RIP Mogre?

I would like to try work out whether it is worthwhile investing any time in Mogre, before it is announced that the project is dead. It’s not wise to invest time and resource on a project that is not supported and so far from what I can work out, the signs are not looking good.

- The latest stable release of MOGRE is 1.4.8, however the Ogre engine itself now has a stable version of 1.6.3. This gap is pretty significant.

- On the 21 April, Bekas revealed some binaries for testing - note this was not a user-friendly SDK installer but raw binaries, and they are for v1.6.2 so it is already out of date.

- Bekas appears to be the only active Mogre developer, yet he hasnt made a forum post since 19 May 2009.

- The Wiki is now out of date.

I think its a real shame; this project had a lot of promise.

I'm using ogre and I'm not going to stop. In worst case scenario i will learn how to prepare Mogre. Ogre with c# is just too good to stop wrapping it. It speeds up development so much. Also if you know what you are doing you don't need friendly installer.

But still I hope that Mogre do not die before Ogre

Perhaps if you start a proyect using it you can help Mogre to be a bit more active uploading patches to maintain the compatability.

i don't think that mogre will just die like that.

even if the main project is not as active as it used to be, we still have a community around it, and a lot of maintained library (miyagi, caelumsharp, mogrenewt, etc...). i agree that we have a lack of active developer on the project, people dedicated solely to the wrapper. it is the main problem right now .

still, mogre is pretty stable and mature. i use the 1.6.2 version for some times now and i haven't run in any major problem. keep it mind that the current version of ogre (1.6.3) is just a bug fix release, so it is not that hard to update.

i agree with luismesas on the fact that by starting a project with it, you could also contribute to Mogre. IMHO, it's the best rendering engine you could use with .NET, it would be a pity to not use Mogre, just because of a lack of update.

Mogre is a wrapper. Most of the "features" and most of the "support" are specifically from Ogre.

Most people here I don't think know how the Mogre build process works and just take the binaries they are given and in all honesty if there's a problem...it's an Ogre problem, not a Mogre problem.

I've updated to 1.6.3 and posted above. Over the next week or so I'll see what I can do about updating some Mogre wiki stuff and improving the build documentation.

I'm using it for a commercial project. I did quite a lot of research into the best graphics engine / way of meeting our 3D needs, with the only constraint being that it had to be programmed in Java or C#. Mogre came out on top.

Fine, there's not millions of people using it, but the forums are active and the hardcore development is done by the Ogre project (which is very active) and so you only need to have the wrapper maintained for Mogre to continue. Although we weren't looking to get involved in the community, we decided that although there is a risk of the maintainer disappearing (as with all projects), the risk wasn't great and ultimately, if necessary we could take on that task if push came to shove.

The wiki & tutorials probably could have a bit of TLC, but you find quite quickly that you are referring to the Ogre wiki & tutorials if the Mogre ones are lacking. Not ideal, but definitely satisfactory, and I've done virtually no C++. Many things that you will find on Mogre wiki should work even if out of date, as ultimately a lot of Ogre doesn't seem to have changed.

Honestly other than simply C++ syntax versus C# syntax the only things different between programming in Ogre and Mogre are project setup (mainly dealing with the render window) and the different usage of pointers.

The scenegraph and all the math is the same.

There's a good deal difference in programming C# against programming C++
syntax is similar, but the way you do things can be dramatically different.

Undoubtedly yes, but I'm talking in regards to using Ogre you're still using the same math, the same scenegraph, the same entities, mesh, resources, shaders, cameras etc...

And it's relatively easy to translate between C++ Ogre snippets and C# Mogre snippets. Some of the stream and buffer stuff can be a real pain though.

I'm not saying C# and C++ are the same. I'm saying Ogre is MOSTLY the same whether you're using C# or using C++ and translating between the two isn't too difficult.

Ah, I get your point. Apologies.

Thanks for the responses, guys. I think you are right, and perhaps I was been a little bit too negative - I agree that there is no reason why Mogre cant live on, and even though I haven't yet tried it myself, there is always the option of wrapping Ogre myself.

mcaden, thank you for releasing new binaries - this is much appreciated!

NP, hope everything's running smoothly.