Posted by Sven Gothel on
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Where-how-to-start-in-2012-tp3802984p3803025.html

On 03/06/2012 09:02 AM, LordSmoke [via jogamp] wrote:
>
>
> I have some old code I wrote in Java 3D, and think I want to move and extend
> it in JOGL. The current code displays some surface scans, and I want to
> enhance that and add multivariate statistical graphs (axes, labels, etc). I
> finally got some time yesterday to look at JOGAMP/JOGL 2 using Netbeans
> 7.1.1, and it was very frustrating. Difficult to find tutorials, lots of
> out-of-date (1.x) pages.

First stop is our wiki. Yes information is partly outdated regarding
the packaging and native jar lib loading, see me prev. post.
However, many folks did a great job documenting the usage,
ie. Wade's effort to walk-through Eclipse.

>
> Am I even doing the right thing? Should I be using JOGL 1.x (seems more info
> is available online)?

Well, our goal is to make JOGL usable for today's environment
including mobile devices and all OpenGL profiles (GL4 - ES1/2).
See the JOGL/OpenGL docs on our webpage in this regard.

JOGL1 is 'frozen' for about 2 years now.

JOGL will offer you a true platform independent framework
for all devices w/o code change when using NEWT and a common
OpenGL Profile (GL2ES1 or GL2ES2).

Think running your code on Windows, Linux, Solaris,
MacOSX and Android (x86* - ARM).

> LWJGL, instead?

LWJGL is another nice OpenGL mapping for Java
with similar but slightly different goals, AFAIK.
Currently they don't seem to support agnostic GL profiles
and platform support.

> Or, something else entirely for 3D
> programming?

I don't want and I cannot make a decision for you
in favor for any binding (JOGL or LWJGL - or maybe native code).

>
> Would someone be so kind as to point me in the right direction?

Another interesting aspect of using JOGL is that we
completely abstract the native windowing system and
OpenGL profiles. We have our own native windowing system NEWT,
which is supported on Android as well.

If you would use native code, you
would need to implement all these tedious things for yourself
for every platform.

Porting your code to diff platforms would be a massive task.

Using JOGL/NEWT here, maybe JOAL and JOCL would give you the
perspective of a truly write once run everywhere experience.
To achieve the latter - we need to communicate and fix bugs, of course.
But that's why we are here .. and have all technology available
for a quality product (CI/Jenkins, SCM/git, Bugzilla, Forum, EMail, Jabber/Chat).

To help the decision making process,
regardless whether it's a multi millions dollar project or 'just for fun',
just browse a bit through the forum messages,
check our blog, streams and tutorials page on jogamp.org
and maybe even the git commits.

Our BOF presentations are available as well on jogamp.org/jogl/www

Your input is welcome .. and if you would like to edit
and update our wiki pages you - and anybody else is welcome
to do so !! Just ask .. and you get an account.

Cheers, Sven

>
> TIA