Horde3D

I have recently been trying out various 3D rendering engines in order to choose one for use in a game that will be written in C++.

From what I have seen of Horde3D in the Wiki, the built samples from the SDK and the tutorials it seems like a very nice engine,
but it also seems like development has ceased and the community is not very active.

My question is, is it worth using Horde3D?
Will development be resumed again at a later date, or is it pretty much dead?

Also, I have seen that a community version of the engine has been started on github.
Would this version be more active, and would it be worth keeping an eye on it to see where it goes, or was it just an idea that hasn't really taken off yet?

I'm still a newbie to a lot of this 3D stuff, but any help would be appreciated.

That really depends on your needs and deadlines. Horde3D provides common rendering features by todays standards required for most of small and indie projects right out of the box with high customization room.


At the moment main developers are busy with professional work, so it's community turn to push forward for time being.


It's supposed to be a sandbox for community members and other interested people, to experiment with new ideas and get feedback. It should make the development and contribution process a lot faster. There is going to be multiple branches of Horde3D with different ideas, and will be merged into Horde3D if interesting. I hope we will see more branches after official announcement and advertising the horde3d-x github repository.

Thank you for your reply, Siavash.

After playing around with Horde3D for the past couple of days I think I will continue to use it.

Before trying out Horde3D the only other 3D rendering engine I considered sticking with was Ogre3D,
but after having read through most of the manual and wiki I have managed to achieve the same results as I had with Ogre3D in much less time.
(Those results being models from blender interacting with terrain through the use of bullet physics)

I also love the fact that the engine itself is so small in size and so simple.
It makes learning about how to use it very simple, even after reading only a few tutorials and wiki pages.

I'm glad to hear that the project isn't actually dead too.
I would love to try and contribute to the project myself, but unfortunately at this time I'm still a newbie to 3D graphics.
Having said that, the fact that the SDK exists on github makes it very easy for me to fork it and play around with it to my hearts content should I want to.