Kambi VRML game engine

For developers: this is a free/open-source engine. It's main focus is on 3D games using VRML / X3D format (although other 3D model formats are also supported). For more information, documentation and downloads for developers see lower on this page.

For normal human beings: this page is a collection of various games and tools developed using our engine. Two most important programs available here are "The Castle" game and view3dscene 3D model viewer.

Latest update:

RSS

News from SVN - 3D textures, shadow maps, hardware occlusion query and more (May 5, 2009) :

New features implemented last month in our engine:

• 3D textures (full support for X3D Texturing3D component). In particular, ImageTexture3D supports 3D textures in DDS format.
• New extensions to easily make projective texturing and shadow maps within your VRML/X3D worlds.
• Anisotropic texture filtering (by standard X3D TextureProperties.anisotropicDegree field).
• Hardware occlusion query may be activated for rendering, this can speed browsing large scenes enormously. Implemented both the basic method (see GPU Gems 1, Chapter 29) and more involved algorithm Coherent Hierarchical Culling (see GPU Gems 2, Chapter 6). view3dscene has menu options (View -> ... Occlusion Query) to try it all.
• And many other things: fixes and optimizations for GeneratedCubeMapTexture, glViewImage improvements (you no longer have to open files from command-line), S3TC compressed textures (from DDS; usable as textures, also viewable in glViewImage), sorting transparent shapes (for better blending), exit shortcut for view3dscene is Ctrl+W (escape was too error-prone).

For the brave: you can test these features already by trying the nightly builds (or grabbing source code from SVN and compiling yourself, of course).

Comments? Go to vrmlengine-main mailing list or forum.
See also the news archive.

Games below are not extended anymore. They are mainly small toys and demos of the VRML game engine. I like them very much, and I keep them in working and compilable state, but that's it.

• glViewImage — image viewer, handles many image formats (including some exotic ones: DDS, RGBE)
• bezier_curves — plotting rational Bezier curves
• glcaps — output some useful information about OpenGL libraries installed on your system.

Subscribe to vrmlengine-main mailing list. Or go to our forum (you can post without registering, or you can register with your SourceForge account). Any questions, discussion, announcements related to our VRML engine (and related programs like view3dscene) are welcome there.

Submit bugs, feature requests, patches to appropriate tracker.

If you really want to contact the author directly, send email to Michalis Kamburelis.

So, you want to actually see how it all works inside, huh ?

Documentation and sources:

• Kambi VRML game engine — overview and sources for developers
• VRML engine reference (generated by pasdoc)
• VRML engine documentation (more general overview of how the engine works).

More details about VRML format handling:

• Kambi VRML extensions, handled by our engine
• Kambi VRML test suite
• VRML implementation status
• KambiScript, simple scripting language of our engine, usable e.g. in VRML Script nodes
• Kanim (Kambi VRML engine animations) file format
• VRML / X3D time origin considered uncomfortable — a small Michalis' rant about one detail of VRML/X3D specifications, and how we deal with this in our engine.

And some more information, randomly related to the engine and the programs developed with it:

• Wiki of Kambi VRML game engine
• Blender VRML stuff
• Standard command-line options understood by all OpenGL programs
• Notes related to programs using OpenAL
• Command-line options understood by all programs here
• Versioning scheme
• All Windows DLLs used by programs here (622 KB)
• Dependencies on Mac OS X
• kambi_mgf2inv — modified version of the mgf2inv program by Greg Ward, it outputs some additional info about physical material properties (concerning Phong BRDF)
• Programmers may be interested in:
  • Bump mapping techniques quick overview
  • Shading languages (in particular ARB vertex/fragment assembly programs, Cg and mostly GLSL) quick overview
  I wrote these documents when I was learning these techniques myself, they contain some summary and my findings, and links to other useful resources. You can take a look into our engine sources (in kambi_vrml_game_engine/.../examples/... directories, just look at the URLs of these documents) to see practical implementation of all these things.

See also vrmlengine project page on SourceForge.

Nightly builds of vrmlengine binaries are available. These are build automatically every night using current SVN code. Use at your own risk.

For amusement (mostly), you can watch commits to vrmlengine through Kambi VRML game engine on cia.vc.

Copyright Michalis Kamburelis. This page is considered part of documentation of my programs, and you are free to modify and further distribute it on terms of GNU General Public License.

Services for the vrmlengine project provided by

See also vrmlengine project page on SourceForge.