Let me say that I enjoyed reading this, and although I'm a novice amateur
programmer, it made a lot of sense to me. I'd love to see more discussion
like this. It's debate like this that moves technology forward.
[Casteel, Don]
-----Original Message-----
From: Anselm Hook [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 3:58 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] MathEngine is " Windows only " : Y U C K !
Hmmm, I'll comment on the below message since I'm working away on various
projects here at MathEngine including the OMG stuff.
First of all, Java3D is not intrinsically platform independent - you have to
ask the vendor for a port to your platform. Fundamentally it's no more nor
less platform independent than MathEngine. J3D has to bind to target
hardware on each platform, and MathEngine has to support numerical methods
optimally on each platform. The PS2 port of MathEngine for example is a
total rewrite optimized at the assembler level for the rather unique
characteristics of that device. There exist implementations of Java3D for
Windows and Linux and Solaris and Irix. MathEngine runs on those platforms
and on the PS2 - albeit not yet in commercial release. Secondarily Java3D
deployment is still not mature. Deploying J3D based applications requires
more than a single click, and this makes J3D untenable for web based
content. The problem fundamentally is an idealistic attitude at Sun, which
eschews interoperation with legacy frameworks such as Windows in favour of
their own entire model of reality. Much of the good technology coming out
of the Sun effort is difficult to install, difficult to deply. Technology
is irrelevant if deployment is difficult. Thirdly, the first iteration of
MathEngine technology was free to download at the very least - nobody else
has put themselves up to that kind of general scrutiny including Ipion. The
proposition has always been to only charge people for genuine value - if
there was genuine value and a genuine relationship then dollars should be
negotiated. Anyway, direct scrutiny has resulted in intense technical
feedback and intense improvement to MathEngine as a result. The new engine
is orders of magnitude faster, energetically stable, much smaller, and uses
entirely new algorithms and methods not based on Baraff. GDC 2000 (
www.gdconf.com <http://www.gdconf.com> ) w
I think everybody agrees on and believes in the fundamental value of
addictive web based multiplayer games with rich emergent behavior. We've
all have a vision of making that kind of killer web app - it's kind of a
holy grail. I actually suspect that interactive experiences / games will be
the dominant form of entertainment and education within a decade and that
cinema will fade away. But ever since starting to work with dynamics last
year I've realized that graphics isn't really as important as underlying
behavior in achieving these kinds of goals. A formal approach to behavior
systems based on newtons laws could cover most of the typical cases that
people imagine when they imagine building immersive experiences. Best of
all it would allow different game developers to make different objects that
actually could interact together. We've never had a "lingua franca" for
describing the interaction of behavior systems. Many efforts to provide
game building toolkits have failed because different models of object
behavior and interaction were insufficiently compatible with each other. I
believe that fundamentally most objects can interact adequately through
physical properties such as position, collision and the variety of other
forces and constraints that we are so used to perceiving as human beings.
Perhaps the place this is all going to happen first is the PS2. It may very
well be the first umbiqitous computing platform.
- Anselm Hook
(Note that we visited Sun and talked about the points below ( that we
provide Java Dynamics for them for free). They suggested that we go through
the java community standards approval process, which we may do but haven't
yet committed to. We also wanted a port of J3D to PS2 but it turns out that
this is harder than first appears so that is also on hold. So solutions
today are still somewhat fragmentary. It's clearly our ambition to solve
this and everybody is keenly aware of these issues. )
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for Java 3D API
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Matthew Gahan
Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2000 10:50 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] MathEngine is " Windows only " : Y U C K !
Mathengine isn't the only runn www.ipion.com <http://www.ipion.com> should
be considered a major contender.
Not least because Ipion's costs a tenth of what Mathengine's kit costs
($5000 ~ish for Ipion with some royalty's...).
According to the doc's this is a highly modular native c/c++ library, which
I am guessing would lend itself well to JNI integration...
The Open Media Group <http://www.openmediagroup.com> managed this with
Mathengine. The results were ok...but still slugish by current standards...
Ipion has a very low overhead (20% cpu usage estimate). It also has some
very nice optimizations for dealing with very large numbers of Free body
systems (ideal for particles).
-----Original Message-----
From: The Casteels < [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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