TV3D Vs Axiom,Irrlicht.

[ansu832001]

Hello All,Can anybody help in differentiating TV3D and Axiom,Irrlicht.

Axiom and Irrlicht are completely Freeware,they have documentaion available with source Code.Can i get some help on which engine to choose.Plz Help.

Thanks & Regards

[dazkona]

3 post about the same on 3 different forum, sigh...

What do you want to do with the engine?

[EagleEye]

I don't know anything about Irlicht... so let me just address Axiom.

I am a former user of Axiom, back when it was being originally developed by ... I forget his name... but anyway... before it was under the RealmForge banner.

Axiom is merely a port of Ogre from C++ to C# (and thus usable by all .NET languages).  The problem with Axiom is actually two-fold, both of which make it a non-choice for me.

1) It's open source.  Now, nothing against open source projects, but the very nature of the project means you end up relying on other developers to continue its development... not to mention the various add-ons that other developers create.  If you are developing a commercial game/app, you really have to ask yourself: "Do I want to rely on people who are in no way obligated to me?"

2) It's now controlled by the RealmForge crew.  I simply can't express how much that makes Axiom a non-choice for me.  If you look deep in to RealmForge, you will find a project team with high hopes, low skills, horrible code, and FAR too many projects "in development".  These people simply should not be taken seriously.  They want to do FAR too much, and do it all at once.  Their fatal flaw is "feature creep" for their RealmForge project in general... taking on projects that have only a slight connection to their original intent... many of which were embarked on simply because "it seemed cool at the time".

That's my impression of them at least.  I've talked with a few of the leaders of RealmForge, and I came away with an impression of really immature people (like 16 or 17) with big egos and very little to back it up.  I even tried to use RealmForge itself, and found it extremely lacking.  Of course that was 2 or 3 years ago, and it was admittedly an "alpha" (according to them)... but still, a year later their flagship product had hardly changed, because they got distracted by these other projects (such as taking Axiom under their wing).

Now how does that differ from TrueVision?

The TV development team is dedicated to their product... they are an actual company (a registered LLC), who are making this in to their business.  This is not just a hobby to them.  Plus, purchasing a license means they have a certain amount of dedication to you, their customer.  It's not a contractual dedication; merely good business sense.

Also, consider this:  DarqShadow was a developer for Symantec if I'm not mistaken... he's an older gentleman who is a professional, and not just some code kiddie doing things that seem cool.  He's focused, he's professional, and he knows how to make a product life cycle and development plan.

Now if you're looking to just mess around and make some tech demos or do some stuff to learn how to code better, then this really doesn't matter much to you.  However, if you're planning on making an actual commercial game, then there's MUCH to be said for getting a real professional engine, and using one that comes from a real company that is professional, and not merely hobbyists.

Edited to add:  Axiom's original developer was a guy with the handle "Leedguitar"... just remembered it.

[TMichael]

<post moved to here from General area>

Hi Ansu,

Axiom seemed to be a very promising engine, but the lack of community involvement and clear, up to date documentation made me steer clear of it. TV3D has limited documentation at present also, but the tutorials and wiki examples available are more than enough to get you pointed in the right direction, and, in contrast to Axiom, the active community and very responsive development team here can help with any questions you have along the way until the very complete and exampled 6.5 documentation is fully released. Also, you can normally find the answer to almost any TV3D question with a quick forum search.

Irrlicht is just a graphics and rendering engine. It is easier to use at first than Ogre (I think of Ogre as Irrlicht's older, more sophisticated cousin), but it lacks Ogre's rich feature set and still has some game breaking problems. Someone at the Ogre forums said something along these lines which sums it up nicely: "Irrlicht allows you to quickly and easily start your game until you reach the point that you have to switch to Ogre in order to finish it." TV3D is also a glorified graphics engine, but it includes a wider range of game specific functions than does Ogre (like a working input system-- Ogre has to integrate a plugin for these sorts of things).

