Ogre vs Irrlicht vs C4 vs fill_in_the_blank?

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Ogre vs Irrlicht vs C4 vs fill_in_the_blank?

Post by BryceD »

I have played around with a couple of engines, and wanted to get some opinions on what you guys think, especially people who have used several engines.

I tried out torque advanced but there were issues. It seems like a huge mess and there is no upgrade path.

unity is mac only and the demo I ran was extremely sluggish.

Cipher looks to not be very full featured.

I also looked at a bunch of other indie engine but each of them had some issues.

In short I am trying to settle once and for all and of the commercial ones C4 seems the most likely, but I also want to consider Irrlicht and Ogre, which seem to be the best bets for open source stuff. I looked at jmonkey and crystal space a bit but neither seemed that great,

I have played with C4 a fair amount now and I like it a lot in some ways, not so much in others.


Here is what I like:

1. Good rendering. I have seen some demos tha look great, and the playable demo looks vey good.
2. Good speed. This is obviously important, not sure how it stacks up to ogre and irrlicht, though.
3. Seemingly good tools for scenes. They look complicated, but at least I won't be the one using them.
4. Relatively easy to use. Has pretty clean interfaces. Some quirks so far but nothing horrible.

Now the bad.

1. The sound support is all CPU based and only supports wav, which combined with the size of wav files means I might go to the trouble of replacing it with something else.
2. No real physics. Well this is ok for me mostly. I am making an overhead rpg, not a shooter. Physics might be nice but it's an icing on the cake item for my project.
3. No AI stuff. Again I am not sure that AI would help me any - I will no doubt have to write everything on my own anyhow.
4. No pathfinding. This could be a pain, but due to having a party full of characters, I guess again I will have to come up with a more or less unique solution to get results.
5. The 2D GUI design seems kind of questionable. I am not sure yet whether it's worth making my own widgets or not, or how easy/hard that might be.
6. License and maintenance. I have already paid for an indie license, but having a free license is of course much better. If I ever got a publisher for instance I have to pay for each game and who knows what that will cost? If the engine takes off, maybe a lot. If it doesn't then it might turn into a dead end. Either way, I lose most of my codebase.
7. Only support for one format. Not the greatest because it forces my art guy to do more exporting and tinkering, but he can probably live with ti.
8. There is no actual complete game that's ever been made in C4, and virtual everyone seems to be using it for FPSs, and a lot of the code seems rather geared for that kind of game.
9. CPU bound. I don't know what it's doing. Maybe it's not multithreaded? But on a crappy CPU or if you have a lot of other programs running its controls become terrible. I suspect part of it is the sound driver not being accelerated.

So when I look at C4 versus ogre and irrlicht all I get over them (that is of any use to me) is a sound library that should probably be replaced, and a GUI library that might need replacing too, and some scene tools. Assuming that the rendering and performance are just as good. The scene tools are kind of a big deal, but maybe something is available for ogre? I know there is Irredit but I am not sure how good it is.

So I guess the points I'd really like to know about are:

1. Rendering. Is Ogre really more powerful than Irrlicht in this regard? I haven't seen even one really good demo with Irrlicht, but by the looks of it it's mostly due to crappy art. Without good art it's hard to judge an engine.

2. Performance. Which of the three is likely better? It sounds like maybe Ogre has some more advanced scene culling. C4 is Octree and I guess Irrlicht is Octree and some BSP in places? Is Ogre better here? Will it give me noticbly better performance without excessive extra effort on my part?

3. Are there some tools for Ogre for scenes and such? If not, how difficult would it likely be to roll up something custom? Seems like a lot of work to me. I guess this is the biggest reason C4 or Irrlicht appeal to me over Ogre at this stage of my knowledge of them.

4. Is it easy to use? I mean not like hello world easy being easy (which means nothing at all), but easy in the sense of down the road after I have learned a fair bit are there design quirks and oddities that will seriously trip me up at times? Ultimately, how much of a chore is it to get to the point where I am doing my game specific code and don't have to worry about building an engine any more?

5. Am I missing anything? Even other engines I am not considering? Gotchas of any kind with any of these three platforms?



Thanks for any help. Discussion appreciated. I may not respond a lot because I don't have the knowledge to make educated statements, but I will be avidly checking the thread and perhaps asking more questions.
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Post by xavier »

Instead of waiting, you could do a search (Google box above) for "Irrlicht vs" and look over the past N times this question has come up... ;)
Do you need help? What have you tried?

