I believe he does have a laptop.

What are the basic requirements for running this engine?  I have a laptop with an Intel graphics card that is fairly decent (i've implemented particle systems and other advanced features) but when I try to debug the beta, it goes full screen, shows a grey color, freezes and doesnt let me change focus to another window or exit.  is it because of the graphics card? or some other requirement?

Mmmh... nowadays, in my opinion, your engine is more "an easy engine to help 3d programmers" than a "good start point for people who wants to learn 3d programming".

I mean... when I load the engine I see code, code and more code... which I'm not able to understand. I'm getting mad just trying to understand the use of the matrix or what's a viewport (even I've I read the msdn help... is quite far to be clear). But also I see lots of classes I don't know I should read and understand or not... just in the first lines we have "EventLog" class, what's that? I go to its definition but still I don't get it... more code I can't understand, calling more and more different classes.

I don't know how to explain... I want to start, and I want to learn, but I just can see lots of information "messed up", without a readme file, without a starting point or a tutorial...

Honestly, teaching 3D math and the basics of the Direct3D rendering pipeline are outside of the scope of the project.  I would highly recommend picking up a book on 3D graphics math and a beginner Direct3D/XNA book.  XNA tries to abstract some of this in a way that you really don't need to know what you're doing, but you really need this knowledge to go very far. 

I got the v.182 (not beta) working except that when I try to put the terrain into the scene, it throws the following error in the TerrainPatch class:

InvalidOperationException was unhandled.  This device does not support 32-bit indices.  Use IndexElementSize.SixteenBits or a type that has a size of two bytes.

when i take out the terrain from the scene, the water, snow, sky, spheres, and light all work correctly.  So I know the problem is in the terrain.  Is there any way I can correct this error so 16 bits will work with my graphics card?
Any ideas?

You'd have to re-write any portion of the Terrain, QuadTree, and TerrainPatch classes that use index buffers to let them use 16-bit buffers.

My guess is that a card that is old enough to not support 32-bit buffers likely won't perform too well if the terrain were working. That is only a guess though.

Might I ask what Graphics card / integrated chip you have?

jano:

Mmmh... nowadays, in my opinion, your engine is more "an easy engine to help 3d programmers" than a "good start point for people who wants to learn 3d programming".

The original template was intended for people starting out in 3D. The engine as it stands in 0.182b is not even close. If you'd like to start with a much simpler and easier to use code base, I suggest one of the early versions like 1.1.

You can find the old versions here, look towards the bottom of the pages, all old versions are highlighted and underlined.

This thread was really here for announcements on the engine but since its obviously very popular the thread has turned into Q&A which are much better asked on the project codeplex forums so that Lord Ikon and the other devs don't have to watch this forum all the time. Mr Ikon will be making a new announcement only thread for the next release and this one will stay for reference however its now locked.

See XNA Quickstart engine discussion forums for all followup and discussion.