has anyone used the Beyond Virtual game engine? is it any good?
their website is at http://www.beyondvirtual.com/
(I hope I’m not being a trator to Blender, but the features in Beyond Virtual are so tempting)
looks kinda nice ill have to give this a whirl
I’ve been following the development of BV for months now and a buddy is already using it. From what I’ve seen and heard the general feedback is it’s a great engine but still lacks a number of features. It should be noted that BV is still in Beta testing and not all of the features that will be in the final version have been released yet. I haven’t bought it because I need shader support for what I’m doing and BV doesn’t support shaders (yet).
I think the big differences between BV and Blender GE at present is that BV seamlessly supports character animations and can import native Maya, LW and .FBX files, so workflow with those apps are better. I’m sure there are other differences, but I’m mostly interested in a particular genre of sim so I haven’t been following everything that closely.
We’ll all be able to learn more about BV in the very near future, they will be releasing a fully functional (except no .exe export) demo version in the next few days.
I’m also looking very seriously at getting Unity, which I’m told is -the- best non-programmer’s game engine. My problem with Unity is that the IDE is Mac only, so I’ll also have to buy a Mac, which doubles the cost. But I’m told it’s worth it.
And yet the third option is to just be patient, there are a number of very cool developments in the wings for Blender. I’m working on a couple projects that need those features -now- and probably can’t wait so I may end up getting Unity in the mean time…
I recently got a windows computer so Unity is out of the question for me right now (I really wish there was a windows version though, it looks really good). I guess I’ll just have to wait for the prieview version of BV, or the Ogre plugin for Blender. (sigh…)
When the OGRE plug-in for blender is finished (I say this whenever someone talks about GE’s functionality), the BGE will be better (in the graphics area, at least) than both Unity and BV.
IMO: Unity being mac dependant doesn’t even put it in the “option” category, when everyone around is still windows based. BV looks good, but it’s somewhat “too” new, and we can only judge and compare it when it moves away from the Beta stage.