Please be aware that you can do a lot more than just make islands and stuff - Leadwerks Engine is a total Larging solution that comes with the SandBox Editor:
All terribly exciting.
Lighting
Leadwerks Engine 2.0 features a unified lighting system with dynamic soft shadows. There is no limit to the depth and complexity of lighting interactions. Lamps can be knocked over, lights can be turned on and off at will, and dynamic day/night cycles can be used to render real-time sunsets and weather changes. Using a dynamic lighting system removes the need for any pre-processing or compiling; scenes can be edited in real-time, and the results are instantly visualized, significantly streamlining the development process.
High-Definition Terrain
Render enormous landscapes up to 33 million triangles with efficient world management and LOD. Even the largest terrains can be edited in real-time with instant shadow updating. Mesh layers allow rendering of millions of vegetation instances. Paint texture layers onto the terrain or morph the terrain in real-time.
Advanced Materials and Shaders System
An open-ended materials and shader system allows the artist to define materials and create new effects, while relying on established lighting and rendering code. Advanced effects like parallax bump mapping are possible, as well as normal mapping with specular reflection. With the expandable shader system, there is no limit to the effects possible.
Skeletal Animation System
Leadwerks Engine 2.0 supports bone animation with hardware-optimized skinning, for efficient rendering of dozens of animated characters. Attach weapons or items to character bones, or add physics bodies to simulate locational damage. Animations can be blended with animations, programmed movements, or even physics interactions, as with ragdolls.
Render Buffers and Post-Processing Effects
Render to any OpenGL graphics context or directly to texture-based render buffers. Render buffers can be drawn onscreen with shader effects to visualize bloom, depth-of-field, motion blur, and other post-processing effects.
Leadwerks Engine 2.0 features a unified lighting system with dynamic soft shadows. There is no limit to the depth and complexity of lighting interactions. Lamps can be knocked over, lights can be turned on and off at will, and dynamic day/night cycles can be used to render real-time sunsets and weather changes. Using a dynamic lighting system removes the need for any pre-processing or compiling; scenes can be edited in real-time, and the results are instantly visualized, significantly streamlining the development process.
High-Definition Terrain
Render enormous landscapes up to 33 million triangles with efficient world management and LOD. Even the largest terrains can be edited in real-time with instant shadow updating. Mesh layers allow rendering of millions of vegetation instances. Paint texture layers onto the terrain or morph the terrain in real-time.
Advanced Materials and Shaders System
An open-ended materials and shader system allows the artist to define materials and create new effects, while relying on established lighting and rendering code. Advanced effects like parallax bump mapping are possible, as well as normal mapping with specular reflection. With the expandable shader system, there is no limit to the effects possible.
Skeletal Animation System
Leadwerks Engine 2.0 supports bone animation with hardware-optimized skinning, for efficient rendering of dozens of animated characters. Attach weapons or items to character bones, or add physics bodies to simulate locational damage. Animations can be blended with animations, programmed movements, or even physics interactions, as with ragdolls.
Render Buffers and Post-Processing Effects
Render to any OpenGL graphics context or directly to texture-based render buffers. Render buffers can be drawn onscreen with shader effects to visualize bloom, depth-of-field, motion blur, and other post-processing effects.
Rendering
* Unified per-pixel lighting system with dynamic soft shadows; Every object casts and receives shadows.
* Point, spot, and directional lights.
* Masked shadows for tree and plant effects.
* Specular reflection and normal mapping.
* Parallax mapping.
* Fast instanced mesh rendering.
* Dynamic visibility determination, requiring no pre-placed portals or compiling.
* Hardware skinning for fast animation.
* Bloom, depth-of-field, motion blur, and other post-processing effects.
* Fast hardware particle effects.
* Seamless transitions between indoor and outdoor areas.
* Adjustable rendering viewports.
* Support for ambient occlusion maps.
* Render to any graphics context to create Windowed applications and tools.
* Render to texture.
* Lens flare effects.
* Dynamic shader management chooses from thousands of variations and compiles requested shaders on-the-fly.
* Open-ended materials and shader system.
* Use existing shaders or add your own.
* Optimized rendering pathways for Shader Model 4.0, with render fallbacks for older hardware.
* Features can be scaled to accommodate older hardware.
* Load textures from .dds, .png, .tga, .bmp, and .jpg files.
Meshes
* Load .obj, .md3, and .gmf meshes, or create meshes from scratch.
* Support for animated meshes with fast hardware skinning.
* Create box, cylinder, sphere, cone, and plane primitives.
* Support for arbitrary number of LOD versions.
* Fast mesh rendering using GPU instancing, if available.
Terrain
* Huge landscapes with up to 33 million triangles.
* Dynamic lighting and self-shadowing terrain allow day/night cycles and weather effects.
