The simulation team at Open Robotics is currently working on the release of Gazebo 11, which is planned to be the last version released from the osrf/gazebo codebase. Gazebo 11 will EOL in 2025.
The team is also working on the next generation of Gazebo, called Ignition. Ignition has already had 2 named releases (acropolis and blueprint) and the next one, codenamed citadel is coming up next week.
Would it be possible to not change anything and continue developing on Gazebo-7? What would be the drawbacks?
It's possible, but Gazebo 7's EOL is on 2021 and after that we won't be making patch releases or porting it to newer platforms. It's highly recommended you upgrade to a supported version, either Gazebo's or Ignition's, on 2021.
Would it be possible to use the Ignition Gazebo instead? How difficult it would be?
Citadel will be Ignition’s first 5-year LTS, but we still expect large changes in the upcoming versions, as the codebase is currently under fast-paced development. If you need features which are in Ignition but not on Gazebo, you're welcome to try it out. The migration from Gazebo to Ignition is currently not very straightforward and we plan on improving that in the coming months.
Are there other alternatives?
Staying within the Open Robotics simulation realm, I recommend you upgrade from Gazebo 7 to Gazebo 11 once that's released, and eventually move to Ignition before 2025. There are also other simulators out there.
