The version of 1.6 in the SVN isnt the final release version of irrlicht 1.6. It's more of a "work in progress" version.
If you want to use it...
Go to this site and download tortoisesvn :
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/
Install it, then go into windows explorer and make an empty folder somewhere. call it irrlicht-1.6-svn or whatever you want.
Now go into the folder and right click > TortoiseSVN > Repo Browser
Then a window comes up, in the "URL" write:
https://irrlicht.svn.sourceforge.net/sv ... leases/1.6
Then, it might take a few minutes to load the directory list.
Once it loaded, right click on the "1.6" folder at the left side, press export.
In "export directory", press the [...] button and choose the empty folder you made.
Choose HEAD revision (if not already) and press ok.
In total it will download around 18 megabytes.
After that, you have to compile the engine before you can use it.
Go into the source\Irrlicht\ folder, open up the project that applies to you. For me, I use Visual C++ 2008 Express, which is version 9. So I open up the file "Irrlicht9.0.sln".
Now with the project open, go to the include folder, then IrrCompileConfig.h. You can enable/disable any compile settings here by commenting or uncommenting the definitions. For example, if you will only use DirectX 9 in your game, then you can compile without OpenGL to save some filesize. Personally I don't have the newest DirectX SDK installed so I only compile with openGL (ie. I commented out the definition for compiling with direct x 9)
Anyways.. now just press F7 or go to Build > Build Solution. It will take a few moments but it will make an irrlicht.dll and also put stuff in the lib folder.
Now in your game project, you have to change the includes folder and the lib folder to your new irrlicht 1.6 ones, and also copy the new Irrlicht.dll from the bin\Win32-VisualStudio folder and put it in your game folder.
And I think that's it. Well that's what I did anyways.
