Speaking for myself only, I'm afraid that debates between VRML and Java bore me to
tears. Just evaluate all of the technologies
directly and make your own decision. One is largely declarative and the other largely
procedural. These are all just grammers -
each trying to define the problem space of 3d graphics. They overlap in some degrees,
like say a chassis and an engine for a car,
but they have degrees of freedom relative to each other (at least it seems to me)
which make it difficult to strictly rate them.
If I really had to be critical I would say that it is erroneous to be fixated on 3D
graphics at all - it's just the shallowest part
of building a simulation.... There is an *incredible* hubris in calling VRML "Virtual
Reality" - as if virtual reality has anything
more than the most passing relationship to visualization. The real focus of VR is the
dynamical simulation of an underlying
reality.... and any transport protocol or grammer can be used to shovel the polygons
in your direction. People doing haptics
research probably care a lot more about millisecond response time to collision events
than they do to the color of a polygon. Now
if VRML had specified certain guarantees about collision and suchlike then that might
be a different story.
Also, I should qualify that while I feel they are complementary I am personally
critical of VRML. We (as a community) should really
be defining component level architectures which are application neutral (such as Mark
Rudolph is doing, and such as the X3D
consortium is doing). VRML's extern proto support technically does allow third party
components but perhaps just for reasons of
having to shuttle back and forth between various grammers it has always been
challenging to use. I was a big fan of Justin Couches
VRML bindings to Java but even then it was difficult to debug all the way through a
system and this was an impedance for me as a
professional games developer used to having total control over a system. And recall
the fiasco with Newfire who tried to build a
business around VRML... it's clear that VRML (regardless of comparison to Java3D) has
its own issues.
(In my opinion) In the areas where VRML and Java3D do overlap - behaviors and
components, Java and Java3D are more mature. Java
itself provides a nice concept of packaging and a fairly good approach to component
level assembly using JavaBeans... if you're a
programmer this all forms a very nice declarative and procedural environment that is
fairly application neutral. (But of course
that is what a general purpose programming language is - an application neutral
framework for hanging chunks of code from various
vendors).
Well, I'll be announcing my own Java3D project soon, and in fact I use VRML heavily so
I shouldn't complain.
- Anselm Hook
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Bendig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Anselm Hook <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, September 10, 1999 7:17 AM
Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] Java3D vs VRML and X3D
>Hi Anselm,
>I don't think so. These technologies are targetting the same or at least very
>overlapping application areas.
>I think, every application done in VRML could also have been done based on Java3D. On
>the other hand I think that it's no problem
to build very complex applications in Java3D but in VRML such complex applications are
very hard to handle because of the interfaces
to other technologies (java, javascript, eai, ...).
>
>So I would say VRML is a nice geometry file format, but for building complex
>applications Java3D ist the better technology.
>
>And even those people who don't what to touch code (designers, architects, ...) could
>use standard Java3D applets which understand
their specific file formats (max, 3ds, dxf, ...)
>
>Or am I wrong?
>
>Thanks for your answer.
>
>Thomas Bendig
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>http://www.echtzeit.de
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Anselm Hook [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>> Sent: Donnerstag, 9. September 1999 18:16
>> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Subject: Re: Re: [JAVA3D] Java3D distribution with browsers
>>
>>
>> X3D and VRML are totally complementary to Java3D. They will only
>> help each other.
>>
>> >
>> >May I ask you (all) another question?
>> >What do you think about X3D and VRML in relation to Java3D?
>> >Will Java3D make it obsolete?
>> >
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