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Post by BryceD »

well, I have some specific questions, obviously. I am sure if I asked whether ogre sucks or irrlicht sucks I could guess the people using ogre think ogre is better.

I have already been searching on these subjects and mention it right in my post :roll: That is how I have come to formulate these questions. I did not pull the names of Irrlicht and C4 and Ogre out of my ass and then stumble here drunk to type in a forum post by banging random keys. Much as it might look like that - but then you obviously didn't actually read my post based on the speed of your response and the fact you missed all this.
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Re: Ogre vs Irrlicht vs C4 vs fill_in_the_blank?

Post by PolyVox »

I will answer as best as I can...
BryceD wrote:So I guess the points I'd really like to know about are:

1. Rendering. Is Ogre really more powerful than Irrlicht in this regard? I haven't seen even one really good demo with Irrlicht, but by the looks of it it's mostly due to crappy art. Without good art it's hard to judge an engine.
As a graphics engine I think Ogre is probably superior to Irrlicht. I can't really quantify that (as I've never used Irrlicht) but from what I have read both here and elsewhere Ogre is more flexible. In the past there was some situation with Irrlicht not supporting custom vertex formats but that may all be in the past now.
BryceD wrote:2. Performance. Which of the three is likely better? It sounds like maybe Ogre has some more advanced scene culling. C4 is Octree and I guess Irrlicht is Octree and some BSP in places? Is Ogre better here? Will it give me noticbly better performance without excessive extra effort on my part?
I don't know - but I have no reason to believe Ogre is any slower. You always have the option of writing a custom scene manager but i think you're unlikely to need it for your project.
BryceD wrote:3. Are there some tools for Ogre for scenes and such? If not, how difficult would it likely be to roll up something custom? Seems like a lot of work to me. I guess this is the biggest reason C4 or Irrlicht appeal to me over Ogre at this stage of my knowledge of them.
There are many tools in varying stages of maturity. Your best bet is probably to check out oFusion, although it is commercial.

http://www.ofusiontechnologies.com/
BryceD wrote:4. Is it easy to use? I mean not like hello world easy being easy (which means nothing at all), but easy in the sense of down the road after I have learned a fair bit are there design quirks and oddities that will seriously trip me up at times? Ultimately, how much of a chore is it to get to the point where I am doing my game specific code and don't have to worry about building an engine any more?
It's cleanly designed and I've found it easy enough to use. It's also very flexible and extensible.
BryceD wrote:5. Am I missing anything? Even other engines I am not considering? Gotchas of any kind with any of these three platforms?
Yes, the most important thing you must realise is that Ogre is a graphics engine and not a game engine. It will not provide sound, networking, AI, physics, etc. It seems C4 does provide some of these things so bear that in mind.
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Post by twilight17 »

BryceD wrote:Here is what I like:

1. Good rendering. I have seen some demos tha look great, and the playable demo looks vey good.
2. Good speed. This is obviously important, not sure how it stacks up to ogre and irrlicht, though.
3. Seemingly good tools for scenes. They look complicated, but at least I won't be the one using them.
4. Relatively easy to use. Has pretty clean interfaces. Some quirks so far but nothing horrible.

Now the bad.

1. The sound support is all CPU based and only supports wav, which combined with the size of wav files means I might go to the trouble of replacing it with something else.
2. No real physics. Well this is ok for me mostly. I am making an overhead rpg, not a shooter. Physics might be nice but it's an icing on the cake item for my project.
3. No AI stuff. Again I am not sure that AI would help me any - I will no doubt have to write everything on my own anyhow.
4. No pathfinding. This could be a pain, but due to having a party full of characters, I guess again I will have to come up with a more or less unique solution to get results.
5. The 2D GUI design seems kind of questionable. I am not sure yet whether it's worth making my own widgets or not, or how easy/hard that might be.
6. License and maintenance. I have already paid for an indie license, but having a free license is of course much better. If I ever got a publisher for instance I have to pay for each game and who knows what that will cost? If the engine takes off, maybe a lot. If it doesn't then it might turn into a dead end. Either way, I lose most of my codebase.
7. Only support for one format. Not the greatest because it forces my art guy to do more exporting and tinkering, but he can probably live with ti.
8. There is no actual complete game that's ever been made in C4, and virtual everyone seems to be using it for FPSs, and a lot of the code seems rather geared for that kind of game.
9. CPU bound. I don't know what it's doing. Maybe it's not multithreaded? But on a crappy CPU or if you have a lot of other programs running its controls become terrible. I suspect part of it is the sound driver not being accelerated.
Well, TBH I think you should use Irrlicht, it has basically all of the features you need, and it's open source.
GOOD features of Irrlicht:
1. Irrlicht can use FMOD, OpenAL, or IrrKlang, all 3 have great sound features.
2. It has many different physics implementations, There are wrappers for ODE, Newton, and PhysX (the 3 main physics libs)
3. Search the Irrlicht forum for IrrAi or AI.
4. Im pretty sure someone has implemented a path finding addon, search the forums for it.
5. It has an Ok Gui, but you can customize it to your liking.
6.It's open source.
7. a TON of formats, read this: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/features.html
8. a lot of games have been made with Irrlicht - forums have a showcase section
9. I don't think its bad at all.

