Irrlicht... or Ogre3D?

twilight17 · Post by **twilight17** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 5:15 pm

Well, I have to decide now which engine to use,
I like how Irrlicht has support for multiple 3d extensions
But I like how Ogre has more Physics wrappers...

So I have no idea which one I should use, so that's why I cam here

Thank you

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 5:26 pm

don't know ogre, though. maybe someone can do a tale-of-the-tape for them.

i saw screenies on ogre gallery and they look pretty good.

Frosty Topaz · Post by **Frosty Topaz** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 6:33 pm

I tried Ogre once. The demos all look very nice. But I found the interface is more complex than Irrlicht and more than I really wanted to deal with.

Ico · Post by **Ico** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 7:32 pm

Imo it's personal preference. Ogre3D offers some more features and might be a little bit more mature but Irrlicht's design is more simple (regarding usability and deployment). For Irrlicht all you'll need is one DLL file (maybe 1 or 2 more if you want extra physics etc.) while Ogre has tons of DLLs and afaik some directory structures you can't or shouldn't change. Not sure on the last one as I never tried it that far.

twilight17 · Post by **twilight17** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:05 pm

Yeah, I tried both, and Irrlicht does have just 1 DLL compared to Ogre's like 10, and you have to have 3 .cfg files with your game, so it gets really bloated...I'll keep messing with both and decide within 3 days... ill let everyone know how this goes

Saturn · Post by **Saturn** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:31 pm

twilight17 wrote:Yeah, I tried both, and Irrlicht does have just 1 DLL compared to Ogre's like 10, and you have to have 3 .cfg files with your game, so it gets really bloated...I'll keep messing with both and decide within 3 days... ill let everyone know how this goes

Not true. How many DLLs depends on what functionality you want to use, minimum are two: ogremain and a rendersystem. And "bloating" has nothing to do with the number of files.
Ogre does not need any config file or any predefined directory structure or anything like this. People who keep saying this just have no clue and you shouldn't listen to them when they tell you about Ogre.

That said: I guess you are a beginner, so just stick with Irrlicht, as it probably is a bit easier for the start and you don't need the flexibility/complexity of Ogre.

bitplane · Post by **bitplane** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:42 pm

My original reason for choosing Irrlicht over Ogre was the license, can't really comment on the functionality because I haven't used Ogre. I've read part of the API docs and downloaded it, and does seem a bit more complicated and it is larger, but I agree it's more mature and has better tools.

Again my main argument was that the things I learn with Irrlicht could one day be used commercially (not just in game and demo projects), I do this just for fun, but couldn't see the sense in investing all my free time learning an LGPL API. Zlib is a better license choice for long term skills investment imo.

Nice to see this thread hasn't developed into a flame war yet! Try to keep it this way folks

twilight17 · Post by **twilight17** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:07 pm

bitplane wrote:My original reason for choosing Irrlicht over Ogre was the license, can't really comment on the functionality because I haven't used Ogre. I've read part of the API docs and downloaded it, and does seem a bit more complicated and it is larger, but I agree it's more mature and has better tools.

Again my main argument was that the things I learn with Irrlicht could one day be used commercially (not just in game and demo projects), I do this just for fun, but couldn't see the sense in investing all my free time learning an LGPL API. Zlib is a better license choice for long term skills investment imo.

Nice to see this thread hasn't developed into a flame war yet! Try to keep it this way folks

Thanks for the info, so you're saying that Irrlicht is free to use in all types of projects? (such as freeware, open source, and commercial?)
and Ogre is just freeware and open source, but I would have to pay for commercial?

Thank you all so far

Saturn · Post by **Saturn** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:25 pm

twilight17 wrote:So you're saying that Irrlicht is free to use in all types of projects? (such as freeware, open source, and commercial?)
and Ogre is just freeware and open source, but I would have to pay for commercial?

LGPL licensed libraries (like Ogre) can be used with commercial projects without paying anyone anything.

The LGPL licensing just means when you modify the library itself, you have to open source these changes too when you release your program, but only these specific changes and not your whole game/application or whatever you write.
When you extend the library by using it (e.g subclassing a class like you would in Irrlicht when you create a new scene node type), then you don't need to open source these changes.

Your modifications of course are still yours, you retain the copyright and can use the code outside the LGPL lib in any way you want without restrictions. In so far, blindside, I don't consider the specific license important for skill investments. In the industry Ogre skills may even be more worth right now than Irrlicht, but it is too specific and low priority to even bother to ponder this really.

Actually the practical importance of the differences is small for most projects. For the individual user of a library zlib is more comfortable, if it is better than LGPL for the sanity of a library project itself is at least debatable.

Ico · Post by **Ico** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:25 pm

Not really:

zlib: Do whatever you want but don't remove any copyright and don't claim it to be your own work.

lgpl: Do whatever you want but if you modify the code that's under this license you have to release the changes to the public.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:26 pm

No, LGPL does not require a different license for commercial tools. It's also not as infectious as GPL in that you can keep your application's source code closed as long as you keep the LGPL code in a separate dll. So you will always have the ogre*.dlls with commercial applications that didn't pay for a purely commercial license (if Ogre has one). You just have to be more careful with the strict separation to not run into problems.

twilight17 · Post by **twilight17** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:35 pm

Oh wow.... well all this now makes my decision even harder.. lol

rogerborg · Post by **rogerborg** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 10:08 pm

Answer: neither.

Don't become reliant on any particular 3rd party library. Keep your master game state under your control (i.e. tell your 3D library where to put things, don't ask it where things are), and abstract them away so that you can switch to another library relatively painlessly.

That said, IMO you'll initially be more productive with Irrlicht. Ultimately though, you may find that you need to switch to Ogre to do things that Irrlicht (currently) can't (e.g. DX10, hardware VBO, 32 bit indexing).

bitplane · Post by **bitplane** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 10:33 pm

You can use Ogre in commercial applications but you have to adhere to the terms of the LGPL, which means you can't static link, you can't build your application around a small part of Ogre.
Irrlicht's code is your code, it's simple and easy to read and has almost no dependencies. You can say "hey that's a nice algorithm, I'll use that" and you don't even have to give credit anywhere but in the source code, which of course you don't have to release if you don't want.
Don't get me wrong, I'm an advocate of software freedom and happily release anything I think others will find useful. I just prefer anarchism to a communist bureaucracy.

Also, I don't really agree with rogerborg about the problems of becoming reliant on a third party library. I don't really want a "third party" library, I want a bunch of useful and easy to read source that I can learn, use, adapt and extend in the way memetic evolution intended

Saturn · Post by **Saturn** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 10:49 pm

bitplane wrote:I want a bunch of useful and easy to read source that I can learn, use, adapt and extend in the way memetic evolution intended

Wow, there is intention in evolution? Tell me more.