Aviatrix3D Beta 3: JOGL-based Scenegraph

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#1

Beta 2 of Aviatrix3D has been released today - 14 June 2004. Lots of updates, plenty of performance gains (now at least twice as fast as J3D in almost every application we have). More functionality and far more stable.

Original message:

j3d.org would like to announce the availablity of Aviatrix3D. It is a pure retained-mode Java scene graph API over the top of Java OpenGL bindings(JOGL). This toolkit is specifically focused on the needs of the data visualisation market - starting from a PC and working upwards to rendering clusters, CAVEs, Domes, HMDs etc.

This project is distributed under an LGPL license and we welcome all interested parties and contributions.

This is a Beta 1 release. We consider it stable, but not complete. Development timelines and plans are available on the project website.

Please check out Aviatrix3D here:

http://aviatrix3d.j3d.org

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Edit: Update title to indicate new Beta release number. Listing of new stuff is in a reply below.

#2

Sorry :-[ but what exactly is data visualization ???

#3

Data visualisation can be many things: typically large scale collections of data that need viewing - such a FEM, weather analysis, chemical modelling etc. Basically what that means is that we’re specifically not targeting the gaming market. There is a trade off of features for raw performance. Those features which are supported at oriented at what the scientific visualisation and simulation markets need, not the gaming market.

#4

Aviatrix3D has now hit released Beta 3. Due to the JOGL 1.1b06 release yesterday which broke the codebase due to some API changes, we actually have a Beta 3 and Beta 3a release for those that need to use either the new release or the old release of JOGL.

Summary of the new features added since Beta 2:

[]Spatialised Audio using OpenAL
[]GLSLang shader support (GL 1.5/2.0 shaders)
[]Significant performance improvements (up to 60% better FPS in heavily transparent worlds)
[]Sub-image texture updates
[]Addition of a collection of utilities. A 3DS static file loader is available, and I’ll be shortly porting the DEM, DTED, BT, AC3D and STL loaders from the main j3d.org repository to work with Aviatrix3D. We’ll also add AV3D loader capabilities to Xj3D as well.
[]Various CAD-related capabilities such as clip planes, two-sided materials, local & volumetric fog
[]Some work on customisable culling system. More below on this.
[]Batch picking complete

The downloads page is here:

http://aviatrix3d.j3d.org/download.html

And system installation requirements are here:

http://aviatrix3d.j3d.org/setup.html

There will be one more Beta release before a final 1.0 release. In that, we will finish up the final two important features - multipass rendering and volume rendering support. The rest are mostly detail cleanups of partially implemented, though less important functionality.