LE3 still uses AABB.. some say it's so outdated. In my opinion it's could be still great to have it.

@Toast
well said, I hope jcl doesn't ignore this whole thread...

Well, I think GS isnt that bad, but its simply a bit old and outdated at all.
The first thing would be DirectX10 or 11 support since I know its much faster, also Kartoffel said this.

Well I don't see why DX11 would help much. Adding DX11 support doesn't flip a switch and you get great performance. Actually it doesn't boost the performance by a lot as far as I know. From the switch itself I wouldn't expect more than a single-digit percent improvement. Maybe if someone skilled in writing shaders would jump into the fray there might be some further improvements but even then I don't think that this is the engine's bottleneck. Way more important than the simple featureset are how LOD, culling and in general the scene management is handled - that's where the real bottlenecks and performance improvements are. That's also why the DX11 switch in Unity did nothing groundbreaking in terms of performance...

So while DX11 support definitely should be on the list for future improvements I don't think this is what holds 3DGS down. I as described think the first engine related problem to address is the general workflow and toolset...

Yeah gs is cool ..it just needs work to bring it up to date

with time determination and work , it could become what it
needs to be but with that said i would not know how
good it was coded , would it be an extremely difficult task to
upgrade or was it coded well enough for extending/upgrading ?

Everyone of us knows it is hard work and takes time
Like has been said "steps" and the only way to move forward
is step by step ..every single feature and improvement
pushes it forward and hopefully into an exciting direction..

There are so many engines each with theire good and bad points
i dont think we should be comparing engines against eachother
because it boils down to what you need and they are theire to choose
from if you need unity then use unity if you think its easier to
go with gamestudio or which ever engine then use that engine
the great thing about engines not being the same is the options
you have to find what you like and want and need..

Yes i agree gamestudio has fallen behind with features and tools
and it really needs to step up..

maybe dx9-dx10/11 performance difference is engine dependent too, in another engine I realized significant fps boost (jumped from 22-24 to 38-41 in average) when the same c++ code was compiled in dx10/11 mode (of course using the same level and settings). I have not tried out unity4 yet.

I would also like to see DX11 support (please no 10!!)
In my opinion a gamestudio IDE would be freakin' awesome. Not like Visual Studio but more for gamestudio. Like combining a coding environment with a level editor, model editor and interactive shader editor (change code -> see results)

I don't want a change of the programming language, i really like lite-c. But also a better support for other languages would be great. Or a good scripting support like Javascript, Lua, ...

I'm not sure if it's engine-dependent but I've already said what I know:
my brother's application (programmed in C#) runs 5x faster (900fps) with DX11 and needs just 1/3rd of the ram usage (mostly geometry-data) comared to dx9.

Well there of course are some areas which got some nice improvements or make a more efficient coding possible. When we're talking about an actual use in a game under "normal" conditions the DX11 performance advantages should shrink down as usually the scene management is what becomes decisive for the performance. So when speaking of a general performance boost through DX11 I wouldn't bet on huge improvements. I mean you can try playing AAA games in DX9 and DX11 mode as that's possible in some titles. Changes in shader code and additional DX11 features (e.g. better shadows) aside you won't be able to skyrocket your fps. Improvements are definitely there but not in a magnitude that I'd say that this is what 3DGS needs to become a beast...

What I would love to see is:
-DirectX 11 support (as I already mentioned some time ago)
*support for geometry and tesselation shaders
-The possibility to render into a depth texture which can be used for shadow sampling for much cheaper PCF and thus a lot faster shadows.
-A new WYSIWYG WED.
-Culling of objects hidden behind terrain.
-more basic, easy to use templates, something like the A5 ones, but cleaner
-better shader library
-some pretty default assets

What is great about gamestudio is that you can actually learn a lot about game development and programming with it as I and probably many others here did, because unless engines like Unity it feels much closer to what is actually happening and still the API is much easier than those of most other engines.
Sure in other engines, you can just use stuff and it works, but most users will never understand what is actually happening there.
Also programming for gamestudio is fun, much more fun than with any other engine I used so far (Unity, Shiva, Irrlicht), not to mention the really streight forward and great to use post processing system.