Deeplayer 3D is a game-engine project, cross-platform, open-source, that will initially target the space-sim games category, but will eventually encompass other 1^st person genres. We have 7 ambitious goals:

• Our first goal is to achieve seamless flow between space-flight, atmospheric flight and ground walking or transportation; both for exterior and indoor settings; across worlds, and maybe galaxies.
• Our second goal is to make this engine capable of extreme realism: Unlike many other game-engines, the default settings it will present to modders are for accurate physics, accurate optics, and presently in use,  --or at least forseeable-- technologies. Deviations from such realities, be they "shields", "FTL", "Warp Drives" or "Wormholes", will either be available as options, or realisable through .dll/.so overrides.
• Our third goal is to have powerful generative algorithms that can produce consistent, pseudo-random universes, worlds, cities, (npc) people, names; and simulate dynamic economies, trade, piracy and all those things we take for granted in real life, but often find missing in game worlds.
•  Our fourth goal is to provide a comprehensive set of tools for game creation: model/scene viewer, material creation and catalogging tool, a game configuration GUI, a GUI builder, galaxy-, system-, planet-, city, flora-, fauna-, NPC-, race-, faction-, ship-class-, etceteras- creation --and/or auto-generation control-- tools; sound archiver, testing and validation tools, and many more. 'The Devil is in the Tools', we say.
  
• Our fifth goal is to produce excellent code: Readable, testable, flexible, extensible and comprehensible. To make use of the best methods and technologies available: Design Patterns, well chosen 'idioms'; and to build upon excellent frameworks and libraries: Ogre3D, OPAL, STLport, boost, libnoise, etceteras. Free and open source, and built upon free and open source foundations.
• Our sixth goal is for this engine to be far ahead of its time in terms of performance and visual quality. We shall cut no corners on the performance department: Expect inline Assembler code to be as common as C++ throughout the sources, as well as carefully chosen data structures and algorithms.
• Our seventh goal is to make our own game, even while working on the engine's development. The name is Tadpole.

  The project has barely just started, as of this writing: September 22, 2006 was its birthday. Happy Birthday! The founding members are Zeog, NPhillips, MKruer and myself: chuck_starchaser. Zeog and myself are the software designers and coders; MKruer is our official researcher (if he can't find it, it don't exist), and NPhillips is our artist, modder, modeller and website designer. There will be journals here, soon; but, for now, the best place to track our progress is at the Deeplayer 3D Forum. See 'ya there.. 
chuck_starchaser