Hi,
since I have some ideas to improve the engine, I'll post them here

1) Static Lighting:
It would be cool if you could compute lightmaps for static shadows in the world editor, like in many other engines. Static Lighting would improve render quality and also performance, and another cool feature for even more realism would be radiosity.

2) Heightmaps in Alpha Channel:
Heightmaps/Parallaxmaps are often stored in the alpha channel of the Normalmap, I think this feature isn't supported by the Mesh Editor yet.

3) Improved Trees:
Since this engine is mainly an indie engine, indie developers can't buy speedtree for nice trees, so it would be nice to include some of the features of speedtree directly in EE. The tree leave attachement in WE is quite nice, but e.g. billboards for leaves aren't supported, are they?
And another nice feauture would be a better LOD system for trees, when the distance between camera and tree grows, the leaves grow in size and reduce in number (like in speedtree).
Also usefull GPU Gems Link for better plants

4) Better Shadows:
See here
I think the same technique would also be nice for improving transparent texture quality (e.g. leaves or wire-netting fences)!

5) IK in ME:
Another nice feature would be Inverse Kinematic in the Mesh Editor for creating better animations. This feature is e.g. already implemented in most 3D applications (3ds Max, Maya, etc.), and it can really help making better animations.

6) Material Animation:
Animation of materials via UV transformation would be nice. This way you could e.g. create water as a material or blinking surfaces.

7) Cinematic Sequences:
And it would also be cool to create cinematic camera sequences inside the WE, like in UE3

8) Terrain with caves and overhangs:
Since the engine already supports DX10+, geometry shaders are also supported. It would be nice to improve terrain creations possibilities with geometry shaders. With geometry shaders you can create caves and overhangs, this would be a nice addition to the cool terrain system of EE
Maybe you'll find some information on this topic in GPU Gems 3.

I think this engine is one of the best out there, so I just wanted to help to make it even better
Please post what you think about these ideas

best regards,
Kevin

1. agreed

2. i think alpha channel of the normal map is used for speculars already.. not sure tho.

4. agreed.

5. animations in overall imho are the worst thing in the engine. they really are something that test your patience.

6. this is possible with custom shaders.

7. also very easy to make your self. create a camera object and animate it trough waypoints or what ever.. very easy to make.

As for LOD system for trees I think that this was in EE but it was replaced by bilboards, but I'm not sure. Am I right?