Posted by gouessej on Nov 09, 2013; 10:31pm
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Onscreen-vs-offscreen-performances-tp4030556p4030558.html

Harvey is right, it's true for Java3D in general and especially under OS X. When you use JCanvas3D, most of the rendering is done offscreen anyway.

However, onscreen rendering in general is faster. The difference of performance depends on the hardware and the driver. Offscreen rendering is noticeably slower on Intel chipsets in lots of cheap laptops and desktop computers, it is very buggy on some hardware whereas there isn't a big difference between onscreen and offscreen rendering with up to date drivers and "not very old" Nvidia graphics cards.

If you want to get better performance, avoid offscreen rendering at all cost but it is almost impossible under OS X while we have no solid UI toolkit for NEWT (this is in our plan...). If you switch to NEWT, you'll have to replace Java3D by another scenegraph supporting it, for example Ardor3D, JMonkeyEngine 3 or Xith3D.