matter if you've got the latest and greatest (until 3 months from now) tech - if you don't have the army of artists and their designer and programmer shepherds, you've got bubkus :)

This is not to say you'll -never- see anything. But of all the things you'll ever see 'open source' be viable for, AAA game development is the least likely.

Engines are neat and keen, but over the years, you learn to stifle a yawn whenever the newest thing comes out. 3D engines are all converging on the same thing (data/art driven shader pipelines with snazzy occlusion, streaming, high grade physics, and an assortment of more and more widely known tricks).

Re:Portable 3D Engine

[Mskpath3]

$250k is a pittance in terms of a modern game budget. No, it's not accessible to the average joe programmer. But to a project looking to drop $15+ million on a 3+ year project, if the engine provides what you need and has solid support, it's a no brainer.