User Survey 2011

Ogre3D presents

User Survey 2011

conducted August 2011 published November 2011 by the Ogre3D team www.ogre3d.org

This survey was conducted to collect some information about the nature of the Ogre user base and the utilization of the engine. It therefore offers a means to get an impression how Ogre3D is used and which platforms and tools it is most commonly used with. Additionally, this survey serves as a guide for the Ogre3D Team to identify weak points and hence help it to decide on future developments.

The survey was conducted throughout the month of August 2011 and was advertised on the Ogre3D homepage (www.ogre3d.org) as well as in the Ogre3D forums (www.ogre3d.org/forums) to get as many community members to participate as possible, in order to get a reliable and representative result. In the end we received 1020 responses of which 875 result sets contained answers to all 20 questions and respectively 145 which covered only a proportion of the questions.

In order for the results to be comparable to the previous Ogre3D User Survey conducted in 2008, this year’s survey also included those questions from 2008 (questions 1 to 5). The results of the previous survey are also incorporated in this report to simplify comparison, which is easily possible due to a similar number of responses in both surveys (1034 in 2008).

We, the Ogre3D Team, would also like to use this report as an opportunity to say “Thank you!” to all the participants of this survey as well as the whole Ogre3D Community in general for their active involvement in the forums and the wiki. After all it is the combination of the skilled and dedicated Ogre3D developers / contributors and the highly motivated and supportive forum members that sum up to the great experience that using and working with the Ogre3D engine is!

So “Thank You!” to everyone involved!

Your Ogre3D Team

Q1: In which sector are you using Ogre?

Note: Multiple answers per person were possible.

Results 2011: In which sector are you using Ogre? 600 529 500 Government 406 400 Academic / Scientific Commercial (closed source) 300 273 Commercial (FOSS)

200 151 Hobby / Student (commercial later) Hobby / Student (non-commercial) 100 49 16 0

Results 2008: In which sector are you using Ogre? 400 352 350 306 300 Government 246 Academic / Scientific 250 Commercial (closed source) 200 Commercial (FOSS) 150 Hobby / Student (commercial later) 100 73 Hobby / Student (non-commercial) 52 50 5 0

Q2: For which application types do you use Ogre?

Note: Multiple answers per person were possible.

Results 2011: For which application types do you use Ogre?

23 169 Games Training / Education 193 Simulation Public Works 25 30 854 Research 48 Architectural Industrial 139 embedded 16 Tools Virtual World 288 Other 141

Results 2008: For which application types do you use Ogre?

21 62 Games

103 Training / Education Simulation 0 21 Public Works

41 465 Research Architectural 62 Industrial

31 embedded Tools Virtual World 155 Other 72

Side-by-side comparison 2011 vs. 2008: For which application types do you use Ogre?

900 854

800 Games 700 Training / Education Simulation 600 Public Works 500 465 Research Architectural 400 Industrial 288 300 embedded 193 Tools 200 169 155 141 139 Virtual World 103 100 72 62 62 Other 48 41 30 25 23 31 21 21 16 0 0 2011 2008

Optional input of respondents who flagged “Other”: • Advertising • Augmented Reality (2x) • Civil Engineering • Computer vision • Entertainment • Hardware diagnostics • Media Player (3x) • Mobile • Photo presentation • Prototypes • Real time broadcast graphics • Robotics • Video (2x) • Video post-production • Virtual Reality simulator • Visualization (2x) • Weather presentation

Q3: Years of experience with Ogre

Note: This question was slightly expanded compared to 2008, so a direct comparison is not possible.

Results 2011: Years of experience with Ogre 350 327

300 269 250 1 year 200 177 1-2 years 3-4 years 150 120 > 4 years 100

Results 2008: Years of experience with Ogre 500 436 450 400 350 305 289 300 1 year 250 1-2 years 200 > 2 years 150 100 50 0

Q4: Size of team using Ogre

Results 2011: Size of team using Ogre

600 562

500

400 1 329 2 - 5 300 6 - 10 11 - 30 200 > 31

100 42 17 5 0

Results 2008: Size of team using Ogre 600

490 500

409 400 1 2 - 5 300 6 - 10 11 - 30 200 > 31

100 82 36 17 0

Q5: Organization size

Results 2011: Organizaton size 500

450 436

400 1 350 2 - 10 300 274 11 - 30 250 31 - 50

200 51 - 100

150 101 - 1000 > 1001 100 65 50 25 27 23 19 0

Results 2008: Organizaton size 500 448 450

400 376 1 350 2 - 10 300 11 - 30 250 31 - 50

200 51 - 100

150 101 - 1000 99 > 1001 100

50 27 26 26 27

Q6: Which OS are you developing on?

