Re. Java3D performance:
This is a popular topic. If the major journals weren't terrified of printing
benchmarks,
the answers to these questions would be more widely understood. As it is, you have
to go to www.tomshardware.com or the gaming websites to see meaningful cross-
vendor comparisons.
Basically, the performance of the various graphics accelerator cards for 3D
and Java3D in particular varies enormously depending on platform. For the OpenGL
mplementation of Java3D, I would say that NVidia has the best OpenGL
support today (that includes Creative, Hercules, Guillemot, Elsa, and other
brands of video boards using NVidia processors). Some Diamond cards also
perform very well, also, such as the Fire GL1. 3Dfx cards
may be fantastic for DirectX but they are largely useless for OpenGL (due to an
incomplete
OpenGL ICD). If you can use the DirectX version of Java3D they may be fine.
The older ATI Rage Pro processors are pretty worthless for Java3D. There seems to be
controversy over the ATI Rage 128. I tried out several ATI XPert 128 cards about a year
ago and could not get them to work properly with Java3D at all. Bad colors, incomplete
rendering and poor performance are what I saw. Some other people have reported good
performance recently with other ATI cards using the ATI Rage 128 processor.
It would appear that ATI may have improved their OpenGL support in recent months.
Your 933 MHz PIII (I presume) should deliver fantastic performance when matched with
a good video accelerator. For less than $150 you can buy one of the GeForce II MX cards
which should work very well. If you need top performance spend $500 and buy a GeForce
II Ultra
card (if you can find one!). The Ultra uses 4 to 4.5 ns DDR memory!!!
No - I do not get kickbacks from NVidia. I have just had to try to make Java3D work on
numerous operating systems (all versions of Windows and Solaris) with about 10
different
video accelerators. There can be a 30-to-1 difference in Java3D performance depending
on
the platform and video card. On some platforms, some Java3D applications do not seem to
work at all at any speed. NVidia processors seem (TODAY) to deliver maximum performance
with minimum hassle. That's my opinion and I do have Java3D benchmarks to backup my
claims about speed! Check out tomshardware for other benchmarks (unfortunately, they
do not
post Java3D tests but they do post a lot of OpenGL benchmarks).
Jim Schatzman
At 12:00 PM 9/14/2000 -0500, Shaun Shepherd wrote:
>I'm trying to run a simulation that loads in an object and translates it along a
>path(via setTranslation). The current fps is 3.5 and I know my computer can do
>better than that. I have a 933mhz with ATI Rage 128 Pro. I really have no idea on
>how to up the frame rate. I get the feeling that my java3d is not taking advantage
>of the graphics card, but I don't know how to remedy that. Does anyone have any
>suggestions? Thanks.
>
>
> Shaun
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