OGRE

OGRE is a graphics rendering engine developed by Torus Knot Software Ltd. According to the vendor, OGRE is designed to cater to the needs of game developers, simulators developers, educational software developers, interactive art creators, and scientific visualization professionals. It offers cross-platform and cross-language capabilities, supporting multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, OSX, Android, iOS, Javascript, and WinRT. OGRE provides bindings for Python, Java, and C# out of the box to cater to different coding needs.

The vendor states that OGRE is released under the permissive MIT License, allowing users to freely use, modify, and distribute the software. Commercial use is permitted without the need for licensing fees. The engine offers a series of introductory tutorials and official documentation, including the OGRE Manual and API documentation, to help users learn and utilize the engine effectively. Support is available through the OGRE forums, Gitter channel, and wiki, where users can seek assistance and access additional resources.

Rectangular Area Lights: OGRE introduces a new spot light type called LT_RECTLIGHT for rendering rectangular area lights. According to the vendor, the Light::setSourceSize method allows control over the size of the light source, and rectangular area lights can be processed in shaders by verifying the autoparam and accessing the light width and height parameters.

Correct whitespace loading: OGRE addresses historical glyph placement issues caused by incorrect whitespace loading. The vendor claims that OGRE now correctly reads the width of the whitespace character from freetype, improving glyph placement. Loading code-point 32 is necessary to achieve correct whitespace display.

RTSS: support for multiple shadow casting lights: OGRE's shadow mapping SRS now supports multiple shadow casting lights. Additive shadows are implemented by default, with improved performance due to integrated shadows. Modulative shadows are used when per-vertex lighting is enabled.

Extended PBR-material support: OGRE provides built-in support for Physically Based Rendering (PBR) materials via the RTSS. PBR materials can be enabled through material scripts, allowing for realistic rendering. The Assimp Plugin automatically uses the PBR pipeline when encountering PBR maps, facilitating the loading of glTF2 meshes.

Improved Gamepad Support: OGREBites, the GUI system of OGRE, offers improved gamepad support according to the vendor. Gamepad events are correctly delegated to ImGui, allowing control of the UI with a gamepad. Additional gamepad mappings can be specified using a gamecontroller.txt file.

Advanced Rendering Engine: OGRE provides a powerful and flexible rendering engine that supports advanced rendering techniques such as dynamic lighting, shadowing, and post-processing effects.