On Wed, 2003-11-26 at 07:41, Michael Pfeiffer wrote: > On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 15:59:29 -0500, Christian Britton > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hey man, > > We don't work for SUN. We can only speculate. So, I'd rather speculate > > POSITIVELY or not at all. Java 3D is a very good API and very intuitive. > > Keep in mind that no one ever dreamed of the Apple release till they > > magically unveiled it with no one even expecting it. Expect something > > similar from SUN... > > I absolutely agree with you! The worst thing would be a pessimism which > tells everybody J3D IS already dead. Some people who spread this > information about their websites and mailinglist help to dig J3Ds grave (a > little bit). So please: let's have a look at the facts and don't speculate > SO much.
Think of this - it only takes a few words from Sun to put a stop to all the speculation. I'll phrase an example (this is totally made up): "Java3D is actively in development and we have a team of dedicated engineers who are committed to fixing bugs and bringing you new features now and in the foreseeable future." Usually a company would squash such damaging speculation in that manner - and if people continued to spread "untruths" then they could sue them. But they haven't. I think many people really don't want to see it die and I can totally understand that due to investments of time, knowledge and money. However - I believe Justin's views are valid. Because if he was spreading untrue rumours like a few posters seem to think - why hasn't Sun simply made a statement to the country? Quoting Doug's comment in the "official" statement from the Virtual Worlds site earlier posters have linked to: "We are still working out the plans for how new features can be added to Java 3D". I would like to point out the wording in that sentence - they are working on a _plan_ to add new features and _not_ actually working on the new features? I know if people started going around saying that a product of mine was dead, I would issue as many statements as necessary to the contrary and then release a new version with some cool new feature to prove it. I am currently working with Xith3D so the following opinion is quite bias. In stark contrast to Java3D, Xith3D has a team of dedicated engineers who are committed to fixing bugs (not just posting workarounds) and bringing you new features. Two days ago I submitted a bug - within 120 minutes a fix was in CVS. 60 minutes later I uploaded the snapshot on xith.org - it wasn't a large bug (obviously) but my point is to show just how fast the gears in the Xith3D machine are turning. And the other great thing about Xith3D is if the project is ever declared "dead" it and all dependant libraries is totally open source and anyone could pick the project up and run with it. The problem now is that so many months of speculation in my opinion has damaged the product that is Java3D. Even if they did release version 1.4 - who's to know development won't stall again? Short of a radical change in policy like making it open source, I can't see myself trusting it again. It opened my eyes to the vulnerability of the product so I switched to something which doesn't have those vulnerabilities. Best Regards, William Denniss --- http://xith.org/ =========================================================================== 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".
