Ease of Transition and where jMonkeyEngine is at...

Engines, Libraries and Tools jMonkeyEngine
#1

So I’ve been looking out some of my old J3d stuff and it’s fine but it crosses my mind that I don’t really want to be reinventing the wheel anymore, what I would like to be able to do is start putting my content into a setting and get it working without having to understand every aspect of the java3d internals so I’m wondering what the Monkey Engine can offer on that front. I’m not too worried about the highest level stuff but to start with I need to be able to load models, draw and interact with terrain and have a working in-game UI. So three questions really:

Firstly, how stable is it?
Secondly, how easy is it to learn to use jME if you’ve got a fair understanding of Java3d- I’m figuring it’s probably quite different?
Finally what are the main practical advantages of jME in terms of performance and productivity?

I’m kind of thinking of using one of jMonkeyEngine or Xith3d and I’m quite undecided at the moment - Xith lets me take advantage of my J3d experience but the tech demos I’ve seen for jME are very impressive.

#2

[quote]Firstly, how stable is it?
[/quote]
That’s a hard question to answer. It’s very rare that we find any application crashing anymore. A couple game companies have put stake in us, and have yet to complain about stability. In our experience, if you have no problems with LWJGL, you’ll be fine with jME.

[quote]Secondly, how easy is it to learn to use jME if you’ve got a fair understanding of Java3d- I’m figuring it’s probably quite different?
[/quote]
The API is quite different than Java3D. But if you know Java3D well, the overall concepts are the same, just applied differently. Documentation is improving to help with this learning curve (still has a ways to go, but getting there).

[quote]Finally what are the main practical advantages of jME in terms of performance and productivity?
[/quote]
I can’t really answer that, as I haven’t used Xith3D before. I have a feeling that performance difference between the two are minor enough that it wouldn’t be a major deciding factor. I think it mostly will come down to community and features. And the speed at which new features are added and bugs are fixed. I would suggest heading to www.jmonkeyengine.com/jmeforum and hanging out for a bit, see if you like it.