bad plug jbanes.
Sorry, maybe I should have specified that I don’t work for these people, nor do I have any affiliation. I just happened to run across them before and found that they sell inexpensive Sun equipment. Since elias asked about Sun kit (sorry, mine has a stupid PGX-8 in it) I decided to post. No spamming intended.
Not everyone uses Java because they want applets or cross-platform code - personally I use Java because it’s an elegant language, lets me write solid working code quicker and provides good debugging aids. Would I get all that from C++? Maybe, given a few more years experience and forking out £££ for extra tools, and that still doesn’t solve the fact that C++ code frequently looks pretty damn ugly.
[quote]why should someone learn the LWGJL api instead of OpenGL?
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There’s no such thing. If you use LWJGL for openGL then you learn the openGL api and anly access it through LWJGL.
[quote]What does Java add to the game programming?
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It does not add to the game programming, it IS the game programming. Remember that openGL is just about rendering, not game programming.
[quote]then one can easily do that with jni
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That’s exactly what LWJGL does. And I’m glad it’s already done and available for us all and that I don’t have to redo it myself. It saves me a lot of work.
[quote]and when new ones come out, they don’t have to wait on LWGJL
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Well, it’s not like there’s new versions of openGL coming out every week. Besides LWJGL is very active and open source, so this is not really an argument.
[quote]So why should someone learn J3D?
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J3D has lots of functionality that just openGL doesn’t have. It has a scenegraph, behaviours, lotsa other hard to code and mathematically complex stuff done for you.
Also, J3D is independant of the underlying rendering API.
However, it’s not specifically for games so one can expect a performance hit compared to coding a gamespecific scenegraph api on top of openGL.
[quote] Had SUN taken their heads out of their asses, they would have given us a similar official wrapper ages ago.
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It’s not Sun’s fault. In fact, some parts of Sun have been pushing for this for years and other parts have been actively campaigning against it. To throw extra fun into the mix, SGI were not interested in licensing the logo and all that goes with it to Sun either for the longest of times. Much of this is political - SGI/OpenGL ARB wanted to control the Java bindings to their spec, and Sun said the only way to get blessed bindings is to do it through the JCP. So, you can imagine where that went…
So, what’s the state of play today. Firstly, Micheal Deering is now nolonger working for Sun, so the cheif protagonist against OGL bindings has gone. There is also a slow mind change inside sun that is, as a result, starting to accept that there will have to be formal bindings. Sun and SGI are talking quite a lot about it and the paperwork is in the process of being completed. I believe it is just dotting i’s and crossing t’s now left to do. Once that is done, there will be formal proposals going on. Expect the first revision to be short and sharp process - way less than 6 months. Based on the slow dance that we’re involved in right now, I would say it is 2 months from work starting. No guarantees, but that is my educated estimate on the issue.
Hm.
Cas 
Stop clanking down on LWJGL
Or java game programming in opengl in particular.
Either you like it or you dont.
I do