OGRE Team, the developers behind the Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine (OGRE), have announced the latest release of OGRE, codenamed 'Eihort,' including improved advanced lighting and shadowing techniques and more. According to the engine's official website, OGRE is “a scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine written in C++ designed to make it easier and more intuitive for developers to produce applications utilising hardware-accelerated 3D graphics.” New features introduced with this latest 1.4.0 version of the open-source, cross-platform real-time 3D rendering engine include SSE/SIMD support, more advanced lighting and shadowing techniques, and threaded loading. Not exclusively positioned as a game engine, the engine is instead designed to fit the needs of a wide range of project needs and target applications, including simulations, scientific and medical tools, architectural visualization, and educational applications, as well as video games. OGRE is also designed to slot in as a component of a larger system rather than to 'take over' the architecture of an existing application. The OGRE source is made available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), which allows the technology to be used as long as any changes made to to the core engine are released should the end product be distributed. The open source license allows anyone to obtain and use the software for free for any purpose, including commercial applications, provided they adhere to the terms of the LGPL. An alternative commercial license is also made available for those who for whatever reason cannot comply with those conditions.