"J. Lee Dixon" wrote:
>
> Justin (and all),
> I wouldn't really consider Java3D a "low-level" rendering API since you
> don't really have access to OpenGL calls. A low-level api would let you
> do have access to the accumulation, stencil, frame and other buffers.
Well that really depends on the definition of low-level too. At the
moment I would disagree with your classification - and I think that is
only temporary. Once we get to 1.4 I think that we will have enough
access to this part of the rendering engine to do those sorts of tasks.
> Really, I consider Java3D a mid- or high-level api since it layers
> low-level calls beneath the scene graph api.
I really would not consider j3d to be in the high-level category. As
you've heard me bitching privately over the last week or so, VRML is
definitely in the high-level category. J3D doesn't even come close to
the sort of things that VRML allows you to do so simply. Then again, it
makes it a complete nightmare trying to implement a VRML browser over
the top of Java3D because of some mismatches in their underlying scene
models. We'll make it, but I don't know how well the end result will
perform.
(For info, we have a core profile X3D browser running complete with
terrain following and collision detection. On a lightly textured world
with around 40k polygons and 3 lights I'm getting roughly 40fps on an
850Mhz laptop with ATI Rage M3 and 256MB ram. The thing that is really
killing it currently is the collision detection because we are
allocating and GCing coordinate arrays every frame due to way
getCoordinates() is implemented).
--
Justin Couch http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/
Freelance Java Consultant http://www.yumetech.com/
Author, Java 3D FAQ Maintainer http://www.j3d.org/
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"Humanism is dead. Animals think, feel; so do machines now.
Neither man nor woman is the measure of all things. Every organism
processes data according to its domain, its environment; you, with
all your brains, would be useless in a mouse's universe..."
- Greg Bear, Slant
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