XLE Prototype 3D Rendering Engine looking for feedback/ideas

[davidj]

Hi all!

I wanted to draw your attention to prototype (work in progress) MIT licensed engine, XLE.


(screenshot includes assets from sIBL archive and Paul Tosca)

• Sophisticated rendering solution for PC based games, scaling to the highest demands
• C++ (all post C++11, using modern patterns) with C# tools code
• Focuses on hot button rendering features, such as Physically Based Rendering, Image Based Lighting, dynamic area light sources
• & complex environmental effects such as ocean rendering and volumetric fog
• Intended as a "hackable" engine -- that is, to be modified and extended to meet special case requirements
• Includes many of the same features as high end commercial engines -- but in a modular, repurposable package (with unencumbered MIT license)

XLE is not a "complete solution" engine. It is focused lower level requirements such as scene rendering and asset management. But it's designed to integrate with other solutions.
So, if you have a favourite library for game logic, or physics, or a favourite scene graph library -- these can be combined with XLE in a modular fashion.

XLE integrates and expands upon a GUI solution (ATF) from Sony's game technology group. ATF follows the same philosophy as XLE by providing an excellent core, and allowing for rapid and reliable extensibility. XLE itself demonstrates this philosophy by taking the generic ATF core and extending it to meet specific requirements.

XLE includes a powerful level editor tool and a node based material editor (shown here with a 100% procedural wood shader).



If you're interested in checking it out, there's a precompiled download here:

• Preview download

(also check out the Getting Started docs on that page). It hasn't been extensively tested for compatibility (but fingers crossed for common setups!)

You can see a few preliminary screenshots here!

I would truly appreciate any feedback or ideas from the community (or comments, first impressions, requests, etc, etc...).

These are still early days for XLE, and it's still a work in progress... But current builds should give a sense of the goals of the project.

Github: https://github.com/xlgames-inc/XLE

[oln]

It certainly looks good, and using modern C++ is also interesting. Too bad it's windows only.

[davidj]

Are you more interested in mobile, oln? Or mac/linux?
It seems like there are a number of people working in mobile in this community.

My feeling is that some of the platform abstraction code from another engine (eg, Godot, or another) could be shared with XLE. There's no reason to write it again if it already exists in open source. This could make it easy to get running on mobile... But what makes XLE unique is its rendering techniques, and many of them will be too heavy for mobile for the next few years.

It might be interesting to experiment with, though. Perhaps one day there will be a Vulkan version of XLE, which would allow for greater compatibility.

[rogerdv]

Supporting windows only limits engine usage. Currently, linux and Mac ports are mandatory for most projects. Also, providing mobile support helps developers to use a single tool for all their needs.