my masters thesis title is real time physical based deformation of large manifold geometric object for non critical applications. sort of. basically, my strategy is improving dynamics of sarah f gibson's chainmail. im looking for a pretty 3d engine to visualize my simulation. pretty here means i am able to render/lit realistic human skin. other fancy stuff are welcome. plus, the engine should provide me with a basic geometry manipulating tools(such as vertex picking, arcball), performance monitoring(fps, total vertex/point displayed), mathematics library is a strong plus(matrices, verlet solver, finite element). the engine should allow me to deform the geometry. old school c languange is a plus(the ony language i really fluent with). if the engine have its physics systems or integrated with other physics library, it is a very strong plus. ive done a bit or engine researching. it seems to me there are two types of 3d engines. one for simulations and one for games. for games(game engine doesnt really provide low level acces to the geometry, imho) ogre - very nice rendering engine(shaders support). object oriented c++. has gui systems. basic performance monitoring systems(fps, total vertex). camera, picking. i dont know about mathematics library. add ons for various physic library support. huge community. lots of tutorials and article. i really like this engine axiom - c# port of ogre. static developement but continue its developement under realmforge gdk(means i cannot have axiom independently). download only using cvs which is unavailable for firewalled user like me(although i can have it under realmforge gdk distro). lack of documentation and tutorials. lack of support and community(or very small community). i dont like this engine. irrlicht - nice rendering engine. have bindings for various physics library. no advance math library. i really like this engine. great community. realmforge gdk - axiom/ogre rendering engine. integrated physics. suitable for creating mods. i dont have the general idea of low level geometric access. unsuitable for my needs. torque - the library is huge. lacks complete documentations(even for registered user). encouraged user to create mods(i dont think i am able to manipulate the vertices/or its very hard to do so). no updates for a very long time. content editin gtools havent been updated for a very loooong time. basically, its full of shit(sorry, but this is how i felt after spending 100 usd for the torque engine). why would i spend 100usd for an engine to create mods? for less than 40usd, i can purchase latest unreal tournament, and create mods with it with lots of free community asset. sdl - does it have arcball, picking, performance monitoring, math and physic library? ithink it is very primitive library. similar to directx or opengl(for rendering) directx - nice, fast rendering engine. provides scene manipulation tool. very suitable for my needs. lack physic. lack advance math library for my needs. object oriented only. various languages. great support(community, dev, tutorial, articles). really like this one. opengl - cross platform. need external library for gui, math, physics, camera, utility and stuff. veeeery easy. since it very small library compared to others, i need other library or create the basic function myself. im trying to steer clear from this library for research g3d - object oriented. provide low level access to geometry. ui, manipulating tools and stuff. physics library. math library. looks very promising. really like it. openscenegraph - huge fanbase, community support, lots of tutorials. looks very promising. coin3d - no tutorial for accessing low level geometry delta3d - rendering rely on openscenegraph. object oriented. no tutorial for accessing low level geometry. maybe method for accessing low level geometry is by using osg method? other non graphics library boost - huge collection of c/c++ library for various task matrix template library - fast matrix library any other resources, suggestion are welcome.

I'm not sure if these engines have the features you are looking for but you should check them out.
-Neo Engine
-Crystal Space 3D
-The Nebula Device 2

The only engines I've used have been Irrlicht and Ogre. Irrlicht is really really easy to setup, and to use. Ogre was a little more difficult to set up but wasn't too difficult following the tutorials on the website. Ogre was a little more difficult to learn than Irrlicht, but it wasn't too difficult to figure out the basic features.

I know in Irrlicht you can easily do things like triangle picking and you can also create your own custom scene nodes, aswell the ability to program your own mesh loaders. However, I don't know the extent that low level geometry can be accessed / manipulated though.

Good Luck.

actually, the most important thing i need were libraries that can do vertex/bounding picking and arcball in opengl. that is the most important thing. i do have arcball libararies and found few picking tutorials, but i would like to use more bigger libraries so that when i need other features, its just right there.

looking at various 3d engines/toolkits, i dont thing i have the time to learn another graphics framework. what do you think the easiest toolkits/libraries/engines that can do both picking and arcball?

thank you.