* Modify terrain in real time.
* Vegetation layers can simulate millions of plants.
* Alpha-blended tiling terrain.
Animation
* Hardware skinning for fast animation.
* Blend animations, or mix hard-coded actions or physics with animation.
* Attach weapons or items to animated limbs.
* Attach physics bodies to limbs for animated collision and locational damage.
Physics
* Support for multi-core CPU acceleration.
* Simulate thousands of rigid bodies.
* Create complex machines with ball, hinge, corkscrew, slider, universal, and fixed joints.
* Physics vehicles with any number and configuration of tires. (In progress)
* Extremely fast solver, with far greater stability than any other physics engine on the market.
* Collisions with polygon meshes, convex hulls, boxes, cylinders, cones, spheres, chamfer cylinders, and capsules, or compound collisions made up of any combination thereof.
* Player controller simulates player movement while participating in complex physics interactions. (In progress)
* Customizable collision system with support for any number and scheme of collision types and interactions.
* Powered by Newton Archimedes®.
Audio
* 3D sound positioning, spatialization, and attenuation.
* Load .wav and .ogg audio files.
* EAX audio effects like reverb simulate different acoustic environments.
* Seamless sound looping.
Programming
* DLL version can be used with virtually any programming language.
* Scripted engine requires no external language.
* Programmable in BlitzMax with a BMX module.
* Procedural interface allows full access to all features while maintaining a simple and straightforward API.
* Headers available for C++, C#, VB, and other languages.
* Abstract file system with no pre-defined folder structure.
* Load files from .zip packages directly into memory.
* Automatic caching and instancing of media files.
* Unified per-pixel lighting system with dynamic soft shadows; Every object casts and receives shadows.
* Point, spot, and directional lights.
* Masked shadows for tree and plant effects.
* Specular reflection and normal mapping.
* Parallax mapping.
* Fast instanced mesh rendering.
* Dynamic visibility determination, requiring no pre-placed portals or compiling.
* Hardware skinning for fast animation.
* Bloom, depth-of-field, motion blur, and other post-processing effects.
* Fast hardware particle effects.
* Seamless transitions between indoor and outdoor areas.
* Adjustable rendering viewports.
* Support for ambient occlusion maps.
* Render to any graphics context to create Windowed applications and tools.
* Render to texture.
* Lens flare effects.
* Dynamic shader management chooses from thousands of variations and compiles requested shaders on-the-fly.
* Open-ended materials and shader system.
* Use existing shaders or add your own.
* Optimized rendering pathways for Shader Model 4.0, with render fallbacks for older hardware.
* Features can be scaled to accommodate older hardware.
* Load textures from .dds, .png, .tga, .bmp, and .jpg files.
Meshes
* Load .obj, .md3, and .gmf meshes, or create meshes from scratch.
* Support for animated meshes with fast hardware skinning.
* Create box, cylinder, sphere, cone, and plane primitives.
* Support for arbitrary number of LOD versions.
* Fast mesh rendering using GPU instancing, if available.
Terrain
* Huge landscapes with up to 33 million triangles.
* Dynamic lighting and self-shadowing terrain allow day/night cycles and weather effects.
* Modify terrain in real time.
* Vegetation layers can simulate millions of plants.
* Alpha-blended tiling terrain.
Animation
* Hardware skinning for fast animation.
* Blend animations, or mix hard-coded actions or physics with animation.
* Attach weapons or items to animated limbs.
* Attach physics bodies to limbs for animated collision and locational damage.
Physics
* Support for multi-core CPU acceleration.
* Simulate thousands of rigid bodies.
* Create complex machines with ball, hinge, corkscrew, slider, universal, and fixed joints.
* Physics vehicles with any number and configuration of tires. (In progress)
* Extremely fast solver, with far greater stability than any other physics engine on the market.
* Collisions with polygon meshes, convex hulls, boxes, cylinders, cones, spheres, chamfer cylinders, and capsules, or compound collisions made up of any combination thereof.
* Player controller simulates player movement while participating in complex physics interactions. (In progress)
* Customizable collision system with support for any number and scheme of collision types and interactions.
* Powered by Newton Archimedes®.
Audio
* 3D sound positioning, spatialization, and attenuation.
* Load .wav and .ogg audio files.
* EAX audio effects like reverb simulate different acoustic environments.
* Seamless sound looping.
Programming
* DLL version can be used with virtually any programming language.
* Scripted engine requires no external language.
* Programmable in BlitzMax with a BMX module.
* Procedural interface allows full access to all features while maintaining a simple and straightforward API.
* Headers available for C++, C#, VB, and other languages.
* Abstract file system with no pre-defined folder structure.
* Load files from .zip packages directly into memory.
* Automatic caching and instancing of media files.
All terribly exciting.