Question

Coding a new 3D engine is fascinating but I there are so many out there. Is it sane for a programmer to start a new one? Are there industry sections in need?

Answer 1

There are lots of reasons to build a new 3D engine (in no particular order):

• The old one is a first person shooter, but you want a flight simulator.
• The old one works, but isn’t easy to use or has too many bugs
• Someone else owns the old one
• New hardware feature XYZ is fundamentally incompatible with the old engine
• Someone is paying you to build one
• You’ve never built one before.
• Your game (simulation) only needs χ, but the old engine provides χ, ψ, ζ, α, β, γ, δ, and even π.

I happen to be building an OpenGL-based 3D engine in my off time right now. By implementing it myself, I’m expanding my basic knowledge of OpenGL way more than I would have by programming to someone else’s interface (way more than I did when I implemented my own software affine texture mapped engine years ago). The downside is that I may never finish it 🙂