My Opinion (only for open source 3D engines): - [Irrlicht][1]: - Light 3D engine - Clean C++ without dependencies and no STL. - Not very well documented but there are good tutorials. - Very small so you can customize it easily. - No OpenGL 3.X driver, Direct X 10.X or 11.X available in the official SDK. - Very good for mobile development; - Good community - Few extensions available - [Ogre3D][2]: - Big 3D engine - It uses modern C++ such as STL, exceptions and RTTI - Good documentation (There are published books). - Many renderers (OpenGL, DirectX and OpenGL ES...). - Ogre3D have many extensions as CEGUI or Bullet integration, Tree nodes... - But more difficult to extend Ogre3D if you want something specifics. - Big community - Many extensions - [Crystal space][3]: An old design and difficult to use. After few days, I stopped using this engine. - [Horde3D][4] - Small engine - Modern design - Light community - No extensions - [Blendelf][5] - Small engine with some dependencies - Modern design with moderns effects as DOF or HDR ... - OpenGL only - Light community - Bullet integration for physics - You use lua to pilot this engine3D **TL;DR:** - For a desktop game (or future commercial game): Ogre3D - For a first game: Irrlicht - For mobile development: irrlicht (Ogre3D is too big) - For sexy effects: Blendelf [1]: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/ [2]: http://www.ogre3d.org/ [3]: http://www.crystalspace3d.org [4]: http://www.horde3d.org [5]: http://blendelf.com/