why use a cross platform graphics engine?

[hessiess]

why use a cross platform graphics engine, if you are only going to relice on winblows? seems like a big waste of time to me.

[hybrid]

Well, there's nothing which would waste your time. Because the code exists, and you can use it whether you're targeting for cross platform or not.
So since you go for this special property I guess you don't want to use DX right away, but use some graphics engine to abstract away the very basic graphics stuff, right? However, there's not much which would be really different from the general engine's point of view. You might avoid some OS abstraction, but that would mean that you need to learn the OS specific way of handling timers, files, ...
Also, do you mean cross platform in the sense of several OS, or is it already support for DX and OpenGL? Because that abstraction and multi-plattform support is also good for Windows only apps.

[JP]

Yep no waste of time at all...

And you may plan to only release on windows but you might change your mind later and instead of having to recode everything you just recompile it on another OS/GFX Driver and get it working just like that (or at least with much less extra work!)

Why would you choose to only release on windows when there's the opportunity to reach more people on other operating systems/consoles with limited extra work?

[CuteAlien]

As long as the engine is nice to use it doesn't matter if it offers additional features, right? Maybe you want to release on other platforms later on - I mean why do you want to restrict yourself to Windows anyway? Also some people prefer to work on Linux even if the project is released on Windows at the end.

edit: hehe, sorry JP, didn't want to repeat your stuff, same thoughts same time :-)

[rogerborg]

why use a cross platform graphics engine, if you are only going to relice on winblows? seems like a big waste of time to me.

Use != develop.

[hessiess]

I just find it very annoying how some applications like IrrEdit are windows only, and closed source so its imposable to do anything about it. How hard is it to wright cross platform code? Most FOSS applications already achieve this without problems.

[rogerborg]

Niko is a grown up. He has bills to pay. If you want a Lunix version of IrrEdit, pay him money, or write your own.

[Halifax]

It's mostly due to the fact that niko is using a hack to render to the four wxWindows widgets, and probably doesn't want to deal with Linux/Mac/whatever.

As rogerborg said, if you want it, pay him. He gave you Irrlicht, so beggars can't be choosers.

[JP]

You may be interested in checking out Christian Clavet's extended mesh viewer project that he's working on. Basically it's the Mesh Viewer example from the irrlicht SDK but he's added in a huge amount of excellent new features and is still improving it.

It may not have all the features of irrEdit and i'm not entirely sure if it works on Linux or not (though i have a feeling it does, if not then he'll get it working on Linux quicker & cheaper than Niko would get irrEdit working on Linux), but it may help you out.

[Nadro]

I always use a cross platform engines, bacause I like play in game on Linux, (so I like all games based on OpenGL eg. Doom 3 Engine) and some peoples don't have Windows, but Linux or MacOSX and They like play in games sometimes, so developers should will release Linux port for all games based on OpenGL, and prefer OpenGL than DirectX.

[dgrafix]

Personally im most interested in cross platform simply because; windows is nowhere near as nice in comparison with others i use (IMO), yet it is a nescessity because everyone uses it.

So it will be nice to be able to develop on one, and release on the other (or both). This is the main reason i left my other engine and came across to irrlicht
(aside from the fact irrlicht/c++ is massively more powerful ).