how good is java3D for real time gaming like fps

Engines, Libraries and Tools Java 3D
#1

hi,

discuss why java3D is not or is good for game progamming in java , in particular first person shooter. compare it with jogl and lwjgl as they r the most famous.

i have tried java3D, not easy to learn at first, but then u come to appreciate the design. im not sure about performance. it integrates well with other java components. on the other hand jogl seems to be little buggy and not backward compatibe with previous versions. i have seen jake2 which is quake 2 ported to java using lwjgl and jogl and joal. never seen an fps written completly using java3D yet…

peace

#2

Java3D has competative performance to other Java scenegraphs. It’s hard to compare to other
engines like ORGE, because of the different design.

Performance-wise jME is more or less comparable to Java3D (shown in quite recent benchmarks).
The jME support (the community) however is extremely helpful and responsive. That alone would be
enough to switch to jME, if I were to use scenegraphs for 3D games.

Just for the sake of those who will scream: “you forgot Xith!!1!”, I’ll mention Xith right now: it’s under
heavy development.

Some prefer to work closer to the metal, and use JOGL / LWJGL directly.

To answer the question, any of the above can be used to create a FPS. For any 3D-game, the non-
technical part often takes the most time: models, level-design, gameplay. Consider that when you
dream of publishing a game, sometime in the far future.

#3

What Riven said- I’m reasonably handy with J3d but I’m writing on jME (MonkeyEngine, not Micro Edition) because it has a really good community and it gives you so much of what you need straight away. Writing games is a hard and massive undertaking, you need every advantage you can get.

#4

For any 3D-game, the non-technical part often takes the most time: models, level-design, gameplay.

I would say thats true for any (non abstract) game. Unless you use some horrible unproductive language, which skews the whole ratio.

Having some artists and a sound guy at hand would be surely nice.

#5

Java3D suffers a bit from the lack of a gaming community … so such an inquiry will not be answered. I suppose thats better with jME or Xith3D, bc. more people with similar problems are around.

If I’d ask for ‘help, my cave doesn’t work properly!’, maybe I’d got more response …

#6

My only comment would be that JOGL is not “buggy”.

#7

Can only say that I worked with both and liked both…but I must go with
jme on this one, it’s more active and it’s not as cumbersome to work with.
Plus there are more features (like shadows, lensflare to name a few)

Can’t say anything about xith, never tried it.

In java 3d you have to set capability bits (God knows why…) which is extremely annoying…

JME is just alot easier to work with.That said if you take the time to understand Java3d I think you can
pretty much work with any scenegraph based engine.

When all is said and done, as much as I love Java I wished I started my projects in C++ or Python since there are so
many great engines to chose from for those languages.

#8

I definitely see benefits of Java over either of those languages, but each to their own.

The fact remains that you will spend 80% of your time working on content rather than code. Whatever you can do to reduce the burdens you’re putting on yourself is worth doing…

#9

I see enourmous benefits as well but the assortment of engines is very inferior compared to C++.
In every other department (except maybe speed) Java is the winner.
Right now there is not a single full fledged gameengine in Java, only a few (quite good fortunately) graphics libraries.

Still going to stick with Java cause it’s brilliant and I for darn sure aint leaving Eclipse for VS or some other annoyance :slight_smile:

#10

I personally like Java3D and have done some graduate work with it (virtual reality and inverse kinematics). I’m currently developing a space combat simulator with it (so its on par with FPS’s). Every library has its quarks and Java3D is no exception. Have I tried other scene graph based engines? Nope, started with Java3D back in 2002 so I didn’t have time to try any others out and now I don’t have a reason to make any switches (of course my friends want me to switch over to using the M$$ development kit).

So for some concrete facts about java and java3d, please check out the link below. Hopefully that will answer your questions with less subjective content (like my reasons above).
http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg/ch00/index.html

#11

Do you have any content online? I am especially interested in IK and J3D/jme (or Java anything really). Have been doing a tennis game and think that pregenerated movement doesn’t look good enough. But realtime movement is hard and cpu-consuming, so project has stranded a bit there… I guess I need some new motivation here :slight_smile:

#12

Hey. So here are my web pages that I made for these projects. Note, these don’t look right in IE for some reason, but netscape/firefox looks fine.

IK stuff is here
http://www.parl.clemson.edu/~mspeth/classes/cpsc808/project5/project5.html

Virtual Reality Game is here
http://www.parl.clemson.edu/~mspeth/classes/cpsc611/sw_tr_vr/sw_tr_vr.html