OGRE vs Star Citizen

[BohdanKornienko]

What do you guys think? Is it possible to create something like video game Star Citizen (I mean in terms of graphics) using OGRE graphics engine?

Just to get more idea about this game here is a nice presentation from 2016s conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuDj5v81Nd0

[frostbyte]

if you mean with ogres out of the box features then the answer is probably no( would be too slow )
Star Citizen uses "oxside"s render engine which uses a technique called "object space lighting/shading""
ogre currently does not support this technique but you are always welcomed to pull your sleeves and add cool features to ogre (-:
spire project contains an engine agnostic renderer which support "object space shading", it can be a starting point https://github.com/csyonghe/Spire
prev discussion...http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=88764

[dark_sylinc]

Star Citizen is built upon a heavily modified CryEngine, not Oxside's Nitrous engine. AFAIK Star Citizen isn't using object space lighting.

Can you make the graphics look like Star Citizen using Ogre? Yes. Can you do that in 1 month? No.
Star Citizen is a very atypical game, from the technology it uses (had to adapt a game engine built for first person shooters to a planetary engine - interstellar engine; relies heavily on extremely high vertex counts which is atypical for any game, Indie or AAA), the marketing it received, the way it was financed (it received a lot of money via crowdfunding), went from 0 to overblown-AAA in almost an instant. It's also being developed by +300 people.

There's stuff we don't provide out of the box (for example, we don't offer planetary rendering, so you would have to write one yourself or integrate some third party solution). Ogre 2.1 is having a hard time right now with asset streaming and such game would rely heavily on streaming. We have a solution in the works but no ETA yet.

That's not even mentioning what makes a game look good and stand out is aesthetics, not technology.

Furthermore I would refrain from comparing with Star Citizen. The game hasn't been released. The video they've shown was stunning and beautiful, but I could see severe issues (camera problems, physics/controls problems, severe flickering, abysmal FPS drops). We'll have to hold until the game's out. I really wish them the best though. The last thing this industry needs is another overhyped game failing to deliver on launch, which this time would also hit crowdfunding as well.

[BohdanKornienko]

Can you make the graphics look like Star Citizen using Ogre? Yes. Can you do that in 1 month? No.

Thanks that is what exactly I wanted to know. And I fully understand that is huge work to do stuff like that.

Furthermore I would refrain from comparing with Star Citizen. The game hasn't been released. The video they've shown was stunning and beautiful, but I could see severe issues (camera problems, physics/controls problems, severe flickering, abysmal FPS drops). We'll have to hold until the game's out. I really wish them the best though. The last thing this industry needs is another overhyped game failing to deliver on launch, which this time would also hit crowdfunding as well.

Actually they do not have this "release" stuff. You are able to play this game already. Just buy a ship and you are ready to move.
Speaking about camera issues and other things. Yes that is true. There are issues. But the way how this game feels and look like it is really overwhelming and revolutionary.

P.S. Would be nice to hear some more opinions from another experts here

[EricB]

What do you guys think? Is it possible to create something like video game Star Citizen (I mean in terms of graphics) using OGRE graphics engine?

General rule of thumb is any engine capable of displaying more color than the eye can see, at high enough resolution that the picture does not look pixelated, and faster than the brain can process (around 60fps) can make anything you can think or want. It is just a matter of artistic skill and time. You could make Star Citizen with nothing but pre-drawn hand made images. It would just take an impossible amount of time to cover all possible instances. But that's all a computer screen is, even VR headsets. A series of 2d images changed multiple times a second.

I know I sound a bit sarcastic, but these sorts of questions are silly. Your limitations to making pretty graphics is talent, money, and time. Rarely is it ever dependent on what engine you choose.

Now, choosing an engine can however make it easier to make those graphics. But that's not what you're asking.

Thanks that is what exactly I wanted to know. And I fully understand that is huge work to do stuff like that.

Do you really? Budgetary wise, for anything close to SC's graphics, you're looking at roughly $300,000 per year for an artist, shader scripter, and a coder. Let's make the assumption your make a much smaller scope game. Say something really basic space combat sim with 5 levels. You'd expect bare minimum of 3 years of development. Roughly a million dollars. For every extra feature add in another artist. For every extra level add another year or another artist. And for every extra new gameplay mode (walking on planets, cockpit, etc.) add another programmer and another artist or two... So in short, bare minimum 2-3 hour game play space combat sim with same graphics quality as SC = $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 budget minimum.

If you don't have this kind of money, then you won't be able to hit the graphics quality of Star Citizen. Sorry, but it's the truth. You can point to any "free help" you have, but remember, free help is free to leave. Your project will turn into vaporware if your free help isn't capitally invested and doesn't make a return on their investment in a couple of years.

P.S. Would be nice to hear some more opinions from another experts here

My blunt opinion is, if you have to ask, then you shouldn't aim for it. You will fail and your project will most likely turn into vaporware. I don't know the entire makeup of your team, but unless you're paying for the work to be done, then your team will break apart when there is struggle. And there will be lots of struggle as just from programming perspective, you'll need to know advance shaders programming, as well advance c++ programming, and take a couple of years of work to piece together something for your artist to start using. Multiply this for how much larger in scope you're looking to do. As others have mentioned, there is no way to avoid this in Ogre, or any other premade engines...

You should not be aiming to be as good as the top $100million dollar budget game, unless you have $100million dollars or $100million dollars in talent and time.

Look at how many failed wow-killers there have been.

Instead, reduce your scope, and reduce your graphical idealism. Focus on what you have talents with. And then you might actually finish the project.
To give you a real world example, GearCity took about 7 years to make and around $40,000 in artwork. I can't imagine how much time and money it would take for a single programmer to make Star Citizen.