>
> > Audio Rendering:
> > Our to do list includes a DirectSound audio device implementation.
> > This will help a lot of the sound performance cases. Since the audio device
> > is an interface, anyone could write this and share it. Any takers? :^)
>
> When I've talked with the J3D developers before (both privately and at
> Siggraph/JavaOne) the message I got was that 3D audio rendering is not
> available at all in the current implementation. That is, all of the
> spatialisation is done within the J3D runtime and then passed to the
> AudioDevice as a pure stereo mode. Therefore, even if you had a 3D audio
> device that was implementing DirectSound/AudioDevice3D it would not use
> the capabilities at all. This is the first time that I've heard anything
> to the contrary. Could you expand on this please.
>
We don't process sound down to stereo in Java 3D. We currently only have
one AudioDevice implementation. That is an implementation using the
JavaSound engine, which is pure software. This may be where the confusion
came from. The Java 3D core processes sound down to the AudioDevice layer,
then it passes it to the AudioDevice. Since, our only AudioDevice right
now is software, it doesn't matter. But we did put the interface in
there so that HW spacialization is possible. We just don't have an AudioDevice
that does it today.
> > Transparency:
> > It seems that most folks don't know what we do with transparent
> > objects. The Java 3D rendering order is as follows: opaque objects,
> > ordered objects, transparent objects.
>
> The problem with this is that it all sounds fine in theory, but in
> reality it sucks badly. VRML browsers (as one example) do this very
> nicely and have never had a problem with it. It is, as far as I can
> tell, impossible to do a mixture of semi-transpareny objects, lines and
> standard geometry and have the thing rendered correctly even when taking
> into account all of the pointers that have been posted to the list over
> time.
>
> I've attached an example image to show you what happens. A single
> texture with alpha works fine. Add another object that doesn't have
> alpha in the texture and it all goes to wrong. Note that the green lines
> should go to the edge of the white texture and stop because the end up
> behind it. The opaque texture is actually in front of the tree so that
> should not show up either.
>
This looks like a common problem people run into. By default, we disable
the Z buffer when rendering transparent objects. You can override this
behavior by calling View.setDepthBufferFreezeTransparent(false). This will
turn Z buffering back on for transparent objects. If this doesn't help,
send the test case to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so we can look into it.
> > Multiple Screens:
> > This is in Java 3D 1.2 with JDK1.3.
> >
> > Stereo:
> > This was a bug in 1.1.2. It is fixed in 1.2alpha1 and the upcoming 1.1.3.
>
> Just wondering - are you/SGI licensee incorporating the SGI OpenGL patch
> that got posted to the list a few weeks ago? Seems like a pretty serious
> bug to me in that particular implementation.
>
We don't have any control over what licensees do in their implementation.
Doug Twilleager
Java 3D Team
Sun Microsystems
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