What 3d engine?

[JayJay]

Hey guys,
I'm a small indie developer, and I started working on a neat little software demo to be used with the rift devkit when it's available.

I'm currently contemplating what 3d engine I should use for this and I thought some of you might be able to make a good decision here.

AFAIK the only engine that currently has support for the rift is doom 3 bfg edition. I know the doom 3 engine is open source, but I reckon the regular doom3 engine doesn't have rift support built in? What other options do I have at this time? Unity? Source?

[defactoman]

I believe they said they would provide out of the box support in the SDK for Unreal and Unity, of which it's up to you which you prefer. Doom 3 BFG isn't made with the open source Doom 3 engine, but rather incorporates items from their new engine and the source isn't available so at this moment your only known options will be Unreal and Unity.


If be curious if that includes UDK or the non pro version of Unity, but id imagine time will tell on that end.

[Fredz]

Two people have already implemented the distortion correction in their own stereo drivers, so I guess you could go with whatever engine you feel comfortable with and implement this correction yourself. If you've never worked with a 3D engine before you can try Ogre 3D which is very well implemented and has good docs and community support.

[Krenzo]

If you've never worked with a 3D engine before you can try Ogre 3D which is very well implemented and has good docs and community support.

Eh, Ogre 3D is only for rendering and doesn't include other systems that you would expect from a game engine (physics/collision, networking, player movement).

[jis]

I think you should fear these:
- frame-delay latency: some engines, and mostly super optimized engines like Unreal or maybe the CryEngine, add an additionnal frame of latency to be able to parallelize stuff more. The parallelized rendering commands buffer will be sent at the next frame.
- normal input->render latency: no direct input bypass to let the render use the newest input data instead of using the one coming from the beginning of the frame. I think most of the engines will have this issue. Carmack implemented the bypass specially for the Doom3 BFG I heard.
- most engines won't be stereo ready: some of their post-process will show ugly and there will be not optimizations to avoid doing the whole render pipe twice.

If you work with Ogre3D, you will certainly be able to bend the render pipe to what you want. For other engines, I don't know.

[Fredz]

Eh, Ogre 3D is only for rendering and doesn't include other systems that you would expect from a game engine (physics/collision, networking, player movement).

That's why I said "3D engine" and not "game engine", and that was also what the OP asked.

[Krenzo]

Eh, Ogre 3D is only for rendering and doesn't include other systems that you would expect from a game engine (physics/collision, networking, player movement).

That's why I said "3D engine" and not "game engine", and that was also what the OP asked.

He was clearly not asking for just a rendering engine when he mentioned Doom3, Unity, and Source, all game engines.

[Fredz]

title : What 3d engine?
question : I'm currently contemplating what 3d engine I should use [...]
He also didn't say he wanted to implement a game but a "neat little software demo to be used with the rift", in this case he probably doesn't need physics/collision and networking.

But anyway, Ogre 3D can be easily interfaced with other libraries and several wrappers are available for different kind of them, like OIS for input devices.

[JayJay]

Hey guys, thanks a lot for the input, looking into the suggestions now. I"ll show you some work in progress asap

[cybereality]

If you want an all-in-one package then Unity is probably the best option. Hopefully the Rift SDK will support the free version, but we will have to see. I am guessing not, since I think you need the pro version to interface will low-level hardware (like the head-tracking) but just doing the stereo render and warping should be possible with a plug-in.

If you want something that is bare-bones and more flexible, OGRE is a good choice. It is *only* a rendering engine, but there are community add-ons for stuff like physics, stereo rendering, etc. Does have somewhat of a learning curve, but the interface is pretty clean and well thought out. For simple demos its probably enough, but expect to spend more time getting stuff working than you would with Unity.

To be honest, I have spent the last 10 years or so experimenting with various 3D engines and I've just come to the point that I want to develop my own engine from scratch. Kind of tired of always reaching roadblocks with most of the available solutions. I also feel like most engines are way more complicated to use than necessary, and would like to make something simple for beginners. But I would NOT recommend doing this. Unless you have a very specific need for highly custom features, its way more productive to just get something off-the-shelf.

