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:

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News - LGPL, SSAO demos, White Dune, more (October 30, 2009) :

• The core of our engine is now available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (with "static linking exception"). Basically, this allows using the engine in closed-source programs, as long as you keep open your improvements to the engine.

  I had a long thought before this decision, always and still being a free software fanatic :) I wrote a short summary of my thoughts, click here to read it (hidden by default, as may be boring to most people).

  1. The initial insight is that with strict GPL, potential proprietary users of the engine wouldn't "open" their product just to use our engine. Instead they would move their interest elsewhere. We're not the only free/open VRML/X3D engine out there, neither we're the the only free/open 3d/game engine out there, and everyone else is available under LGPL (or even more permissible licenses).

  2. The common answer to above argument is that "popularity of the engine is not all that matters". LGPL is, ultimately, a permission to make closed-source software.

     The counter-thought to this is that LGPL still protects the freedom of my engine. You still have to share modifications to the engine, so it's not like properietary software can get all the benefits in some "unfair" way.

• Victor Amat implemented demos of Screen Space Ambient Occlusion using our GeneratedShadowMap. The complete examples, with shaders, are available inside our x3d/shadow_maps/ directory in kambi_vrml_test_suite (SVN only right now). Many thanks!

  Be sure to test these examples with view3dscene from nightly builds, as various problems reported by Victor (related to generating shadow maps) were fixed along the way.

  Some demo screenshots are on the right. They show the same view with/and without SSAO. (The comparison is somewhat unfair, as "without SSAO" versions just have GLSL shaders turned off. But the point is that they don't have smooth shadows (occlusion)).

• New White Dune release supports all VRML/X3D extensions of our engine. Thanks go to Joerg "MUFTI" Scheurich.

• Documentation of our "VRML / X3D implementation status" was refactored, each X3D component has now separate page with support details. This should make it easier to read and find needed things. See the SVN documentation here.

• Also, I noticed today that our nightly builds were down for the last 3 weeks. Sorry about that, fixed now.

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

Some of the games below are large and definitely playable, like "The Castle". Some others are just small toys, demos of our engine. I consider them all finished — I like them very much, and I keep them in working and compilable state, but that's it.

• 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.