Hello. Im currently working on a graph visualisation project. JOGL works very nicely, cross platform although rather than write my own font rendering or bounding box picking I was rather hoping there might be a higher level API uilt on the robustness of Jogl. unlike other APIs, Jogl works on mac, windows and unix which i need for this project. Jav3D unfortunately, is completely out because of several failings. jME was a step in the right direction although im told it doesnt build on JOGL. Anyone have any ideas? Something with basic primitives, fonts, movement and interaction and all the basics would be a great help.
Well, have you tried Xith3D?
…it’s built on the footsteps of Java3D and offers both JOGL and LWJGL(?) renderer implementations.
or LWJGL?
Aviatrix3D is a scene graph built specifically for the visualisation space and is probably close to what you need. The one definite missing capability is font rendering, but everything else is there if you make use of the right utilities (which are included). See my sig for details, but don’t download right away. I’m expecting to release beta 3 on monday or tuesday.
thanks for all the advice there. LWJGL Is no good since it doesnt support Mac yet. Aside from that it isnt too bad. Xith is just a scenegraph thing which isnt good really… it does have primitive and some selection though but not font support. My original thoughts were to take an exisiting Graph Library licenced on the GNU Licence and build on top of that. JOGL has been the best 3D Java library i’ve found but its a pain when you have to rewrite picking and such all the time :-/ Still, cheers for the hints. Hadnt heard of any of these.
LWJGL is scheduled for full OSX support before the new year. But as it’s a games API it might not be what you’re after anyway.
Cas 
It seems that java + 3d api = gaming. Personally, I believe Java3D to be utter rubbish as an API for 3D stuff, but… JOGL is too low level. Guess you cant have everything! 
Well, LWJGL is just not a scenegraph API, is all. It would be sensible to write a scenegraph on top of it but not to use it directly in scivis. I think Aviatrix is probably what you are looking for.
Cas