I'm glad others are concerned like I am on Java bindings to OpenGL ES 2.x. As things go it would be nice to hear from Google that they will be included in FroYo not just that they "should" be included. Even if they are included in 2.2 it is going to take roughly 6 months to a year (from this point) before this update will make it out to the larger ecosystem. Not being in 2.2 would be tragic and put the delay to the larger ecosystem at 1 to 1.5 years which is not acceptable. As we can see the Droid update to 2.1 is taking ~3 - 4 months to receive this update after general release and that is a significant time gap. The same can be assumed for the 2.2 role out to the larger ecosystem of devices that support GL 2.x.
The way I view it is that the roll out of GL 2.x in FroYo is more of a consumer facing issue than it is a developer oriented one. It is not enough to say we will support GL 2.x in FroYo and that all developers will have to wait until it is widely available to _begin_ next generation engines/tech. It is crucial for leading edge Java real time app & game developers to develop the engine / game technology now well in advanced of a consumer roll out and general / wide availability in the ecosystem. As Mario and others have brought up it is pertinent to have a binding that uses NDK r3 available as soon as possible. It is possible to release GL 2.x apps with a 3rd party binding (extra jar and extra .so) for early use apps, however it is more important to have this 3rd party binding available now for development of next gen titles / engines. Romain.. You previously worked at Sun and contributed to their JOGL effort. You should have some general understanding that it wouldn't take all too much effort for Google to provide an interim solution. Whether this is using Gluegen or SWIG it shouldn't be too bad to come up with an official interim binding and Java wrapper. I think it would go a long way with leading edge Java oriented Android developers for Google to support an interim wrapper. This is primarily to support leading edge developers and not necessarily for consumer facing deployment though it certainly could be used unofficially for that purpose. If Google will not, can not, or refuses to provide this interim binding it would be helpful to know right away that is the case. If not it allows the larger dev community to create a publicly available version. Personally I've not looked into using Gluegen/SWIG before to create a Java wrapper/binding, but it seems like it wouldn't take all too long to work it out especially for anyone that has previous experience doing so. Romain or other Google Android devs can you guys comment on the above. I assume it may be up to the dev community to roll our own, but as mentioned this seems like it would be relatively trivial for the Android team to provide an interim build of an external binding/Java wrapper from the OS itself. It would show strong support for the developer community and be much appreciated. After all some of us are early adopters of Android and have dealt with the growing pains with GL support (re initial 2.0 release and the incomplete/buggy GL implementation was a major headache for some of us), so pushing this into our court is just another burden. The general consumer is one issue, but strong developer support is a more important issue. We should have next gen Java engines/games ready and well developed before 2.2 hits the wider ecosystem. So yeah.. I'd be glad to work with Mario or anyone else if necessary to create an interim 3rd party binding/wrapper, but I still recommend that the Android team provide this and show support to leading edge Java real time app & game developers. Regards, --Mike Leahy On Mar 11, 3:52 pm, Romain Guy <[email protected]> wrote: > FroYo *should* have these bindings. > > On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 3:49 PM, Mario Zechner <[email protected]> > wrote: > > I'd also be interested in the java bindings. A not so precise time > > estimate would suffice so that i can decide wheter i write my own > > bindings or not. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
