[osg-users] OpenSceneGraph for driving simulation framework?

[Jan Ciger]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 3:51 PM, Florian Weidner <osgforum at tevs.eu> wrote:
> Hi Jan,
> afaik it is available freely but you aren't allowed to share source code or applications you developed via arbitrary channels. You have to use the unreal marketplace or the github repository.

That's not what I know. I would love to see a reference to the EULA
part saying this.

>
>
> https://www.unrealengine.com/faq wrote:
>>
>> however the UE4 Editor (including modified versions) and code may only be distributed through official Epic channels (e.g. the UE4 launcher for binaries, and GitHub for source), to users who have accepted the EULA.

Well, ok, but normally you don't ship the Editor to your
clients/users. That's not needed to run applications based on Unreal
Engine.


> https://www.unrealengine.com/faq wrote:
>>
>> You can’t combine the Unreal Engine code with code covered by a “Copyleft” license agreement
>>
>
>
> :( :(
>
> That is, in general not a big issue but I don't like it. Imho publicly funded research should be available freely and without any restrictions. So, I consider the UDK, but would prefer another solution ^^[/quote]


You can use free (LGPL and such) libraries no problem in your plugins.
What you cannot do is to use such libraries with the core code where
it could "infect" it and force Epic to release the source under a more
permissive license. So this usually isn't a big problem in practice
but it depends a lot on what exactly you want to do. Building a
simulator typically doesn't require much hacking in the Unreal Engine
code itself.

I agree with the idea that publicaly funded research should be
available freely and without restrictions, however here you are going
to hit the wall of market realities. There is no fully free/open
source game engine that comes close to the features you are looking
for and that these commercial engines have - hobbyists and volunteers
can do a lot, but it is hard to compete with a well paid and qualified
team of developers working on something like this full time.

There are few free/OSS engines around - Irrlicht, Crystal Space,
Delta3D, Blender Game Engine, Panda3D. Then you have some frameworks
you can use to build a game engine out of - such as OSG, Bullet, ODE,
etc. but that's pretty much it. It will take a lot of time and work to
make a reasonable engine and tools (e.g. editor) out of those
libraries. It certainly is possible, with a lot of effort, though.


J.