To start off, there is not much to fear from anything at all. Java3D has
broad applications, I feel this is not to far off from the OpenGL and
Direct3D issue, in that Direct3D was designed for games specificly, and was
incorporated into a few high end 3d applications. The only diffrence from
that would probably be the cross platform issue.
Plus I have not seen a comparison or study of how many web games use Java,
versus how many use Macromedia solutions. Out of the 2d games though, I have
played more fun games written in Java then I have ShockWave, Im not entirely
sure why this is so.
And also Shockwave3D is not necesarily going to be the only competitor to
Java3D. I have, ah hmm, used the Groove engine for Director before, and I
believe it is probably more developed then macromedias 3d solution, but its
very rare to get access to it. Plus there is Wild Tangent (which I believe
mixes with Java) solution, and they have a pretty developed 3d engine in
comparison to others, at least my experience left off in their Genesis3D
which had a level editor a physics engine and a number of other features.
There also some other solutions I have seen around that have a lot of
potential for online entertainment and 3d interfaces, like Shout 3D, GL4Java,
Magician, and I believe there is some other ones I have seen based upon
GL4Java or Magician.
> e.g. nearly every 3D animation study will provide exporters, o.k. you say
Java3D
> has Loaders, but for Shockwave 3D, the exporters will export whole
animations
> eveb for single skinned meshes...
Thats interesting, Im hoping Java3D adopts good performance skinned mesh
nodes, not because they are the latest fad in game developement but because
they can shrink down the size of and animated meshes (morph targets consume
more memory then animated skinned meshes), and probably save memory internaly
as well.
> so i guess SUN has a little more to do than go to the GDC (Game Developer
> Conference) for advertising cause Macromedia has done i hit before
> (FLASH-payer)..
Interestingly enough, macromedia I believe bought flash, it was created by
some independant developers and macromedia unable to do the same things that
it could do simply bought it. And I believe that flash itself is an open
standard. This really has nothing to do with anything, its just some
information I picked up some time ago when researching flash.
Leyland Needham
===========================================================================
To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".
