Features
Irrlicht supports 3D rendering via OpenGL, DirectX 8 and 9, and internal software rasterizers. External renderers and windowing systems plug in through simple interfaces, giving rise to community-made SDL, iPhone and SymbianOS devices. The engine comes with a library of standard material renderers, allowing fallback materials where user hardware is unable to handle advanced techniques. New materials can be added to the engine at run-time, allowing users to write their own as required. In addition to legacy fixed-function pipeline materials, programmable Pixel and Vertex Shaders (1.1 to 3.0 and 4.0 using GLSL), ARB Fragment and Vertex Programs, HLSL, Cg and GLSL materials are supported.
Irrlicht supports many file formats. It will load and display 3ds Max files, Quake 2 MD2 Models, Wavefront .obj objects, Quake 3 .bsp maps, Milkshape3D objects, and DirectX .x files. Additional format loaders have been written as external plugins. Lights, cameras and 3D objects are managed as a tree of 'Scene Nodes', arbitrary groupable entities linked together in a scene graph. These nodes are responsible for their own behaviour, but can also be managed by animators, each other, or manually by the user.
A large number of built-in node types exist and can be used together to make complex indoor and outdoor scenes. New nodes are trivial to make and can be added at runtime; many additional node types are available from the community. Node types packaged with Irrlicht include a terrain renderer and sky domes/boxes for outdoor rendering, BSPs for indoor rendering, bone based animated meshes, stencil shadows, billboards and particle systems, water surfaces and primitives.
A skinnable 2D GUI is available, supporting many controls and the ability for users to plug in their own (or community made) custom widgets at runtime. Irrlicht's internal event system provides mouse, keyboard, joystick and GUI events without having to rely on additional libraries.
Filesystem access is abstracted allowing platform-independent file and folder access, and transparent access to files within Zip archives. Other IO features include an XML reader and writer, the ability to take screenshots, manipulate images and meshes and then save them in several different file formats.
Irrlicht's provides support for simple collision detection including mouse picking, but users are advised that this is not intended as a replacement for a full featured physics engine.
Read more about this topic: Irrlicht Engine
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