oh, and the good features of c4, are ALL already in Irrlicht, it has great speed, render capabilities, and etc.
Last edited by twilight17 on Thu Jan 17, 2008 3:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Falagard »

BryceD wrote:well, I have some specific questions, obviously. I am sure if I asked whether ogre sucks or irrlicht sucks I could guess the people using ogre think ogre is better.

I have already been searching on these subjects and mention it right in my post :roll: That is how I have come to formulate these questions. I did not pull the names of Irrlicht and C4 and Ogre out of my ass and then stumble here drunk to type in a forum post by banging random keys. Much as it might look like that - but then you obviously didn't actually read my post based on the speed of your response and the fact you missed all this.
You have specific questions which have been answered before in all the other comparison threads. Usually a comparison thread pops up each week.

Rendering, performance, tools, and ease of learning were your major questions, which are all very common questions answered in those threads.

Check out NeoAxis which is a C# based engine built on top of Ogre, PhysX/ODE, fmod, and includes great tools (the most important thing you should be asking about is the tools).
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Re: Ogre vs Irrlicht vs C4 vs fill_in_the_blank?

Post by haffax »

Beforehand, I have never used C4 and can't say anything about it, but I have used Irrlicht in the past and keep a version of it at hand to see how it develops. SO I feel competent to talk about it.
BryceD wrote: 1. Rendering. Is Ogre really more powerful than Irrlicht in this regard? I haven't seen even one really good demo with Irrlicht, but by the looks of it it's mostly due to crappy art. Without good art it's hard to judge an engine.
In a word: yes. Ogre beats Irrlicht in any regard in that they are not equal.
Irrlicht has three fixed vertex types, 16bit index limit, no hardware buffers, very basic and broken and slow stencil shadows, very limited material system and many other points it is clearly inferior.
Ogre has a free vertex system, 16/32 bit indices, hardware buffers and very flexible and complete and highly optimised shadow support.
There are many more differences, but I can't list them all.
BryceD wrote: 2. Performance. Which of the three is likely better? It sounds like maybe Ogre has some more advanced scene culling. C4 is Octree and I guess Irrlicht is Octree and some BSP in places? Is Ogre better here? Will it give me noticbly better performance without excessive extra effort on my part?
Here it depends, small static scenes are very fast in irrlicht, which may be a bit surprising due to missing hardware buffers, but irrlicht does a lot less house keeping in itself, everything is very straight forward. Performance of animations, at least back when I used it was rather slow, it might have been improved with their new animation system, but without hardware skinning, Ogre will likely beat it here. The shadow is extremely slow in Irrlicht. For bigger and nicer scenes with much geometry and fancy lighting, I guess Ogre will outperform Irrlicht due to its optimisations and the hardware buffers and hardware skinning. But I don't have hard numbers here, so this is just extrapolation.
BryceD wrote: 3. Are there some tools for Ogre for scenes and such? If not, how difficult would it likely be to roll up something custom? Seems like a lot of work to me. I guess this is the biggest reason C4 or Irrlicht appeal to me over Ogre at this stage of my knowledge of them.
IrrEdit is very nice and there is no comparable tool for Ogre so far, though Sinbad is working on one, but I don't know the state. But Ogre has a broadly supported scene format as an addon. DotScene. There are dotscene-exporters for many popular modelling tools, e.g Blender and Max. Also afaik ofusion has its own scene format. In our project we use our own scene format that we derived from dotscene and we have our own exporters for it, the development was quite easy actually with dotscene tools as a head start.
BryceD wrote: 4. Is it easy to use? I mean not like hello world easy being easy (which means nothing at all), but easy in the sense of down the road after I have learned a fair bit are there design quirks and oddities that will seriously trip me up at times? Ultimately, how much of a chore is it to get to the point where I am doing my game specific code and don't have to worry about building an engine any more?
I find Ogre easy, but I consider myself a seasoned developer. So it really depends on how experienced you are. Ogre is complex and so you will have to work yourself into it, unlike Irrlicht which is stupifyingly easy for the start. But in the long run Ogre is easier, simply because Ogre has much more infrastructure to develop your solutions on compared to the bare Irrlicht-API. For instance deviations from standard behavior are very easy in Ogre but hard in Irrlicht. Ogre has many listeners and APIs you can hook into to change behaviour or to simply react on events.
Irrlicht source is very easy to understand and to modify, but it isn't very orthogonal and it houses some (IMHO) poor design decisions, so your changes will likely break other code. Ogre is harder to modify alone because it is so big and complex, but everything concept is neatly abstracted into its own classes and subsystems and once you've seen through it all it becomes easy to extend. Ogre can be extended by using the hooks and base classes provided without modifying Ogre itself, which is not true for Irrlicht in the same degree.