I have also heard good things about the C4 engine, but I've never used it. It is similar to OGRE but more full-featured (closer to a game-engine). Then there is Neo-Axis, which is based on OGRE but integrates a lot of 3rd party libraries for game-like functionality.

Also, I would stay away from Torque. Its sounds good on paper, but the code is really a mess and harder to work with than the other ones I've tried.

Hope that helps.

[JayJay]

If you want an all-in-one package then Unity is probably the best option. Hopefully the Rift SDK will support the free version, but we will have to see. I am guessing not, since I think you need the pro version to interface will low-level hardware (like the head-tracking) but just doing the stereo render and warping should be possible with a plug-in.

If you want something that is bare-bones and more flexible, OGRE is a good choice. It is *only* a rendering engine, but there are community add-ons for stuff like physics, stereo rendering, etc. Does have somewhat of a learning curve, but the interface is pretty clean and well thought out. For simple demos its probably enough, but expect to spend more time getting stuff working than you would with Unity.

To be honest, I have spent the last 10 years or so experimenting with various 3D engines and I've just come to the point that I want to develop my own engine from scratch. Kind of tired of always reaching roadblocks with most of the available solutions. I also feel like most engines are way more complicated to use than necessary, and would like to make something simple for beginners. But I would NOT recommend doing this. Unless you have a very specific need for highly custom features, its way more productive to just get something off-the-shelf.

I have also heard good things about the C4 engine, but I've never used it. It is similar to OGRE but more full-featured (closer to a game-engine). Then there is Neo-Axis, which is based on OGRE but integrates a lot of 3rd party libraries for game-like functionality.

Also, I would stay away from Torque. Its sounds good on paper, but the code is really a mess and harder to work with than the other ones I've tried.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Cyber, that's massively helpful! I was also pondering if Unity free version will support the rift, I have send an inquiry to their support team so as soon as I find out more I'll comment here.

[space123321]

I have zero knowledge of programming however I have downloaded the free of versions of unity and UDK and have had a blast watching the tutorials and playing around with things. I have made a very simple Dactyl Nightmares style game to bringback the memories of my first virtual reality experience. Would love to try something like this out with the Rift!

[cybereality]

@space123321: Very cool man! Dactyl Nightmare was my first experience with VR and still one of the more amazing things I have experienced to date. Before the Rift, I don't think any consumer headsets even came close to what those old Virtuality systems had going. And the whole 360 degree turning and cyberpuck controller, good stuff.

[Fredz]

You can find an implementation of a clone of Dactyl Nightmare here :
http://devilmaster.altervista.org/vnightmare.html

It's based on the Quake 3 engine, so since it's now Open Source adding specific rendering for the Rift shouldn't be too complicated. That's not the most recent engine out there but for something like Dactyl Nightmare it's more than enough.

[anlumo]

If you want an all-in-one package then Unity is probably the best option. Hopefully the Rift SDK will support the free version, but we will have to see. I am guessing not, since I think you need the pro version to interface will low-level hardware (like the head-tracking) but just doing the stereo render and warping should be possible with a plug-in.

Well, the pre-warping usually is done using a fullscreen post-processing shader ("Full-Screen Post-Processing Effects" in the Unity license comparison), which is a Unity Pro feature…

The alternative is to render to a texture, and use a special plane mesh to distort. However, "Render-to-Texture Effects" is also on their list as a Unity Pro feature.

[Chriky]

I currently use DarkGDK because it is easy to use and I have quite a lot of knowledge of it from learning to program back in the day with DarkBASIC. There is a free version out there that works with Visual Studio Express 2008 (also free), but I'm using DarkGDK 2.0 (which is actually a rebranding of an engine called PureGDK) and it costs $30.

I also use DarkBASIC Professional for quick prototyping - that is free (it puts small banner ads in the IDE).

In terms of ease of use scaled by number of features, I haven't found anything better than DarkGDK.