Hi,
First - Great Engine , good work
I would like to ask how Irrlicht deals with large open enviroments and if anyone has had a serious go at it.. I mean open sea\ocean type enviroments ?
How would Irrlicht handle something like that and is there perhaps a free graphics engine out there that would be more suited ?
OGRE is a very clean engine that comes close to/is on par with graphics engines used in commercial games, BUT it is hard to learn (much harder than IrrLicht), although, it adds much more features/flexibility for this payoff.
I chose IrrLicht because I am not as advanced a programmer and have never worked with 3d so I want something easy and something I can get pretty good results with the first run.
I suggest you look at OGREs demos, AMAZING realtime bump mapping, frensel, water effects and the like with AMAZING FPS--usually around 200 on a high end system but mine got 200 on not so hard operations on on thing like real time bump mapping it got ~60 fps (1.4 GHz, GeForce FX 5200, 256 RAM).
It is hard to set up and takes a lot of knowledge on C++ concepts to use but is well worth it.
I know people who have worked with ORGE and once you get it set up they say it is very nice. It is not a game engine at all (niether is Irrlicht though) and therefore has no built in collision or many other things needed for the game. The good thing is that it is written, in my opinion very well and also have a plugin type architecture and there are a large number of plugins already created that allow you to do a vast amount of things like keyboard input, collision and many others. I have tried to look into setting it up recently and it is a lot of work but with the help of my friends and some patience I got it done.
The thing that I do not like is you have to use there exporter to there model format and it is a pain and often does not work well. That is the main reason I am still using Irrlicht(Other than I just enjoy working in Irrlicht over other engines)
It is a great graphics engine though and I would highly recommend it. I think ist also has some very good water effects, not to say Irrlicht's is bad its not, but there water demo is really really cool!
Yes, comparing IrrLicht and OGRE is almost like apples and oranges. They weren't made with exactly the same purpose and goal.
But yes, VERY difficult to set up and currently you can only set it up in VC++, now, there is a method that works with DevC++ but it does not support the latest version(so no cel shading) and it can't use JPG (have to use PNG or something else) files.
Just to clarify Valkyr. They released a new dev pack w/ v. 0.14.0 which has the exact same features as the other version . Jpg, cel shading, and all
{edit} - I am using ogre now, it was a breeze to set up under vc.net 2k3 and i'm loving it. (and as any chance i get to pimp my screens) you can see some of my shots at my forum. http://centaurforce.sf.net/web/phpBB2/
It is not for the n00b programmer though, it is much harder to learn and it does have its quriks
The Robomaniac
Project Head / Lead Programmer Centaur Force