Note: Multiple answers per person were possible.

Results 2011: Which OS are you developing on? 700 644

600

500 Microsoft Windows: XP or below

400 375 Microsoft Windows: Vista or above Linux 290 300 Apple Mac OS X Other 200 159

100 17 0

Optional input of respondents who flagged “Other” [excerpt]*: • Android (4x) • FreeBSD (3x) • iOS (4x) • Windows 7 (3x) • Windows CE 6 • …

* Only a proportion of the data is listed here, since some participants seem to have misinterpreted the question and answered for which OS they develop rathern than which OS they use to run their IDE. This might also apply to the listed responses.

Q7: Which IDE are you using?

Note: Multiple answers per person were possible.

Results 2011: Which IDE are you using? 700 664

600 Microsoft Visual Studio

500 Apple Xcode Eclipse 400 Code::Blocks KDevelop 300 NetBeans 200 142 QtCreator 130 124 88 98 Other 100 44 42

Optional input of respondents who flagged “Other” [excerpt]*: • Bluesfish (2x) • Codelite (8x) • DevC++ (2x) • Editor (4x) • Emacs (14x) • Geany (7x) • Gedit (5x) • Kate (3x) • MonoDevelop (3x) • Notepad++ (4x) • SciTE (2x) • Vim (25x) • …

* Only a proportion of the data, namely entries that appeared at least two times.

Q8: For which platforms are you developing with Ogre?

Note: Multiple answers per person were possible.

Results 2011: For which platforms are you developing with Ogre? 800 755 Microsoft Windows: XP or below 700 Microsoft Windows: Vista or above 600 525 Apple Mac OS X 500 Android powered mobile device Apple iOS 400 Sony Playstation 3 300 231 230 Microsoft XBox 360 200 Other kind of Computer 118 98 Other kind of Mobile device 100 25 32 28 15 Other kind of Games console 0

Q9: For which OS are you developing with Ogre?

Note: Multiple answers per person were possible.

Results 2011: For which OS are you developing with Ogre? 800 756

700

600 Microsoft Windows: XP or below 523 Microsoft Windows: Vista or above 500 436 Linux 400 Apple Mac OS X Apple iOS 300 235 Android 200 Other 105 92 100 11 0

Optional input of respondents who flagged “Other” [excerpt]: • Any OS which can run Java • Attempting Xbox and BlackBerry • FreeBSD (3x) • Meego • …

Q10: What configuration of builds for your applications are you using? Note: Multiple answers per person were possible.

Results 2011: What configuration of builds for your applications are you using? 450 397 403 400

350

300 32-bit only 250 64-bit only 200 32 and 64-bit 150

100 70 50

Q11: Preferred shader language

Results 2011: Preferred shader language 300 272

250

200 185 CG HLSL 150 131 131 GLSL None / I do not use shaders 100

Q12: Preferred Render System (if you have a choice)

Results 2011: Preferred Render System (if you have a choice)

400 371

350

300 258 Direct3D 9 250 Direct3D 11 200 OpenGL OpenGL ES 1.x 150 121 OpenGL ES 2 100 43 50 10 0

Q13: Main programming language in conjunction with Ogre

Results 2011: Main programming language in conjunction with Ogre 900 775 800 C 700 C++ 600 C# 500 Java 400 Python

300 Ruby

200 objective-C 59 Other 100 25 14 7 0 10 11 0

Optional input of respondents who flagged “Other”: • BASIC • Common Lisp • erlang • FreePascal • Javascript • Lua (2x) • PHP • PUREBASIC • VB.NET

Q14: Primary modeling tool

Results 2011: Primary modeling tool 500 Blender 450 433 Maya 400 3D Max 350 Wings3D

300 LightWave TrueSpace 250 237 Softimage/XSI 200 Google Sketchup 150 Cinema 4D 92 100 Cheetah 3D 60 Don’t do any modeling myself 50 18 11 6 1 3 12 6 2 Other 0

Optional input of respondents who flagged “Other”: • 3DCrafter/3DCanvas • AC3D (2x) • DAZ Studio • DeleD • Houdini • Luxology modo (2x) • Milkshape3D (3x) • My own molecular dynamics C++ code • Not just one • Only few manual meshes • Own tools • Procedural geometry • Silo • ZBrush

Q15: Which GUI library do you use the most with Ogre?