Another thing, you write Irrlicht uses octree culling, but it doesn't quite do so. It has an OctreeSceneNode, but this node only handles its own geometry, it doesn't use the tree for culling of child objects. Ogre's (loose) octree scene manager on the other hand has, in its base version, no geometry in its own it handles, but only culls its child nodes. Derived scene managers can organise their geometry inside the octree, as does the terrain scene manager.
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Post by nullsquared »

I'd say Ogre is superior to Irrlicht for anything mildly advanced.

To a beginner who just "wants stuff on the screen", Irrlicht beats Ogre by far - Ogre's complex materials and setup and everything else scares newbies away.

However, once you get to complicated stuff, Ogre stomps over Irrlicht. Heck, Irrlicht's "main" form of rotations is euler angles. Just look at its matrices and scene nodes and vectors - its simply... horrible, to be blunt. I seriously don't think that a scene node should have a render() function :|

Ogre's lighting and shadowing setup can be very extreme. No - super extreme. And if you don't like it, take it to the upper extreme and integrate your own texture shadows for ultimate flexibility - you provide the shaders, and Ogre automatically arranges all of the textures and lights and renders the scene for you with your shaders, all automatically.

All of Irrlicht's materials are some hardcoded SMaterial crap. I had such an annoying time using that (yes, I switch from Irrlicht to Ogre). Ogre's materials just Make Sense, especially the material scripts.

Irrlicht's community seems to gather in the orders of 20s of people for each project, make gigantic 20-page threads, and by the end of page 21 have... . .... nada. Some simplistic "FPSCamera" moving glitchily around a "level".

I could pretty much go on forever here... To conclude: use Irrlicht for simplistic stuff (to just get "stuff on the screen") - use Ogre for anything "serious" or mildly complex.

... and I don't really think much needs to be said about Ogre's community - it's awesome, 'nuff said ;)

Also, C4 is a game engine, IIRC. Ogre is simply a rendering engine. Irrlicht is supposed to be a rendering engine, too, but it has loose bindings for a bunch of crap that tends to confuse people into thinking of it as a game engine.
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Post by twilight17 »

Well, just to let you know :D ...
If you ask that question on the Irrlicht forum, then you are gonna be told to use Irrlicht lol...

So basically it's up to you.
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Post by MartinBean »

twilight17 wrote:Well, just to let you know :D ...
If you ask that question on the Irrlicht forum, then you are gonna be told to use Irrlicht lol...

So basically it's up to you.
Yeah... but I would like to see their arguments, as compared to the arguments given in this topic.

I think nullsquared made a nice small comparison.
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Post by cybereality »

I've looked at a lot of engines over the years, and honestly Ogre is the best one (unless you are made of money). There are tons of engines that will get a model rotating on the screen, but once you get to a certain point you will always find limitations here and there. C4 is also very worthy from what I have heard, and similar to Ogre in its OO-design. Many other engines are basically just hacked up crap that aren't worth your time although I don't want to name any names <cough>torque</cough>.

Basically here is the deal: Ogre is only a graphic engine. Not a game engine. You need to use external libraries for everything, including sound, input, etc. This is a good thing. There are many open-source libraries available that are professional grade. You can assemble the tools that fit your project. However, this also means that you will spend a lot of time just building the engine before you can actually start working on a game. So you spend more time of the foundation, but after its done it could support basically any feature you can think up. The flexibility is what makes Ogre so great.

