I was wondering what''s the best/easiest/fastest way to do hardware accelerated 3D in Java. If possible I''d like to use the latest stuff (I''ve spent too much money on that geforce3 to let it go to waste ). From some 60 minutes research on the net I''ve found 2 possible solutions:
1. use Java 3D, however I''ve heard some comments that this API is incomplete (fi. how about support for the new vertex/pixel shaders etc?) and the current implementation is buggy (this was a remark I heard some time ago, so it might be redundant by now?)
2. use some Java-OpenGL binding, however at the moment there doesn''t seem to be a well-supported binding. The only one I could find that seems to be updated and maintained is GL4Java. Are there other and better ones that I didn''t find? There was some rumour that a company might buy Magician and continue to develop it. Did this happen?
Or should I just stick with C++?
Thanks in advance,
Peter
When I was at the JavaOne conference, I took a little time to talk to some of the Java3D guys and it sounds like JDK1.4 is going to have hardware acceleration.
I looked at their demo and there is a real improvement in speed compared to 1.3, but I''m not sure if it''s going to be good enough. Sun''s demo ran at 16fps instead of 0.8fps in 1.3. That''s a big boost but who knows what hardware they were running on.
The best way is to try out JDK1.4 (the beta is available now).
I have almost finished the basic design phase for my summer project, and have been exploring the different implementation options. I would prefer to use Java. I have looked into GL4Java; they don''t have a GLUT wrapper library, and my famaliarity with OGL relies heavily on that. I suppose I could fairly easily learn to implement GLUT functions myself, but if I am going to learn something, I am thinking I''ll just go ahead and learn Java 3D; since it''s fairly new, it will probably be semi-slow and possibly have a couple of bugs, but I don''t think I''ll finish my project anytime soon, and each new realease should be leaps and bounds ahead of the last (jdk 1.3 smashed 1.2, and 1.4 is supposed to smash 1.3, so I am hoping this trend will extend to java 3D). Anyway, just my 2 cents.
). From some 60 minutes research on the net I''ve found 2 possible solutions:
1. use Java 3D, however I''ve heard some comments that this API is incomplete (fi. how about support for the new vertex/pixel shaders etc?) and the current implementation is buggy (this was a remark I heard some time ago, so it might be redundant by now?)
2. use some Java-OpenGL binding, however at the moment there doesn''t seem to be a well-supported binding. The only one I could find that seems to be updated and maintained is GL4Java. Are there other and better ones that I didn''t find? There was some rumour that a company might buy Magician and continue to develop it. Did this happen?
Or should I just stick with C++? 
Thanks in advance,
Peter
