Irrlicht Engine – a cross-platform realtime 3D engine

The Irrlicht Engine supports 5 rendering APIs, which are 4 more than most other 3D engines do: Direct3D 9.0 OpenGL 1.2-4.x The Irrlicht Engine software renderer . . The Burningsvideo Software Renderer A null device. When using the Irrlicht engine, the programmer needs not know, which API the engine is using, it is totally abstracted. He only needs to tell the engine which API the engine should prefer. There are three reasons why the engine not only focuses on one API: Performance . Some graphic adapters are optimized for OpenGL, some simply run faster with Direct3D. . Some graphic adapters are optimized for OpenGL, some simply run faster with Direct3D. Platform independence . Direct3D will not be present on a Mac or a Linux Workstation, while maybe OpenGL will. And when OpenGL is not available either, there are still the Irrlicht Engine software renderers, which will always operate on any platform. In this way, the user will see something on the screen for sure. . Direct3D will not be present on a Mac or a Linux Workstation, while maybe OpenGL will. And when OpenGL is not available either, there are still the Irrlicht Engine software renderers, which will always operate on any platform. In this way, the user will see something on the screen for sure. Driver problems, which are a common problem a user encounters when using 3D software. There are thousands of hardware configurations out there, and often games and 3D applications are crashing, because there is an old driver installed. Letting the user switch the driver might solve the problem.