I haven't heard of not one person ditching Ogre for another engine. However I'm sure a whole lot of people here came to Ogre because of limitations within other engines.

Here is my super-quick breakdown of all the engines you mentioned (and a couple of others you will probably stumble upon):

Ogre:
+Next-gen graphics, good flexibility, open-source, good documentation, great community.
-Just a graphics engine. Lack of standard tools, editors. May be too difficult for a novice.

Torque:
-Decent graphics, built-in world editor. Fully featured (sound, network, AI). Large community.
-Hacked up spaghetti code of an engine. Unstable builds, lots of quirks. Don't bother.

Unity:
+Next-gen graphics, full featured game engine, best toolset/asset pipeline available, WYSIWYG editor, web plug-in.
-Closed source. IDE only works on OSX, otherwise I'd be using that instead.

Cipher:
+Decent graphics, good animation support, some game engine features.
-Project abandoned, no support or updates for a long time. Forget it.

C4:
+Next-gen graphics, game engine support (sound, physics, network, etc.). A somewhat usable editor. Source available, good documentation/community.
-There were some issues with animation blending, maybe they've been worked out by now.

Irrlicht:
+Decent graphics, long standing community. Standard tools, relatively easy to use.
-I've heard mixed reviews. Tools are weird. Not as flexible as Ogre. Some quirks.

Crystal Space:
+Been around for a while, decent support, good graphics. Game engine features (sound, physics, scripting, etc.). Open-source.
-I've heard good things but none of the demos are particularly impressive.

Nebula 2:
+Awesome graphics, fully featured, supported shaders back in the day. Source available.
-Not much development/support, most of the documentation in German.

Lawmaker:
+Good graphics, WYSIWYG editor, full game engine support (sound, physics, AI, event triggers, networking, scripting, etc.).
-Still under development, some features not complete, closed source. Small community.

So to answer your question, yes Ogre is the best engine bar none. Stop wasting time doubting it and start reading the wiki! :D
Last edited by cybereality on Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:12 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by xavier »

cybereality wrote: Crystal Space:
+Been around for a while, decent support, good graphics. Open-source.
-Just a graphics engine, none of the demos are particularly impressive.
That actually is wrong -- CS is a full game engine, with a toolset (what level of maturity and features the toolset is at, I couldn't say).
Do you need help? What have you tried?

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Post by Halifax »

Woah, woah guys, why don't the people who aren't really experienced with Irrlicht stop speaking! You are clearly slandering the name of Irrlicht.

First for some eye candy of what Irrlicht can do:
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image

I will try not to go short of naming all the features that Irrlicht currently holds.

* Easy to use API (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/tutorials.html)
* Easily extensible through Scene Nodes
* Vertex Buffers are fully functioning!
* Manually deformation of bones is supported!
* LUA and XML bindings
* 32-bit indices are currently being worked on.
* Wrappers for physics engines PhysX, Bullet, ODE, and Newton
* Wrappers for audio engines OpenAL, FMOD, and DirectSound
* Bindings to CG have been added. (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=23676)
* Networking has been built specifically for Irrlicht users (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=18263)
* Easy to use visual GUI Editor (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=18273)
* Irrlicht Engine fork IrrSpintz includes DirectX 10 support

Cool features:
* Irrlicht can run on a PS3 with Linux no problem (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=21473)
* You can use a 360 controller with Irrlicht (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=18090)
* Great, active community.

Great Irrlicht Scene Nodes:
* Clouds (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... php?t=7746)
* Cloth (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=24102)
* Shadow mapping (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=22225)
* Pathfinding scene node that is currently being developed (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... ight=irrai)
* Prey Portals (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=12806)

There are so many more great scene nodes like procedural trees, realistic water rendering, etc., you have to visit the forums!

* Here is a site from one person that has made a hardware raytracer, racing game with physics, fur rendering, toon shader, dynamic glass refraction, hardware skinning, and depth of field (http://sio2.g0dsoft.com/modules/wmpdownloads/)[/b]
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Post by syedhs »

Seriously, I dont think you should just slapped many many screenshots and call it an awesome engine. The screenshots that are in there can be impressive (or not) depending on your modelling skill - yeah, and it speaks nothing of the engine itself. :wink: Many seasoned developers will attest to that.
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Post by Game_Ender »