Results 2011: Which GUI library do you use the most with Ogre? 300 274 CEGUI 250 MyGUI Hikari 200 173 Navi 144 QuickGUI 150 buttonGUI 94 BetaGUI 100 Gorilla

50 39 Note at all 27 Other 4 6 4 2 0

Optional input of respondents who flagged “Other” [excerpt]: • Awesonium (2x) • Berkelium (2x) • Canvas • Custom made / in-house (23x) • Flash • Gtk • MFC • JoyUI • libRocket (7x) • Lugre • Miyagi (7x) • Ogre SDKTrays (7x) • Nifty GUI • Ogre Overlays (2x) • QT (19x) • WPF (2x) • wxWidgets (4x) • …

Q16: Which Ogre physics wrapper do you use the most?

Results 2011: Which Ogre physics wrapper do you use the most? 250

200 193 193 OgreNewt NxOgre OgreODE 150 132 OgreBullet btOgre 100 Use physics libraries directly 62 55 No physics libraries used 45 44 50 30 Other

Optional input of respondents who flagged “Other” [excerpt]: • Box2D • BulletSharp • Custom wrapper (18x) • Havok (2x) • Lugre • OgrePhysX • OpCode • PhysX (5x) • PhysX Candy Wrapper (4x) • Rigs of Rods Physics (2x) • …

Q17: Which Ogre SceneManagers (SM) do you use?

Note: Multiple answers per person were possible.

Results 2011: Which Ogre SceneManagers (SM) do you use? 900

800 765

700

600 Generic / Octree SM 500 Old Terrain SM

400 Portal Connected Zone SM BSP SM 300 Other 200

100 66 41 36 20 0 Which Ogre SceneManagers (SM) do you use?

Optional input of respondents who flagged “Other”: • Custom (8x) • ETM • GameKit Occlusion Culling • Ogre::Terrain Component (4x) • PLSM • PLSM2

Q18: Most severe drawback(s) of Ogre Q19: Most important/anticipated future change for Ogre

Note: These were free text questions. As a consequence the result cannot be properly displayed via a chart, but instead the below written summary tries to outline the most common answers.

Within the 805 responses we received for these two questions, the following points are the most frequently listed ones that would help improve the overall experience and/or are highly anticipated (in no particular order): • Official console support and official Android port • DirectX 11 and OpenGL3+ support • Updated and more extensive documentation • Enhanced mobile platform support • Good and free 3D Max exporter / better exporters in general • Official tool chain (scene editor, material and shader editor, …) • Modular design with the math part or the resource handling being own sub-libraries • More books, tutorials and other resources to help mastering the steep learning curve • More frequent releases and faster processing of bugs and patches • Better shadow support • Official C-API • Improved performance • Generally improve rapid-prototyping by offering more tools and pre-created content such as complex shader • Official x64 builds • Multithreading / multi core support • Instancing • Inverse Kinematics • Very large scene support / scene manager redesign

PS: Rest assured that even though your specific remarks and suggestions for the further, future improvement of Ogre3D might not be in the list above , they will be taken into account. The Ogre3D Team is currently discussing internally how to best address and proceed on the feedback received by this survey.

Additionally, there are also multiple ways for you to get active yourself and help develop the engine further, e.g. by participating in the discussions in the “Developer talk” forum section, creating patches to fix issues or add new functionality or help improving the documentation in the wiki.

In case of any questions, just send us an eMail and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Details can be found on the last page of this report.

Developer talk forum section Ogre3D wiki Bug tracker Patch tracker

Q20: Feedback on the Ogre User Survey 2011

Note: These was a free text question. As a consequence the result cannot be properly displayed via a chart, but instead the below written summary tries to outline the most common answers.

The 153 responses we received for this question, mainly focused around the following points: • Overall huge appreciation that the community gets a voice • A lot of congratulation and gratitude for the engine and the Ogre3D project in general • Desire to have more questions to get even further insight into the community and the use of Ogre3D and its ecosystem • Plenty of good ideas for new questions on suggestions on how to improve the current ones • Request to conduct that kind of survey on a regular basis

Thank you for your participation and interest!

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