Ogre3D or Irrlicht ?

[jamesst20]

Hi !

I''ve been making C++ software for a while now, maybe 4-5 months, but I've never used to make animation or 2D/3D. Now I've a new project which 3D is required. I need to make a Map Editor for minecraft, something like MCEdit (which is made in python).

I was wondering which between Ogre3D or Irrlicht would be the easiest one to learn? Are they equals in methods available?


Thanks you

[hendu]

Irrlicht is much easier to use, ogre has some more plugins. Also depends on your platform, ogre is very Windows-centric and a huge PITA on unix.

[jamesst20]

Alright thanks you I will stay with Irrlicht

[ACE247]

Agreed with hendu, For just using 3D use Irrlicht. For fancy 3D stuff while getting Hemorrhoids use Ogre.
PS: So far I am yet to see anything were Irrlicht or Ogre are really better at, they for different purposes. Irrlicht is meant for Generic 3D whereas Ogre is aimed squarely at Games and little if not nothing else.

[smso]

Also ogre3d needs newer and better GPU to run than irrlicht. I'm in favor of irrlicht since my machine only has a GMA GPU.

Regards,
smso

[jamesst20]

You said Ogre3D was better for video games. Does that mean I can't make some with Irrlicht ? :O

[hendu]

No, of course you can make games with irr.

[ACE247]

Generic 3D is MORE than "aimed squarely at games".

[Kojack]

whereas Ogre is aimed squarely at Games and little if not nothing else.

What exactly is it that makes you think this?

[ACE247]

@Kojack
Its got way too much cr@p built into it that's solely used in games and slows it down.

[Kojack]

That's pretty vague. You say it's aimed at games and nothing else, so what features required by general purpose 3d apps does irrlicht have but ogre is missing? What are these game only features that are slowing it down?

While ogre may be used by games a lot, it absolutely isn't aimed at only games.

[Ethon]

Ogre has the advantage that its codebase is very clean and the developers make an intelligent use of verious design patterns.
Irrlicht is often pretty dirty and not using the STL makes it even worse. But well it, Irrlicht is easy to use and does its job.

[ACE247]

@Ethon, not using STL is great it means it works only with what it needs!
@Kojack you know exactly what I'm talking about with OGRE, once something becomes popular with a certain type of use/crowd its developed more towards it.
But then again neither Irrlicht or Ogre are used for serious Engineering / Scientific purposes. For that i often just see raw OpenGL being used if 3D rendering is needed. So both Irrlicht and Ogre might as well throw all their resources at making it a game engine, if we want to waste time making something that wastes more time.

The main feature Irrlicht has is that its simple and hasn't got tons of fat, so anyone intending to use it for a specific purpose can do so easily, since they are anyway going to extend it with problem specific functionality and only really want it for already doing the 3D part for them.

This brings me towards a point: Does anyone have even a slight fact based idea towards what irrlicht is primarily aimed/ used for? So we having somewhere to develop irrlicht towards. Because I seem to notice that Irrlicht is slowly but surely slipping away to becoming obsolete, with far too small a developer base available to work on the svn.

[Ethon]

@Ethon, not using STL is great it means it works only with what it needs!

Nope. Every major C++ compiler has a good STL-implementation today and ships it by default.
Irrlicht reinvents the wheel and consists of many container/algorithm implementations which are less efficient than the STL counterparts, not to mention that the design is not as good and it's pretty annoying to convert std::strings to Irrlicht-Strings all the time.
If I remember correctly the MeshCache still uses an array and a binary search instead of a RB-Tree/Hashtable, right?

[ACE247]

So what? Irrlicht is old-school, it just works and that's all that counts for it. The design is a heck of a lot better than most new code released today. and the meshcache is not exactly a long winded overhaul if like I said more developers were working on svn level access and actually doing something for the future of irrlicht instead of having forum users nitpicking at it. Besides when irrlicht was first developed few major compilers reliably came with proper STL and Irrlicht hasn't really changed much since.