Ogre has all those things you listed and more. I really don't think you want to turn this into a pissing contest. Both graphics engines have large communities, hence there support for so many other projects.
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Post by cybereality »

xavier wrote:
cybereality wrote: Crystal Space:
+Been around for a while, decent support, good graphics. Open-source.
-Just a graphics engine, none of the demos are particularly impressive.
That actually is wrong -- CS is a full game engine, with a toolset (what level of maturity and features the toolset is at, I couldn't say).
Thanks for the correction (I will edit the post). Not all those engines were evaluated thoroughly, and I haven't looked into CS for years so sorry for that mistake. It appears to be a capable engine, however I'm still not particularly impressed by anything I've seen done with that platform. I just did a quick glance at their website and they still have the same screenshots they did the last time I checked (which was like 2 years ago). Not a good sign.
Last edited by cybereality on Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Kojack »

Let's not start a screenshot war on here. (Argh, fighting the urge to post heaps of them... damn my responsible admin ethics)

But that last irrlicht one... I can't help posting at least one visual response.
Image
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All the examples of Ogre projects you need are here:
http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?set_alb ... _album.php

I started making a point by point response to the irrlicht feature list, then realised it's easier to just list the things in that list which we don't already have. No network addon that I've seen (this is a gfx engine, not a game engine), dx10 isn't finished yet.

I'm not sure if 360 controller support is really much of a feature. Ogre dependencies come with OIS, which can do 360 and wiimote. Plus Xinput (the 360 controller's preferred api) is like the Hello World of input libraries.



I've been going through the irrlicht tutorials porting them to ogre, to provide an example for people migrating from one to the other. So far there's not really that much different about them. The ogre version tends to be a bit longer, but not by much, and I don't believe it's harder to understand. For example, Irrlicht tutorial 1 sets up it's camera with:

Code: Select all

smgr->addCameraSceneNode(0, vector3df(0,30,-40), vector3df(0,5,0));
But in ogre I do:

Code: Select all

Camera *camera = scene_manager->createCamera("PlayerCamera");
camera->setPosition(Vector3(500,120,0));
camera->lookAt(Vector3(0,120,0));
(Pos and direction don't match, because irrlicht's sydney model and ogre's ninja model are different scales)

It also gets a bit bigger because irrlicht has a built in first person camera with keyboard and mouse control. In ogre we do that manually. Not that it's hard, irrlicht's mouse control of a camera can be recreated in ogre using just the following in the main loop:

Code: Select all

mouse->capture();
camera->yaw(Degree(mouse->getMouseState().X.rel*-0.1));
camera->pitch(Degree(mouse->getMouseState().Y.rel*-0.1));
Same for keyboard, not much code.


Or let's look at tutorial 2, which loads a bsp map (I use irrlichts bsp pack file without change).
Not everything in irrlicht is shorter or easier than the ogre version. For example, here's how the tutorial chooses render systems:

Code: Select all

	video::E_DRIVER_TYPE driverType;

	printf("Please select the driver you want for this example:\n"\
		" (a) Direct3D 9.0c\n (b) Direct3D 8.1\n (c) OpenGL 1.5\n"\
		" (d) Software Renderer\n (e) Burning's Software Renderer\n"\
		" (f) NullDevice\n (otherKey) exit\n\n");

	char i;
	std::cin >> i;

	switch(i)
	{
		case 'a': driverType = video::EDT_DIRECT3D9;break;
		case 'b': driverType = video::EDT_DIRECT3D8;break;
		case 'c': driverType = video::EDT_OPENGL;   break;
		case 'd': driverType = video::EDT_SOFTWARE; break;
		case 'e': driverType = video::EDT_BURNINGSVIDEO;break;
		case 'f': driverType = video::EDT_NULL;     break;
		default: return 1;
	}	

	// create device and exit if creation failed

	IrrlichtDevice *device =
		createDevice(driverType, core::dimension2d<s32>(640, 480));
Here's how the Ogre version does it:

Code: Select all

Root *root = new Ogre::Root("plugins.cfg","config.cfg","ogre.log");
	if(!root->showConfigDialog()) 
		return 1;
	RenderWindow *window = root->initialise(true, "Ogre");
Of course you can ignore showconfigdialog and do it all manually.

Irrlicht loading a bsp map:

Code: Select all

scene::IAnimatedMesh* mesh = smgr->getMesh("20kdm2.bsp");
scene::ISceneNode* node = 0;
if (mesh)
   node = smgr->addOctTreeSceneNode(mesh->getMesh(0), 0, -1, 128);
Ogre loading the same map:

Code: Select all

scene_manager->setWorldGeometry("maps/20kdm2.bsp");
I'm not trying to say one is clearly better than the other, but I've found that it seems to be a common belief on other forums that ogre is hard and takes more code. In some cases that's true, but in others it's the opposite.


