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Are questions asking something like "Do any game engines support feature X out of the box?" off-topic? Or do these fall under the "which technology to use" category (or some other category)?

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The actual question is a yes-or-no question, which we know to be bad. The implied follow up is "okay, which engines support this technology?" which is, I'd argue, pretty clearly a "which technology" question.

But even if you disagree with that, it's a list-generation question, which is too broad.

So I think we should close these.

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I think these questions are tricky and should be handled on a case-by-case basis, but should be closed more often than remain open.

First of all, because the answer can very easily be "No", which doesn't make for a very good answer. Or they can be "No, but you could try...", which can easily get into a back and forth about how you might tweak technology Y to work for feature X. Or generate a list of plugins or libraries that add said feature to a specific technology.

I think it'll be less likely for the answer to be "Yes, technology A and B support it and no others". This would be a very definite answer and likely pretty rare.

Since I see far more of the answers being the wishy-washy type, I don't think these questions are a good fit for the site.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I wonder what actually would be a good way to find out which existing frameworks support feature X? Should one ask for each framework separately? In other words: Would "Does framework X support feature Y?" questions be offtopic? \$\endgroup\$
    – Trilarion
    Dec 1 '14 at 10:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ In that case I believe it would be best to look up the documentation. Yes-or-no questions are not very good questions. \$\endgroup\$
    – House Mod
    Dec 1 '14 at 15:50
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Fundamentally, these questions are not good QA site questions for the same reason questions aren't allowed on SuperUser.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/

[T]echnology moves so rapidly that the best shopping recommendations will be utterly obsolete within a year! What’s the point of a bunch of labor intensive questions that provide only temporary benefit to a limited (some might say Too Localized) audience? There isn’t any.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Yes, technology moves often rapidly but still, even a temporary benefit for a limited audience is a benefit. I think one should not be too harsh and decide on a case by case basis. After all every question is only useful to a limited audience and might become outdated. Most questions here are about technology one way or the other. \$\endgroup\$
    – Trilarion
    Dec 1 '14 at 10:24

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