Making a graphics engine is hard and costs a lot of man hours (thus lots of $$$). There's not many people who can just start contributing to them (compared to other OS projects). The Open Source engines will always be at least a generation behind, simply because they're always going to be slowly implementing what's already been done in the commercial engines, while companies like Crytek are busy working on their next-gen stuff.

On the plus side, the Open Source engines (Ogre and CrystalSpace anyway) are good enough for people to make decent looking games if they wish to do so. Gameplay is what counts right? I'll take TES: Oblivion quality graphics (hell, Morrowind even) if the game play is great. Unfortunately making games is as hard as making the engines that they run on...

I believe it would appear as if the distance between objects had decreased. The speed of light would also always measure the same.

Works fine for me... Usually I run it on my PS3 so I can watch stuff on my TV (so I haven't noticed it being CPU hungry).

The more money the BBC can pull in from stuff that my taxes (TV licence, which I don't object to) have already paid for, the better. I realise that the TV licence won't drop in price, nor will I get any money back, but perhaps the money will go on creating more good stuff for me to watch.

Nah, probably the BBC execs will get big bonuses.