I guess at least this thread is semi original now, I can't remember any previous comparison threads having irrlicht users post screenshots. :)
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cybereality
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Post by cybereality »

Halifax wrote:Woah, woah guys, why don't the people who aren't really experienced with Irrlicht stop speaking! You are clearly slandering the name of Irrlicht.
First for some eye candy of what Irrlicht can do:
I admittedly haven't used Irrlicht much, but if those are the best shots the engine has to offer, I'm not so sure people here have missed the mark.

Image
Irrlicht

Image
Ogre

You can form your own conclusions. I think the screenshots speak for themselves.
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Kojack
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Post by Kojack »

Of course the look of a game is very dependent on the quality of the art assets and experience of the team making it. So comparisons of unrelated projects aren't always a reliable comparison of engines.

But then again, when posting screenshots of an engine in another engine's forum, expect some response. :)

(Let's not annoy the bandwith limited people with full size pics, imageshack thumbnails would be better if there's much more posted. Although I still think we don't need a screenshot war, this minor skirmish should be enough)
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Post by MartinBean »

Its the same as with the never ending flame war between Windows and Linux. Go for the OS which suits your needs best. Simple as that. We dont use only Windows or only Linux. We use them both, doing stuff they do best.

Each engine has its +'s and -'s. Go for the engine which suits you best. Look at the feature list, if the -'s are not important for you and you get all exited by the +'s then you have found your engine :)
I have not failed... I've just found many ways that wont work
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Post by jjp »

People here should have enough knowledge that posting screenshot proves absolutly nothing about a graphics engine. Especially if there is no information about the hardware it was rendered on and the performance...
Enough is never enough.
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nullsquared
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Post by nullsquared »

Halifax wrote:Woah, woah guys, why don't the people who aren't really experienced with Irrlicht stop speaking! You are clearly slandering the name of Irrlicht.
I'm experienced with Irrlicht. Used it for quite a while before Ogre.
First for some eye candy of what Irrlicht can do:
[...]
Image
Maybe its just me, but... cars do not cast cube shadows :|
I will try not to go short of naming all the features that Irrlicht currently holds.

* Easy to use API (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/tutorials.html)
* Easily extensible through Scene Nodes
I don't think scene nodes are what what should render stuff. I think scene nodes organize a scene.
* Vertex Buffers are fully functioning!
* Manually deformation of bones is supported!
Um. Is that something to be proud of? Ogre has been doing this since... the beginning, am I not right?
* LUA and XML bindings
Kind of hard to bind Ogre's extremely gigantic feature set to Lua or something...
* 32-bit indices are currently being worked on.
Read my other quote.
* Wrappers for physics engines PhysX, Bullet, ODE, and Newton
NxOgre, OgreBullet, OgreODE, OgreNewt.
* Wrappers for audio engines OpenAL, FMOD, and DirectSound
What's there to wrap about an audio library? You load a sound, you play it. Done.
* Bindings to CG have been added. (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=23676)
Ogre supports CG shaders for QUITE a WHILE now. Through its material scripts, too, which is even easier than doing everything by code.
* Networking has been built specifically for Irrlicht users (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=18263)
Not sure what networking has to do with a graphics library.
* Easy to use visual GUI Editor (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=18273)
Meh, for Ogre we get QuickGUI, RBGui, CEGUI, BetaGUI, MyGUI, etc. (sorry if I said etc. for some major library, I don't remember them all :P)
* Irrlicht Engine fork IrrSpintz includes DirectX 10 support
Remember that guy that posts all of the cool demos, like the fur and ray tracing? All done in IrrSpintz. IrrSpintz is a lot more capable and advanced than Irrlicht, and its quite separate from Irrlicht - you can't use its feature set and say "hey, look what Irrlicht can do!"
Cool features:
* Irrlicht can run on a PS3 with Linux no problem (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=21473)
... with its software renderer.
* You can use a 360 controller with Irrlicht (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=18090)
You can use any controller with Ogre, so long as you get the proper input library for it. Including the wiimote.
* Great, active community.
I find Ogre's community a lot more professional.
Great Irrlicht Scene Nodes:
* Clouds (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... php?t=7746)
Game-specific.
Ogre supports additive stencil shadows, modulative stencil shadows, modulative texture shadows, additive texture shadows, and modulative or additive texture shadows that you can directly pull into your shaders for calculations. Give me Irrlicht's argument of THAT.
* Pathfinding scene node that is currently being developed (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... ight=irrai)
Game-specific.
Dare I say it? Never heard of my project, Portalized?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHiNjLbaSNM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwL-nTOD ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsD7AqVT ... re=related
Candy shot: (now you're doing Spanish homework with portals)
Image
(credits go to Peabsnuts123 for the wonderful 3D-fing of the poem)
Yes, it has movable and dynamically sizable portals of any shape. Yes, it uses Ogre :P
There are so many more great scene nodes like procedural trees, realistic water rendering, etc., you have to visit the forums!
Game specific.
* Here is a site from one person that has made a hardware raytracer, racing game with physics, fur rendering, toon shader, dynamic glass refraction, hardware skinning, and depth of field (http://sio2.g0dsoft.com/modules/wmpdownloads/)[/b]
Read what I said above about IrrSpintz.
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Halifax
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Post by Halifax »

