Catch 22 for jogl

OpenGL Development JOGL Development
#1

I know that it is not an easy period for the Jogl project, so my apologies in advance for the following rant…

But here is the thing:

  • On a stock (~2008) Mac OSX 10.5.x box (comes with Java 1.5 preinstalled): Jogl is working fine (1.x or 2.x)

  • At some point, the “Software Update” system is probably going to convince you (the “average user”) to switch to Java 1.6.

  • From that point: Jogl 1.x is not going to work anymore.

  • On a stock (~2008) low-end Intel-based PC with an onboard GPU and XP: only Jogl 1.x is working (blank screen for 2.x…)

  • I heard that upgrading the graphics driver may help, but it’s not something which is done (or even proposed) automatically to the “average user” on this kind of system.

Recap: there is no way today to deploy a Java Webstart Jogl project which will work cross-platform!
It’s going to crash: either on (more and more) Mac’s or on PC’s with Intel GPU’s, depending on the Jogl version you’re going to choose.

Any workaround that I (hopefully) missed?

#2

??? I use JOGL 1 with Java 1.6 on Linux 64-bit. It works. Why would it not work on OS X 64-bit?

#3

“why would it not work on OS X 64-bit”?

I don’t know, but I guess this topic is not about how close Linux and Mac OSX are or should be…

I’m just telling the facts: Jogl 1.x is not working on Mac OSX 10.5.x with Java 1.6.

#4

How about LWJGL?

Cas :slight_smile:

#5

Sure, I’ve been thinking about it for the past months…

“Only” a matter of spending time converting and testing existing code.

But beforehand, I have to make sure that LWJGL works flawlessly on any (32-bit or 64-bit) “out-of-the-box” PC (XP, Vista, 7) and Mac OSX (10.5.x and Snow Leopard), with Java 1.5 or 1.6
Does it?

#6

MacOS - yes, mostly - not aware of any issues, and should run OK from 10.3.9 onwards on either PPC or i386 and 32 or 64 bit.

Windows - about a third of Windows machines don’t have any OpenGL drivers or have drivers so broken they just don’t work. At least that was last time I compiled the stats, which was nearly a year ago I think. I’m not sure about 64 bit support on Windows. Elias or Matzon may be able to clarfiy where that got to.

Cas :slight_smile:

#7

Thanks for the info.

Good news for Mac’s then…

Regarding the PC’s with poor OpenGL out-of-the-box support: I was not aware that it could affect 33% of all the machines…

Now I wonder if my low-end 2008 Intel based PC with onboard GPU (G31/G33) is in that category (which I doubt, since Jogl 1.x is working flawlessly, i.e. the dysfunction with Jogl 2.x is more like a software regression…)

Anyway, I’m going to test LWJGL with that PC and we’ll see.
Is there any “reference” Webstart test (ala Jogl Gears) in LWGJL land?

Regarding 64-bit support (AMD, Intel) on Windows: yes, any feedback would be great.

#8

http://lwjgl.org/demos.php

#9

You didn’t actually say that before, and I read what you said as an assumption. What error do you get?

FWIW I have no problems running JOGLTetrahedron from the Wikipedia page on JOGL with Java 1.6.0_15 and JOGL 1.1.1a on a MacBook running OS 10.5.8.

#10

as of LWJGL 2.2, it should work fine on windows 64 bit.

#11

It’s not either about compiling by yourself a Jogl 1.x example and running it locally on OSX 10.5.x with Java 1.6.
But rather: producing a web-startable Jogl 1.x example that would run on any out-of-the box OSX 10.5.x Mac which received a Java 1.6 upgrade.

It’s a very different test-case actually…

A few months ago, I went to the local Apple Store:

  • many different kind of Macs (all of them with Java 1.6 _ not that the Apple Store guys know what Java even means, but more like something that was automatically upgraded…)
  • ran my good old Jogl 1.x web-start examples and they all failed.

On the same machines btw: using the Java “control panel” to force-back Java 1.5 is solving the problem.
In short, the problem is like Java 1.6 is fooling Jogl, which in turn don’t know what native libraries to pick.

Actually a pretty well-known issue (links to come…)

#12

More details about the issue with Mac OSX and Jogl 1.x:
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,18564.0.html
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,15594.msg156712.html#msg156712 b[/b]

I think that the web-startability of Jogl 1.x on OSX with Java 1.6 was never achieved…
And sure, it’s one of the hot topics Jogl 2.x hopefully solved…

So why just not moving all my Jogl 1.x web-start stuff to Jogl 2.x?

Well, that’s the catch 22: it seems to be broken with Intel GPU’s:
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,21380.0.html
http://kenai.com/projects/jogl/forums/forum/topics/1762-JOGL2-XP-Intel-GPU

Is it realistic to expect for a fix of that current Jogl 2.x regression?

#13

it is realistic, but jogl 2 is now a freetime project. We have currently some infrastructure issues thats why nightly builds of the jogl 2 stack are delayed. I’ve set up everything for cross compilation (linux/windows/32/64bit, mac is on the todo list… i have no access to macs) but have some issues with the packet filter at my university.

Speaking for Sven and me, we have not the resources to support JOGL 1.x and work on JOGL2 at the same time. Don’t expect any jogl 1.x fixes from us. JOGL2 is now community driven, JOGL1 is ‘politics’ driven and has been forked company internally (apparently long time ago).

I can’t give you any guarantees… thats open source.

#14

I can offer some help from the mac side if you like, just tell me what to do. I got git installed at last, and as long as the build is ant or maven I should be able to offer some help…

#15

thanks Cork, i will ping you within next week. Building jogl/jocl/gluegen will be as simple as starting a webstart app when i am done :wink:

#16

As far as I know, JOGL 1.1.1a works fine with at least some Intel GPU’s under Windows, some users succeeded in using my “game”.

#17

The problem with Intel GPU’s is not Jogl 1.x but Jogl 2.x (the “blank screen” issue)

Yes, I’m aware of the new open-source nature of the project, now that Sun dropped it.
So first: kudos to everyone who is contributing!

If I could vote for one single feature to fix, I’d obviously go for this one:

  • Make sure Jogl 2.x works with Intel GPU’s (as it is already with Jogl 1.x)

I don’t mind converting all my code from 1.x to 2.x once I’m sure that all the major current platforms are properly supported “out-of-the-box”…

#18

[quote=“arielm,post:17,topic:34594”]
Don’t worry. If I had much time, I would help fixing bugs in JOGL 2 but I will give a financial help if required. Some motivated guys go on maintaining JOGL 2 and I thank them for using their precious energy and time for a community project. Please guys, keep up the good work ;D We need you.

However, the Apple’s JVM is quite less reliable than Sun’s one and even the OpenJDK can do better. I fear that there might still have some bugs in their JVM that affect JOGL as it happened a very few times in the past with Java 1.5.

#19

Hi Bienator, so what does JavaFX use internally? I was under the impression that
it uses JOGL as its rendering layer. I would appreciate any clarification on this matter.

.rex

#20

As far as i know it uses Java2D as its rendering layer, which has software, D3D and OGL pipelines.