What is leadwerks' Engine

I would look at his site, but it seems to be down.

Now I was under the impression that it was a scene engine. However After a couple of replies on another thread it seems that ppl are thinking of it as a 3D engine.

Can anyone whos been using the demo, (or whatever), give a criticle opinion and description of it.
(NOw Im sure Josh wont mind if you say what you like or dont like about it, But I will mind if you just post things like "Its rubbish")

Leadwerks Engine is still in the beta phase. When finished, it will be a complete next-gen engine that will form the basis of my technology for the next five years or so, including 3D World Studio 6.

I think the strengths of the engine are that it integrates perfectly with 3D World Studio, it can be used as a dll or with script, and it features a good occlusion system. The character animation system has not been implemented yet, and it may take a while to do so. I'm still mulling ideas over for that. Also, shaders are not going to be included in the initial release. I'm looking for a new programmer to add, who will just deal with shaders.

Good things:
- Built in Dynamics.
- OpenAL 3D Audio.
- Advanced culling.
- Fully integrated with 3D World Studio.
- Flexible licensing.
- Joshua seems very determined to ensure broad compatibility.

Not so good things:
- Dependant on OpenAL.
- Fully integrated with 3D World Studio.
- Is taking a while.

Overall I'd say that leadwerks' engine is definitely a serious contender and one of the finalists for our research regarding which 3D engine to use for our next project.

Next-gen engine without any shaders?

I've implemented shaders, but I want to release the first version without, to simplify compatibility testing.

Is this game engine a series of library functions that can be called from within blitz 3d or a standalone alternative to blitz?

As I understand it, both. I believe it has it's own scripting laguage (similar to B3d) and can be called from Blitz3D as well.

If I'm wrong, I'm sure Josh will take time from his GDC shmoozing to smack me around. :)

I think it is all very exciting.

Correct me if I'm wrong, thought it's based on OpenGL. If so, it would be pretty impossible to use Blitz3D parallely, at least in 3D mode.

Leadwerks 3D engine is an game engine that is called from an DLL. As such it has all the pros and cons of other similar engines:

+ can be used with almost every programming language
+ you can easily exchange an old engine version with a newer one
- Windows only (though porting *would* be possible)
- need DLL to work (obviously)
- in this case: 3DWS is sold seperately so the engine will probably cost you more than you'll have thought at first