Free, cross-platform, real-time 3D engines
From FreeGameDevWiki
This list contains free engines, which specialize on real-time 3D rendering, opposed to 3D game engines, which aim to provide complete solutions (sound, networking, physics).
Contents |
General information
| Engine name/link | Active1 | Stable2 | Requirement3 | Description4 | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axiom | Yes | No | Object oriented 3D graphics engine[1] | LGPL | |
| Crystal Space 3D | Yes | Yes | Development kit for realtime 3D graphics | LGPL | |
| Delta3D | Yes | Yes | Fully-featured game engine | LGPL | |
| G3D Engine | Yes | Yes | Commercial-grade 3D engine | BSD | |
| Horde3D | Yes | No | OpenGL 2.0 | Small 3D rendering engine | LGPL |
| Irrlicht Engine | Yes | Yes | High performance realtime 3D engine | ZLIB | |
| jMonkeyEngine | Yes | Yes | High performance scene graph based graphics API[2] | BSD | |
| Lightfeather | Yes | No | 3D Engine for professional programmers | ZLIB | |
| OGRE | Yes | Yes | OpenGL 1.2.1 | Scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine[3] | LGPL |
| OpenSceneGraph | Yes | Yes | High performance 3D graphics toolkit | LGPL | |
| OpenSG | Yes | Yes | Scenegraph system to create realtime graphics programs | LGPL | |
| PySoy | Yes | No | OpenGL 1.4 | Multi-threaded 3d game engine | AGPL |
| Soya 3D | Yes | No | OpenGL 1.2 | Object oriented "high level" 3D engine | GPL |
| Xith3D | Yes | Yes | Modern, feature-rich and fast scenegraph-engine | BSD |
1Development activity (releases, activity in repository) must not be older than one year 2'Stable' releases exist 3Minimal direct rendering ability needed, to run the engine in accelerated/direct/hardware mode 4Description of the project by the development team, no more than seven words
Native and binded languages support
Only languages that have free implementations are listed.
| Engine name/link | Language | .Net | Java | Lua | Perl | Python | Ruby | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axiom | C# | Default | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Crystal Space 3D | C++ | yes | csJava | No | yes | PyCrystal | No | No |
| Delta3D | C++ | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| G3D Engine | C++ | No | No | No | No | No | G3DRuby | No |
| Horde3D | C++ | pyropix | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| jMonkeyEngine | Java | No | Default | No | No | No | No | No |
| Irrlicht Engine | C++ | Irrlicht.NET CP | Bindenlicht, Jirr | IrrLua | No | pyrr, Venom | Irrlicht/Ruby Interface | No |
| Lightfeather | C++ | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| OGRE | C++ | MOGRE, OgreDotNet | ogre4j | Lugre | No | Python-Ogre | Ogre.rb | No |
| OpenSceneGraph | C++ | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| OpenSG | C++ | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| PySoy | Python, Vala | No | via JGIR | No | via Introspection | Default | No | Javascript |
| Soya 3D | Pyrex, Python | No | No | No | No | Default | No | No |
| Xith3D | Java | No | Default | No | No | No | No | No |
Yes means that the language binding is complete for the latest stable release version, Partial means that the binding is incomplete or that it is unknown whether the binding is complete, No means there are no bindings for the language
Other engines
These were not included in the comparisons, as not enough information about them and their capabilities is available.
Attention: The plan is to create a separate article for id-made engines and their derivates.
- Deeplayer 3D
- game engine
- EasyWay
- Java, GPL
- NeoEngine
- GPL
- PLIB
- C++, LGPL
- Quake Engine
- C, QuakeC, GPL
- Quake II Engine (id Tech 2)
- C, GPL
- Quake III Engine (id Tech 3)
- C, GPL
- Raydium
- C, PHP, Python, GPL
- Sylphis3D
- C++, Python, GPL
- Xreal
- C, Based on id Tech3, GPL
- Yage
- D, GPL
About this article
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