Quote: "
There is so much work involved in making a "big one," that the shader model supported and GPU instructions available becomes a tertiary priority, at the most.
"
true but not true.
lets say it takes 3 years to build something superb
but then , cause the lack of Update or Patches
you need to convert everything into a new FrameWork that does
posses the new Updates and Techs
you are so fammiliar with the old framwork , that now you have to learn the new one , and that after 3 years of one thing , may take a lot of times saying nothing about bugs and fixes that you are not fammiliar witht the new framework.
so its another year just to learn the new framework, and yes you can make an SUPER algo that convert everything into the new framework but still... you need to learn it.
now if you start with a framework like XNA that you know
1. it have all the feature the Xbox360 contain
2. it updates rapidly
3. there is no New Tech cause its just for the Xbox360
in this case it will still take 3 years to build the SuperB game you desire , but after 3 years you start working on marketing and releasing the product, you dont wait another year converting.
and if we take Ogre3D ,
1. large community
2. mass of free plugins and addons
3. rapid updates with the New Techs (from the actuall vendors
since its an Open-Source with a decent popularity)
4. no need to convert.
for me its good logic , to turn now before getting too fammiliar only with dark , and who knows maybe i wont like ogre at all and TGC will decide , "guys , from now on , we will update as much as we can , we not promising anything but our time" and i will comeback.
this is actually pretty hard for me to do , i love Dark but like any good thing in life , sometimes one needs to follow his logic and not heart.
so about the shaders.. i think you are wrong , also dont forget the shaders take decent amounts of FPS , and after your project is done and now suddenly after converting and writing beatiful shaders with the new framework your FPS just drop , now what you do?
maybe in not the best self explained man , but i feel its a good thing for me to do .