As far as ease of game development goes, I would rate the above engines as follows: TV3D > Ogre > Irrlicht > Axiom. I know it is a bit like comparing apples to oranges, but from a big picture perspective, that sums it up for me. The only other engine I have seriously considered using besides TV3D is Ogre (and Visual 3D.NET, which is still in closed beta), but Ogre, as far as I can tell, while offering great flexibility, would require more development time than TV3D.

I'm sure there are others here with much more experience than I have using Irrlicht/Ogre/Axiom (such as EagleEye above), so perhaps they can offer you more insight. These are simply my observations based on limited tinkering, and a great deal of research, with all of the engines referenced.

Cheers and Good Luck,
Tim

[ansu832001]

Thanks for Your Help,well iam Completely a NewBie to this and Knows Nothing in this domain and your suggestions did help me a lot.

Thank you all.

[EagleEye]

TV > Ogre > Irrlicht > Axiom?

Naw... switch the last 2...

[TMichael]

TV > Ogre > Irrlicht > Axiom?

Naw... switch the last 2...

Well you have more experience with those two than I do.

Axiom's lack of community support, developer involvement, and documentation (compared to Irrlicht and others) made me drop it to last. I like having either great docs or a great community support (or both) before even considering an engine for use. Just too many red flags I suppose...

[EagleEye]

I hear ya... but in Axiom's defense, they DO have documentation.. but it's for Ogre... seeing as how Axiom is a direct port, the ogre documentation is pretty much appropriate for Axiom as well.

[AriusMyst]

I used OGRE for about 2 months about 8.. maybe 9 months ago. I really liked it. But I had severe issues with the way it handles materials and shaders. I do not like having to write a second script for a shader. I know 6.5 isn't out yet, but its pretty much CTVShader->CreateFromEffectFile(Filename) in 6.5. In OGRE you have to essentially write a   second shader for it. Which just seems absurd to me. There were other issues too - such as TV being bilingual and OGRE not( despite its .NET ports - sorry, but they aren't worth using, lets be honest about this, nobody in the OGRE community cares about anything but C++ ). There were other little foybles that annoyed me. However, despite this, OGRE is a good engine - if you use C++. The trick to anything like this is to test the engines available to you and summise which is best for your needs.

[sciophyte]

hey guys, not trying to hijack thread or push anyone from TV, I dunno if this has been talked about in the comparison forum before, but www.multiverse.net looks promising but it is in very early stages, i've downloaded the beta and it leaves a lot to be desired, i mention this here only because i believe it is built on the axiom engine. The promising things I see with this engine are having massive network code already written for you, the ease of use from the scripting approach (supposedly, i haven't checked out the scripting yet) and the licensing (not sure if this is good for industry standards, but they say it is), major downfall would probably be the limited capabilities in customizing to any other game genre.  anyway, it's just an example of implementation of the axiom engine and thought it somewhat fit in here somewhere.  Perhaps this should be a thread of it's own if anyone has anymore insights pros/cons of this system so far.  I honestly wouldn't give up the flexibilty of TV for this sytem but it could possibly make prototyping easier.

[Hypnotron]

meh, dunno about multiverse but i like their models in the demo.  They are using the ones from rocketbox-libraries

http://www.rocketbox-libraries.com/cs_the_animations.php


too bad they only have those two types (casual characters, western soldiers).  If they had scifi looking soldiers i might be tempted... but they are expensive.. but actually, not that expensive considering how many you get, all textured and with high quality animations.

[tysoe]

Axiom is terribly out of date and hasn't been developed in over a year, its based off of ogre before Ogre 1.1. Must be close to two years old. Ogre is at 1.4 now with 3 major updates and unrecognisable from those early days.

Your better off using Ogre, or MOGRE if you want to use a modern flavour of ogre with C++ or C#

Most people that have played with TV3d, Ogre and irrlicht felt that Irrlicht was missing too many features and was very basic. Most suitable for beginners.

TV3D is easier than Ogre3D and is a complete engine, whilst ogre 3d has more rendering features, but also a more complex API and required you to build your own engine framework.

There are a lot of simple bolt on addons that would enable an experienced coder to get a framework up and running within a couple of weeks.