So, OGRE just became awesome.
They've been working on integration of high performance PBS (Physically Based Shading) graphics enhancement for a while and it looks like it just paid off! See here: http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 6&p=516099
More PBS based magic: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=149706
For ages I was looking forward to OpenMW porting to OGRE 2 and getting a chunk of performance and shiny shaders from it. Sadly it turns out OGRE still has a lot of problems.
I initially had misgivings about porting to OpenSceneGraph, but after reading Scrawl's blog on the topic, it looks like the way to go on the grounds of simplicity, portability and feature-completeness. I imagine OSG's performance will begin to catch up with ogre 2.1 with the advent of DX12/Vulcan as well. Shame we'll miss out on PBS in OpenMW (proper shiny metal swords!), but it's not like we won't be able to code it into OSG if we really want to.
(Yes, I'm new. Long time lurker, first time poster. You guys are awesome and I'm amazed how far this project has come!)
OGRE PBS Awesomeness
Re: OGRE PBS Awesomeness
My personal thoughts on PBS are, while awesome for new games, it's going to be unusable for Morrowind, for a long, long time (that is, until modders have overhauled all assets in the game).
With the vanilla game files you can't even enable something as per-pixel lighting without causing odd lighting in some corners, where they are using negative lights to achieve occlusion. That depends heavily on the per-vertex lighting to look acceptable, with pixel lighting it just looks like a black dot.
Adding fresnel and image based lighting to everything, as PBS demands, looks awfully bad on models that do not have high quality normals, and MW's models certainly don't.
Lastly, you would have to redefine lighting settings for each cell, because a term like "ambient" does not even exist with PBS, at least not with the implementation Ogre is using now.
With the vanilla game files you can't even enable something as per-pixel lighting without causing odd lighting in some corners, where they are using negative lights to achieve occlusion. That depends heavily on the per-vertex lighting to look acceptable, with pixel lighting it just looks like a black dot.
Adding fresnel and image based lighting to everything, as PBS demands, looks awfully bad on models that do not have high quality normals, and MW's models certainly don't.
Lastly, you would have to redefine lighting settings for each cell, because a term like "ambient" does not even exist with PBS, at least not with the implementation Ogre is using now.
Re: OGRE PBS Awesomeness
Thanks for responding to this!
I really appreciate your work on OpenMW and integrating OpenSceneGraph. Behind you all the way!
I donated on your blog too. 
Well, modders aren't going to start making PBS assets until the engine supports them. It's a catch 22... But, like you say, there are technical problems with having both kinds of assets in the game at once, which would probably need a lot of work/dirty hacks to get to function. Not to mention Patchwork Morrowind while people work on replacing stuff. I guess we're better off with a system that actually works and is easily portable.it's going to be unusable for Morrowind, for a long, long time (that is, until modders have overhauled all assets in the game).
I really appreciate your work on OpenMW and integrating OpenSceneGraph. Behind you all the way!
I donated on your blog too.