Previously known as RealmForge GDK.
“Visual3D.NET™ is a shader-based 3D engine and rapid production toolset for visually authoring interactive virtual worlds using C# and VB with Microsoft .NET, XNA Framework, and Visual Studio.” Maybe worth checking out.
http://www.visual3d.net/

Wow this looks awsome, downloading the beta right now.

it features HDR lighting, normal mapping, unlimited terrain and much more. I'm going to set up a little test level if i can

I searched n' searched, but found nothing as far as *actual* licensing costs though. All I could find was that the "non-commercial" license would be free (but forces a non-commercial use screen at the player), and the Commercial version "will not be under $200" (a forum post that did some comparision of 3DGS to this engine).

I get a lil' worried when costs are not revealed up front, lol!

I would be curious to your thoughts on this engine after you tried it out, if you wouldn't mind replying back on it. Wasn't too impressed with the Gallery screenshots; maybe I missed something or a page with better screenies.

Thanks!

The screens do not look impressive but the feature list does.

When the tool-set is great then artists will jump on it very fast especially when the non-commercial version is for free.
You see the same with Beyond Virtual. It has a fantastic art-pipeline and you see constantly new screen-shots in their forum and most of them look really good.

If this really works (all those post processing effects, normal- and parallax-shaders, soft-shadows, in-game editors, real-time shader editor and much more) then this tool-set will be a very powerful set and new shots will come very fast.

Visual3d.NET claims to support obj, 3ds, fbx, collada and x. So everybody can import meshes into this engine.

They build the engine consequently around the DX9 graphic cards and support only Shader 2.0 and higher. But every lighting is modern and shader based. They even said that they will support DX10 as well.

The terrain is huge. I have no idea what kind of scene-management they do.

They hire people and pay real money so I think the engine will not be very cheap. But I have no idea how much it will be at the end.

I agree with Frank, and I hate registering...you know how it is. I have at least 70 passwords right now. One user name thankfully.

they claim to have a non commercial edition for free, so aou can tackle around and if you create a great game your publisher will probably take care about the financial parts;)

Yes. You can go the same route with Unreal3 as well

Nevertheless we have to wait until September to check Visual3d.net intensely.

What you have a free version of the unreal3 engine? (at least non-commercial then)

Visual3D.Net Beta is a XNA engine and it looks great. But you can find a few more XNA engines out there. Two examples:

Blade3d :

http://www.blade3d.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx
Look at their galery: http://www.blade3d.com/MediaGallery/tabid/74/Default.aspx#viewLocation


Sorcerer's engine :



Water shader moving:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3aQ-pRkDUM
Features implemented:
* Scene editor
* Switching between fullscreen or windowed mode
* Switching resolution
* Fps displaying
* Pause system
* Importing heithmaps for terrains
* Camera moving around
* Loading .FBX and .X models
* Shaders ( Yes, shaders )
- Multitexturing
- Mirror
- Water
* And it works with XBOX

Now, why am I posting this? As a info. You can also making your own engine with XNA and it is free and easy to use. You can even sell it as those guys.
Also, don't ask me for price about my engine, because I am not going to sell it. I am making it just for a learning purpose.
So, go ahead and start making your own engine. You will see how easy you can do it.

Did it and know how easy it is. XNA is really intuitive, but it still has some bugs in the current version