Open MW - competition or collaboration? Thread - Morrowind Rebirth 6.61 mod for Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

I've seen a few really cool updates from Open Morrowind and see a lot of potential for Morrowind to look like a modern-day game with the classic Elder Schools feel.
I'm curious to see what the future hold in comparison to Morrowind Rebirth and Open Morrowind...

Will they compete to see who has the most enhancements to make Morrowind into a modern day game?
Or
Will they collaborate together and all the elaborate efforts will be combined into one huge Open Morrowind Rebirth?

Both editions have their positives and negatives (to my knowledge):

Morrowind Rebirth
1. high resolution textures
2. environmental enhancements & fixes
3. new armors & clothing
4. new enemies
5. mesh enhancements
6. new musical scores

Open Morrowind
1. completely open source engine
2. modern shaders (graphical enhancements)
3. Windows, OSX & Linux
4. future game enhancements (physics, AI, etc)
5. possibility of multiplayer

I would love to see both projects combine and have all the benefits in one awesome implementation of Morrowind!

Until Open Morrowind released an actual mod or game .... there is no competition. Bethesda has not to my knowledge released the tech engine for Morrowind to the public so I don't know what engine they are using? Unity3d? DarkBasic? FPS Creator? Lith Tech? Tech 4 - Doom 3? Or the Unreal Engine? It would be a major accomplishment to re-create the world of Morrowind in another engine - A few mods have done so for Oblivion and Skyrim, so it can be done. I know I don't have much room to talk with my mod - WIP - Seyda Neen Census & Village v.10 - but still I did a lot of work. And the update is being released soon ...

Thanks
eric

True, but part of me still likes the idea.
If Open Morrowind has a full release I hope there is some moddability with Morrowind mods. But I'm sure there will have to be a lot of testing

It seems like a huge project ... and I wish them well in all the hard work ahead of them. Porting Morrowind over to Another Engine is a daunting tast, and has been done with Oblivion. But why not just use the The Construction Set and make modifications to the Original Game. We've all played the Vanilla Morrowind thousands of times before ... so I don't see what a new engine and the same landscape, buildings, and npc's will do ... except better graphics.

That is pretty much it.
I never really played Morrowind vanilla. When I picked up Morrowind the first time it was after I played Oblivion. I knew the graphics were inferior, but I looked up some graphical improvement mods and found hundreds.
So I added as many graphical mods as I could and played Morrowind like a modern game, except the shaders/bump maps.
With Open Morrowind it is now possible.

Its kinda like comparing Half-Life to Black Mesa.
Of course Half-Life has a lot of nostalgia about it, but I'll never play Half-Life vanilla again after playing Black Mesa.

If Open Morrowind improves the overall graphical capabilities and mods can be applied to it, then I get to play it like a brand new game with all the modern eye candy.

All morrowind mods will work with OpenMW, they've stated this several times.

It will not only have support new effects like bump-maps and shaders but it will also take advantage of dual, quad cores = better performance. It will also fix several issues with the code, make it possible to change game formulas/rules, make the modders able to add new spell effects, easier to implement new animations etc. Just things that wasn't possible before. From what I heard there will also be a new construction set that will be vastly improved.

With this info I can say for sure that it just won't affect graphics but a LOT of other things that will make the game more enjoyable, with less engine related issues, better performance and more options to mod the game.

Btw booman, you have tried MGEXE right? It makes it possible to have shaders/shadows/bump maps etc.

That is all very good news...
This is what I was hoping for... really making Morrowind a new game and a modern game.
I don't mind that at all, vanilla is only the beginning these days. Look at Doom 3, ID Software created the new BFE with amazing high definition textures and shaders making it look like a whole new game. Very exciting!
I can't wait to play Rebirth in the Open Morrowind engine.

Yes I have used MGEXE but its been a long time. And it didn't support SLI... which made my Morrowind really slow. I plan trying it in the future now that I have an upgraded system with a GeForce 550 Ti.

By gamer for gamer

Not sure who is contributing (so far, I guess the needed skills are not that common as to "modding" out of the animation & scripting ?) but progress are steady (do you guys know there is a installer as to MW on Linux & Mac ? ..) and features coming along, so there definite answer = support !

Other than that, hm.

For those of us who like modding, the new options & features will mean new options will be there, I can only wonder as to the meaning as to mods like Tamriel Rebuild.

OpenMW (and not Open Morrowind ) is using the Ogre engine. It's not a mod like Morrowind Rebirth, but rather a complete engine. Morrowind Rebirth should run fine inside it, and we're impatient to test this !

Me too. I'm going to install the 2.5 version of Rebirth this weekend.
Can't wait to see OpenMW mature