@Red
Puh hard question. It's much more easier to compare unity to director and i haven't used blitz3d this much but i will try to give a brief overview from my point of view.
Unity is a gamdev tool which is built for easy integration of media, features an 3d IDE and crossplatform publishing so far (just click the release button for system x). If you take a look at what's new in version 1.5 http://unity3d.com/whatsnew-1.5.html then you will see that there is a serious development behind it. One of great things about unity is that the dev-team is very responsive and helpful. There is a fair chance that your suggestions make it into an update if they do make sense. They put a lot of effort into easy integration for artists and try to make things run on low end system as well. If they add something then they try to do it right.
Unity includes ageia's physx engine which is pretty good as long as you stay with the things physx is good at. The current version of physx is faster than havok where the engine focuses on. Havok beats physx where it comes to diversity (like for instance concave mesh collisions). The best physics engine for diversity i've used so far was the 1.6 version of havok which ships with virtools.
Unity also includes lot's of stuff which makes beginners the life easier like for instance fixedrate functions where you just throw your code in or they provide a couple of scripts like third person movement, physics car controller and so on. You don't have to worry how it's realized, you just use them.
Using an 3d IDE has pros and cons. Everything is object oriented and it takes more time getting into it like just having an editor like with blitzmax but once you got it the reusability is much better without thinking about it. You write your script and drag and drop it on the appropriate member.
The current version 1.5 is the first useable version in my opinion and whilst you can do a lot of things with it, there are still things missing like shadows (there do exist only blob shadows at the moment), windows ide, drag&drop multiplayer support, serious debugging/performance monitoring and so on.
So you can realise a lot of game concepts already with it but if you wanna do a mulitplayergame for instance then you're on your own and have to use what's possible with .net or add your own solution as a plugin but you don't have a no worry solution yet.
The documentation also isn't perfect yet. I quite don't understand why almost every tool lacks in this discipline. They put a lot of effort into improving it but it's still not where it should be in my opinion.
The indie licence is only interesting for mac developers at the moment and the pro version is quite expensive. On the other side there are no hidden costs in unity like with torque.
As max3d hasn't been released yet i obviously can't compare it. max3d will for sure be much much cheaper than unity but won't be running online. And the question is how long will it take till there will be a useable version available.
Blitz3d is also a lot cheaper, win and offline only and well if you don't mind havin no oop and are fine with directx7 only then why not take it. Personally i wouldn't be happy with it as i already own an outdated 3d engine in director and i don't need another one.
As stated above you could write easily pages about this in order to make a fair comparison and cover everything.
I don't have the time for this and so i hope the little bit helps?! But there is no question that i would prefer unity to torque for instance!
Puh hard question. It's much more easier to compare unity to director and i haven't used blitz3d this much but i will try to give a brief overview from my point of view.
Unity is a gamdev tool which is built for easy integration of media, features an 3d IDE and crossplatform publishing so far (just click the release button for system x). If you take a look at what's new in version 1.5 http://unity3d.com/whatsnew-1.5.html then you will see that there is a serious development behind it. One of great things about unity is that the dev-team is very responsive and helpful. There is a fair chance that your suggestions make it into an update if they do make sense. They put a lot of effort into easy integration for artists and try to make things run on low end system as well. If they add something then they try to do it right.
Unity includes ageia's physx engine which is pretty good as long as you stay with the things physx is good at. The current version of physx is faster than havok where the engine focuses on. Havok beats physx where it comes to diversity (like for instance concave mesh collisions). The best physics engine for diversity i've used so far was the 1.6 version of havok which ships with virtools.
Unity also includes lot's of stuff which makes beginners the life easier like for instance fixedrate functions where you just throw your code in or they provide a couple of scripts like third person movement, physics car controller and so on. You don't have to worry how it's realized, you just use them.
Using an 3d IDE has pros and cons. Everything is object oriented and it takes more time getting into it like just having an editor like with blitzmax but once you got it the reusability is much better without thinking about it. You write your script and drag and drop it on the appropriate member.
The current version 1.5 is the first useable version in my opinion and whilst you can do a lot of things with it, there are still things missing like shadows (there do exist only blob shadows at the moment), windows ide, drag&drop multiplayer support, serious debugging/performance monitoring and so on.
So you can realise a lot of game concepts already with it but if you wanna do a mulitplayergame for instance then you're on your own and have to use what's possible with .net or add your own solution as a plugin but you don't have a no worry solution yet.
The documentation also isn't perfect yet. I quite don't understand why almost every tool lacks in this discipline. They put a lot of effort into improving it but it's still not where it should be in my opinion.
The indie licence is only interesting for mac developers at the moment and the pro version is quite expensive. On the other side there are no hidden costs in unity like with torque.
As max3d hasn't been released yet i obviously can't compare it. max3d will for sure be much much cheaper than unity but won't be running online. And the question is how long will it take till there will be a useable version available.
Blitz3d is also a lot cheaper, win and offline only and well if you don't mind havin no oop and are fine with directx7 only then why not take it. Personally i wouldn't be happy with it as i already own an outdated 3d engine in director and i don't need another one.
As stated above you could write easily pages about this in order to make a fair comparison and cover everything.
I don't have the time for this and so i hope the little bit helps?! But there is no question that i would prefer unity to torque for instance!