Irrlicht vs. Ogre3D

[thr]

This is not a question of "which is better", because I assume both have their strong points, but: I'm starting a semi-serious game project to get a better understanding of GPUs and graphics hardware in general as well as network programming (no, not an MMO - just multiplayer capabilities) above the "web" part of things.

I've been evaluating Ogre3D and Irrlicht for about a week each (I know, not nearly long enough but I can keep on using two engines next to each other if I want to get anywhere), so far I prefer Irrlicht because the components shipped with it seem to have a higher quality (a lot of the plugins for Ogre3D seem to be, abandoned or poorly tested on different versions on the engine, etc.). Irrlicht is also a lot smaller then ogre, compiles faster and has an imho. cleaner API and it seems to give better FPS speeds.

Now to my question - graphics is far from everything, i know - When looking over the different demos/plugins (for example shadows, ppl, etc.) for Irrlicht and Ogre, Ogre seems to render better effects/environments/characters - also especially when looking at the few commercial projects that have been done with each engine the graphic quality of the Ogre projects is a lot higher.

Is this due to ogre supporting more features(ps3.0, etc?) or being a better engine (render wise) or has it to do with the demos/projects created (i.e. there have been more serious projects done in Ogre and they have a higher quality, but nothing is stopping you from doing it in Irrlicht also).

I'm still leaning heavily towards Irrlicht, no matter what the answer is, because I *really* like the API and layout of the engine.

Hope some of you have time to answer my simple question and that you're not to tired of hearing stuff like this.

Thanks in advance
/Fredrik

[jddevnet]

You may want to take a look at this thread:

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... 3d&start=0

Personally, I liked this response to the question of which engine to use....

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).

[JP]

The quality all comes down to the artists really... The irrlicht demos are poor quality as the models and textures are small in size so the download is small, you can get some really nice looking graphics with irrlicht if you have a good artist. Ogre is going to be no different.

I'm pretty sure you can use ps3.0 with irrlicht, i don't know what other features ogre may or may not support...

If you've got a good feeling for irrlicht then i'd suggest going with it as you're likely to do better with it!