Hello everyone, just a few things I wanted to add to this thread:
Every month I talk with many students here at Fullsail and others at
University of Central Florida who are looking for an API that allows them to
make a 3D app without having to worry about low level APIs. For the longest
time, the first thing that I would suggest was that they write their
application or game using Java3D. I would tell them about the advantages
that J3D has over other 3D APIs, and after showing a "little" demo most of
them would consider J3D to be very good candidate. The reason the demo was
a "little" one is because we tried to leave out everything that had a small
bug, so that they would not get a bad first impression. Unfortunately, as
soon as they asked to see a more complete demo, I would end up having to say
things like "this here is a little bug that wasn't in the previous version
and since they know about it, they will fix in the next version", "this
won't look right until they resolve it in the next release". A little after
getting started, they would ask questions that I would have to reply to with
"No, we had to rewrite what they had because..." "We are not using this or
that because..." "This other work around won't work because of another bug",
or that "we had to write other DirectX code that changes color
depth/resolution or .". In addition, trying to explain issues like why on
their laptop the OpenGL version of an engine runs only 10 Hz slower that its
D3D version, but J3D goes from 45Hz to 7Hz were never fun.(I agree with the
earlier post that Jeff Roberts made).
As much as I am pro J3D, I hate to say that last week I didn't even
bother to mention java3D to a team of 14 individuals (UCF Comp Sci. and
Digital Media students), who are trying to get started on a 3d project,
simply because the little things that makes the biggest difference in their
projects "almost work" or don't work at all. I have to say that without J3D
most of our 3D apps/software that we have developed here at Fullsail
wouldn't have been nearly as complete as they are, but it is a shame that we
can't demo them because they all have some kind of bugs (unfortunately J3D
ones). As Shawn Kendall had mentioned, " Java3D is a huge and wonderful API
as a pre-release, but as a release, it is hurting us! "
We have had a very few groups use our one of our J3D based engines for
their final project and I believe that little things here and there (if not
the major ones) will cause them to tell the groups coming behind them not to
use J3D based apps at all.
Regards,
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Syrus Mesdaghi Winter Park, FL
Real Time 3D instructor
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.fullsail.com
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