Hey I was just providing information that people were discarding when it came to Irrlicht, and they are some key features. I am not proud of anything. I guess I should have summed up that I am an Ogre user, and currently I do agree that Ogre is better than Irrlicht.

And I really don't think there is a need to compare screenshots because obviously Ogre has better ones, mainly due to the fact that more than hobbyists projects have been done. Yes, those are cube shadows due to the fact of the broken stencil buffer support at that time.

Audio wrappers are much more than that. Just for a small taste you could start with occlusion sound, which dissipates as it goes through walls, windows, water, etc. Low-level and high-level effects on the audio, and more. It is not just loading and playing.

And why do you not look at the link correctly! That guy, sio2, did all of those demos in both IrrSpintz and Irrlicht! It was to show that games are easily portable throughtout the two.

Either way, Irrlicht is currently Ogre's little brother, I agree with that. But please, next time, just don't slander Irrlicht's name. At least give it a fair chance, that was all I was doing is giving it a fair chance.

Oh, and don't take this post count wrong. I registered a long time ago, and have browsed all the Ogre topics quite actively, just never posted much.
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Post by MartinBean »

I think proud is something which is in play too. People working on/with Irrlicht are proud on Irrlicht. Same goes for Ogre. That's why topics like these are alway's fun to read ;)
I have not failed... I've just found many ways that wont work
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nullsquared
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Post by nullsquared »

Halifax wrote:Hey I was just providing information that people were discarding when it came to Irrlicht, and they are some key features. I am not proud of anything. I guess I should have summed up that I am an Ogre user, and currently I do agree that Ogre is better than Irrlicht.
Except, most of those "key features" are features any standard 3D engine should have. It's like saying "this awesome 3D sound engine plays 3D sounds!"
And I really don't think there is a need to compare screenshots because obviously Ogre has better ones, mainly due to the fact that more than hobbyists projects have been done.
Community quality + Ogre's feature set.
Yes, those are cube shadows due to the fact of the broken stencil buffer support at that time.
Cube shadows? Oh, you mean it looks like a shadow from a cube. Why does Irrlicht even use the stencil buffer for shadowing? Why not integrate some nice texture shadowing like Ogre? And I really mean "integrate", not "add on and pray it works out right". Sure, lots of people still use stencil buffer shadows, but then again, better to have 1 thing that actually works than 2 things that "somewhat" work.
Audio wrappers are much more than that. Just for a small taste you could start with occlusion sound, which dissipates as it goes through walls, windows, water, etc. Low-level and high-level effects on the audio, and more. It is not just loading and playing.
All easily done in any audio library. Just feed it some geometry. It has nothing to do with the wrapper - any relatively good programmer can easily extract geometry from a mesh in a 3D renderer.
And why do you not look at the link correctly! That guy, sio2, did all of those demos in both IrrSpintz and Irrlicht! It was to show that games are easily portable throughtout the two.
I've been looking at sio2's demos since pretty much the start.
- ray tracing: irrspintz
- motion blur: irrspintz
- island demo: irrspintz
- cat fur: irrspintz
- etc.
He has some neat stuff for Irrlicht, but most of his cool/newer stuff is with IrrSpintz.
Either way, Irrlicht is currently Ogre's little brother, I agree with that. But please, next time, just don't slander Irrlicht's name. At least give it a fair chance, that was all I was doing is giving it a fair chance.
What was I doing? Stating the truth.
Oh, and don't take this post count wrong. I registered a long time ago, and have browsed all the Ogre topics quite actively, just never posted much.
That's nice :|.
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