I was talking about this with Damien, Bmax will be as old as B3D was when Bmax was released pretty soon, and not much to show for it really :(. I'm glad we looked for our own solution sometime last year.
Yes. Bmax will need something of a miracle over the next year or so to be as successful as B3D. It's a shame. You can understand why its evolving a little slower than blitz- there's much more to deal with.
People have been wanting a 3D engine for the last 3 years. (yes, dec 2004 means in december this yeat Max is 3 years old..) Some have done their own. MiniB3D is pretty awesome at what its intended to do, but it doesn't cut the mustard for high-end features. Halo's engine is coming along. Then there's our team working on Flow. We want Flow to be *complete* when released.
Once youre used to it, Ogre is pretty damn good. I've been shown other engines and havent been impressed by any really.
Wrapping Ogre properly takes time though, but if you know what features you need and what you don't for definite, you could get the basics running in no time.