Hi. I was recently browsing the archives of this list and spotted the
thread entitled 'Magician/Sorceress VS. Java3D'. There's a lot of
misconceptions about Magician and Sorceress in the postings which I
feel I ought to clarify.
I have included to original posts between chevrons with my reply to each
one below. If you have any comments on this that you don't want to send to
the java3d list, please contact me directly and I'll be happy to answer
your questions.
>>>>>>>>>
From: Jaime Requena
Subject: Magician/Sorceress VS. JAVA 3D
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 15:25:27 -0400
I was wondering if their are people here who have tried both. I want to
create a multi-player game using one of them, but I'm not sure which would
be better. It seems like Magician will have better performance than JAVA 3d
because it is a lower level api. I know JAVA 3d has a good system for
building a scene and I'm not sure how good Sorceress is at doing this. Any
information would be great.
<<<<<<<<<<
Firstly, comparing Java3D and Magician isn't stricly fair. Magician implements
bindings for OpenGL which is a low-level rendering API. Java3D implements
a scene graph toolkit that just happens to use OpenGL ( as well as Direct3D )
as its rendering API.
Therefore, without starting a fight about this, they can't really be directly
compared. Magician is faster but more low-level, Java3D has a scene graph
which might make doing basic stuff easier. The product called Sorceress is
more comparable to Java3D as it too provides a scene graph via the Cosmo3D
portion of it *and* large model visualisation tools via the OpenGL Optimizer
portion.
However, Arcane are no longer working on Sorceress.
Therefore, if you *need* a scene graph, use Java3D. If you want performance
and don't mind a bit of extra coding, use Magician.
Next up........
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
From: Bob Gray
Subject: Re: Magician/Sorceress VS. JAVA 3D
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:22:31 -0400
I have not used Magician, but when I looked at it and had to make a
decision as to which to use (Magician or Java 3D or other) I picked
Java 3D mainly because Magician (and other 3D software packages)
are not free. You have to buy it. (Or, with other packages,
you have to include a copyright notice in all the software you write
with the package.) And if you are going to sell a product you developed
which uses the package, you have to buy licenses for each copy of your
program you sell, etc.... So be sure you understand what licensing
obligations
you have if you buy a package.
Java 3D may not be the best performance, particularly for games, but its
free, nice to program, and (I hope) will improve over time.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Magician is a commercial product which costs money. Java3D is free. Magician
is based on a tried, tested and trusted graphics API with a raft of
developer-friendly features. Java3D....?
However, your statements on Magician's licensing are totally wrong. We
have the following licensing structure:
o Writing free software, working in/for education, working for
non-profit organisations
-> You can apply for a license which allows you to redistribute
Magician for free with your application or development project.
If you have multiple projects that fit the bill, we'll issue
you with multiple licenses.
The license allows you to redistribute the licensed version of
Magician with no restrictions as part of your application
without any per-seat charge. Basically, you get to use it for
*free*.
o Writing shareware?
-> You can purchase a shareware license for 200 GBP. This allows
you to redistribute the licensed version of Magician unlimitedly
with your shareware application. No additional costs.
Again, one license for one development project or application.
o Commercial or government use?
-> You can purchase a commercial license for 1000 GBP per license.
This allows you to redistribute the licensed version of Magician
unlimitedly with your application or development project. There
are no additional costs. This is a one-off payment.
Again, one license per development project or application.
o Need the source code for interest or security purposes?
-> We offer source code licenses for exactly this purpose. This
license gives you non-exclusive access to the Magician source
code which you can use for study or to create custom Magician
builds for your company. This costs 5000 GBP for 12 months.
You may not release the source code to anyone.
All these licenses do *not* require renewal. They are good forever. Also,
these licenses do *not* have per-seat charges attracted to them. You pay
a single charge ( or not in the case of the free license ) and that's you.
Therefore, if you are using Java3D because of a costing exercise, I fear
you might have made the wrong decision! Magician is very affordable to use,
even for commercial enterprises.
Full information and draft licenses are available at:
http://www.arcana.co.uk/products/magician
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
From: Daniel Selman
Subject: Re: Magician/Sorceress VS. JAVA 3D
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 18:24:00 -0400
As Bob also mentioned the stumbling block for us was the license that the
people at Magician were prepared to offer. We were deploying an *Applet* to
potentially thousands of people (how would we even know how many), and they
were fixated on a *per-user* licensing model. A per-user licensing model was
unacceptable to our client so we made the (at the time risky) decision to
use Java 3D.
A year later I would feel much happier in recommending Java 3D. A few months
ago, I heard through the grapevine that the people behind Magician had gone
out of business. I don't know about the contractual status of their code
base.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Our original licensing model was the main reason we shut down to re-evaluate
Magician's position. We had a shut-down on development for about 1 month
while we worked out what way the licensing model needed to go. I think we
have definitely fixed that as we're now issuing a great deal of licenses
both free and commercial and the Magician user-base is increasing at a
fairly rapid rate.
However, those problems I feel are now completely behind us ( and receding
quickly into the far clipping plane ) and you should seriously consider
our new licensing strategy for your needs. For example, your JavaMet project
would now fall into our free license category.
Our codebase is now nearly three years in the making and is very very stable
across all the platforms that we support: Linux x86/PPC, MacOS, OS/2, Irix,
Intel/Solaris, SPARC/Solaris, AIX, Windows95/98/NT/2000, Netscape Communicator,
Microsoft Internet Explorer...
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
My group made precisely the same decision - we chose Java3D because it was
the only freely available high level scenegraph period. We also expect it
to improve over time and frankly have more confidence in a larger organization
like Sunsoft being able to do that eventually.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
All I can say to this is that Java3D is now nearly three years in the making
and people are *still* saying ``it'll get better eventually''? :-)
I hope this note clears up any misconceptions Java3D users may have about
Magician and I strongly urge you to check the software out ( and download
the evaluation copy to play with ) at:
http://www.arcana.co.uk/products/magician
You *will* be impressed...
Regards.
A.
--
Alligator Descartes |
[EMAIL PROTECTED] |
http://www.symbolstone.org |
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