Question on some outdated material to get started

[PolyGoner]

Hello,

First, I must say I am really pleased to have stumbled across Irrlicht. I've been looking for a 3d graphics library that lets me stay in control with my code, as other engines tend to say "do it our way or else..." So, I'm really excited to get into Irrlicht.

I have some questions though:
1. Your website says Windows 10 is only supported. Is Windows 11 not?
2. Your precompiled dlls for Visual Studio is for Visual Studio 2010. It also reads:
"There are several project files for different VS versions in source/Irrlicht.
Irrlicht10.0.sln is for VS 2010
Irrlicht11.0.sln is for VS 2012
Irrlicht12.0.sln is for VS 2013"
Source: https://github.com/zaki/irrlicht/tree/m ... sualStudio
-- In addition, these paths seem to be outdated, too.

If I didn't know any better, this would back me away from using Irrlicht. I'd be thinking this isn't fit for Visual Studio 2022, which I use. It feels ancient than up to date. Who uses Visual Studio 2013? If I have to build them, I don't know how to do this.

I'm hoping this be all updated so I can plan.

How do I prepare this for Windows 11 / Visual Studio 2022?

[CuteAlien]

Hi!

I've kicked out the version numbers on the website now, no one updates those anyway (as you just noticed...). And it runs on Windows 11 as well (also likely still runs on Windows 98...). Development right now is mostly on Windows 11.

The outdated project files are because we didn't have a release in a decade or so. If you work with Irrlicht svn trunk then there are vc_17.sln files which are the VS 2022 project files. There's a solution file in the examples folder which rebuilds the whole engine + all the examples. And I definitely recommend using the svn trunk version (https://sourceforge.net/p/irrlicht/code/HEAD/tree). Even if there are still a few blockers preventing the 1.9 release it's better than the official 1.8 version in nearly every way (tons of bug-fixes, several new features, performance improvements).

That said - be aware Irrlicht is still based on a 1-2 decade old architecture and most of the development these days is maintenance. So check the examples - those probably show best what you can expect. If that's what you need the engine might be right for you.

edit: Oh, just seen that git repository you linked. I don't know who's repo that is, but it looks like it hasn't been updated in half a decade and it's not related to any of the Irrlicht maintainers. Sorry, but even if you use git yourself (very recommended), the official repository is on svn for now.

[PolyGoner]

Thanks.
I downloaded the link you provided. Edit: I was able to compile them all.

I hope Irrlicht still updates... We need more of these code-first engines that allow for pure C++ projects. I got tired of a popular game engine forcing me to change all my code to fit their way. I miss the code-only ways, it had more control, especially for smaller to medium projects. I'll compare this with another and go from there. Thanks for the help.

[CuteAlien]

I still use Irrlicht myself (mostly architecture stuff, rarely games these days), so svn still gets updates once in a while. And every bug-report is checked. But I kinda care more about stability than about features most of the time. And aside from me there's only Thomas doing a big improvement to the Burnings Software renderer once per year or so. And Yoran keeping our website alive.

So nothing to worry about maintenance. But serious lack of modern formats (fbx, gltf). No PBR build-in. Very little shaders (a bit better if you add XEffects). Engine code shows it was build around the fixed function pipeline (D3D9 and older OpenGL). And the animation system is rather rudimentary and far behind more modern engines - especially when it comes to animation blending features. So as I said... it depends on what you need. If it does what you need it's very nice to use and I love using it for small projects. But if not - you might have to put in quite some work.

[n00bc0de]

But serious lack of modern formats (fbx, gltf).

Someone on the Minetest project seems to have been working on GLTF support already. I was planning on integrating it into my project so I can let you know how it goes. Even if it does work really well, I personally don't think it would be a good idea to add it to base irrlicht but rather as an extension since it has external dependencies and irrlicht's biggest strength over other libraries like Ogre or Horde is in how easy it is to build and tinker with.

Here is the repo I was pulling the GLTF stuff from: https://github.com/jordan4ibanez/irrlic ... s-animated

It uses the same license as the irrlicht engine so we should be able to add it to extensions.

[CuteAlien]

Thanks for the info. And no worries, I'm also not keen on adding more dependencies.
I'm also aware that Skylicht engine has for example a PBR implementation (although annoyingly they switched to MIT license). But haven't checked yet how well it works in real scenes (I also have another PBR implementation for Irrlicht which I wrote for a company, but not happy with it yet).