Posted by gouessej on Nov 19, 2015; 12:37pm
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Java3d-pushing-the-limits-tp4035814p4035826.html

philjord wrote

Julien,
Thanks for checking it out.

Setting licensing was something I wanted to have done before putting it up, but I have an enormous amount of work to sort out the attributions and license statements on the various code I've borrowed and used.

You should have done that earlier because there are some incompatibilities between licenses...

philjord wrote

Currently I plan on keeping with Java3d for 2 reasons:

Firstly the scene graph of java3d is still miles ahead of the other options, even though it's 9(+) years since it was designed and written, I am consistently amazing at how forward thinking they were.

Java3D has some very deep and impacting design flaws, it's maintained but there will be no new feature, it will never work under Android, it has no chance to work with OpenGL ES and it won't work with Vulkan. We have just postponed its death by maintaining it a bit longer but there are fewer developers contributing on it as time goes by. We don't have enough resource to implement a new backend based on Vulkan without breaking the public API. Java3D isn't miles ahead the JavaFX 3D graphics API, it's a lot less modern than JMonkeyEngine and most of its API goes less far than JogAmp's Ardor3D Continuation which is really designed to be maintained for the next ten years and with JOGL in mind.

philjord wrote

Secondly the only major stumbling blocks (once I got compressed textures working) are:

1 My Oculus Rift support (which worked well with SDK 0.3) can't work with the newer SDK and needs JoglPipeline changes (hint hint).

Java3D is only in maintenance mode, we won't implement any new feature...

philjord wrote

2 I can't get bump mapping going using COMBINE_DOT3 so I have to learn more GLSL (which does my head in frankly).

We all have to learn shader programming one day :)

philjord wrote

3 The damn bug in JVM 1.7/1.8 which returns bum drivers on a second init of the canvas, meaning resolution changes require a restart.

This limitation is absent of JogAmp's Ardor3D Continuation, I just have to move some code from TUER into the engine itself to make it work as flawlessly as possible for the other developers.

philjord wrote

Finally, yes I agree furiously about the build system as I wrote that enourmous readme all I could think was it would take the same time to just convert to something, but I know nothing about Maven and the c++ system "make" is such an awful beast I  haven't been able to bring myself to look into it properly. But yes I really should put that on the top of the todo list.

A portable equivalent of "make" is Ant ;) I saw a few DLLs, it discouraged me to run your stuff under GNU Linux.

philjord wrote

Can I just take a moment to thank you personally for the Jogl port you did, it was an absolute lifeline to me during a time when I nearly gave up on my hobby game coding feeling that it had all been a waste of years of effort. Thank you heaps!

I did most of the port in a few hours (about 4 :D ) and Harvey read all my commits before using them. I don't want you to give up but you'll really have to drop Java3D one day.

philjord wrote

I actually read some of your early post on JGO the other day, amazing to see where you started out and what you've achieved since.

I hope the "discussion" that's just started results in a more lively java3d release path.

I would almost put my hand up for it except:
I'm a father of 3, so I'm unreliable with my time.
I know very little of linux and maven.
I know even less about openGL.
I've got about 6 bug fix/bug examples for Java3d that I still haven't had time to get SSCCE for.

There won't be anything really lively in Java3D. I'll try to make it work with OS 10.11 but I'm reluctant to release Java3D 1.7. You can just expect a few maintenance pre-builds this year and next year. It was designed with no strong reliance on JOGL, this aspect is a weakness, it reinvents the wheel in worse, it's less reliable than the other 3D engines written later.

philjord wrote

PS I live in Paris, Vive la France!

I live extremely close to Paris. I was in the Charonne street one hour and an half before the shooting. I just try to forget what happened.