Eventhough he was nearly ritually sacrified in that thread, uj had some valid points.
Some devs here just want every API written in Java to be written in the same spirit as Java.
But hey, it’s not all about ideology, it’s also about making money - and learning new technologies.
Screw ideology - it simply doesn’t make sense - it adds no value while reducing portability.
A wrapper for the non 3d parts of DX makes sense, but thats it.
Maybe you forgot how many driver-problems OpenGL-implementions have?
ATi (or: AMD) and nVidia give a heck of a lot more priority to getting the best performance and stability out of DirectX, because simply that’s where 95% of the game-market is. It’s basicly rocksolid while OpenGL remains flackey at best.
The Java2D-team knows everything about it. Only the very very last (or near future) drivers are usable for the OpenGL-pipeline of Java2D. They still haven’t ditched their DirectX implementation, for a reason!
So much for ‘it simply doesn’t make sense’ and ‘it adds not value while reducing portability’
Don’t see your problem here. You only have to download the latest drivers and have a modern graphics card to have the same stability that directx offers. Java2d is another thing and it makes sense for them to support both for computers with old gcs and buggy opengl drivers. People who require hardware acceleration for visualization and games usualy have a good gc and they still have to do a lot of low level tweaking and fixing to get the best out of it no mater what api they use.
You don’t wanna know how many people with great graphics-cards have outdated drivers.
And if you aim at the casual gamemarket - where eyecandy is a musthave - the situation is much worse.
Even worse: some vendors don’t offer GC driver updates even for new notebooks and the preinstalled versions are way behind the actual ones from ATI/nVidia for the PC-versions. Therefore I doesn’t matter, whether XP/Vista allows OpenGL driver from the hardware vendors to be installed, if there are none or no new ones available…
The more software that uses OpenGL the more likely the card manufacturers are to give it better support. Giving in to the monopolist only hurts the industry.
Indeed, but that doesn’t help those that need to make money now :-\
Theres a very easy solution for that, when you install the game also install the updated drivers for the most common manufactors. Or warn the inexperienced user to install new drivers and point him some links.
Having a directx binding won’t change anything as outdated directx drivers will cause the same problems you describe.
Still i would like to see someone trying a directx binding for java just to prove it’s not realy worth the trouble right now with current OpenGL apis, but don’t expect sun to support it.
Zero just mentioned the situation with notebooks…
The problem isn’t the same with DirectX drivers because they tend to be rocksolid, even older versions.
But thats an atipical problem. It only shows that there are bad notebook manufacters. You don’t have to fix every problem in every computer on this planet and that certainly wont magicaly happen with directx.
You know there are realy three versions we have to distinguish here. Directx 7 for very old cards. Directx 8.1 for pre-sahders graphics cards. And finnaly directx9+ drivers. I know that HL2 supports these three versions as separate drivers. So if you wanted maximum compatibility then you would realy need three bindings and not just one. Have fun with directx.
If you had PixelShader 3.0, then you would typically need different shader versions than if you had 2.0. And this is in OpenGL…
HL2 did the same for DX 8.1 and DX 9.0
* darkprophet hids back
[quote="<MagicSpark.org [ BlueSky ]>,post:60,topic:27824"]
I think what “uj” is trying to do is to prevent Java from becoming a widely used gaming development platform by sucking in devs time in worthless and endless discussions.
[/quote]
The reason I’m participating in these discussions is because I want to hear the opinions of others. I sometimes push it a little but that’s just to be more engaging. What’s wrong with that really?
Vista is coming and DirectX 10 is coming. Look here for example. (Also check the DirectX 10 link just at the beginning).
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2000442,00.asp
I read things like this and I know Java doesn’t support DirectX directly. Is that good for me and for Java? Do I and Java miss out on something important while busy praying at the altar of portability? I’m not talking about drawing a few lines in pedagogical games for todlers here. I’m talking about gaming at the bleeding edge of the possible like those guys interviewed are producing.
I was being serious but somehow managed to piss off everybody especially the moderators which probably wasn’t such a good idea. Shit happens but njema problema and I still think it’s an interesting topic worth discussing, I just do it elsewhere. And not that it matters but I’m a she.
My applications are in Bioinformatics and Molecular Dynamics Simulations so I’ll be fine with OpenGL but I think game-style graphics could be a competitive advantage also in modelling applications. That’s why I’m investigating this and I would prefer to stick with Java for the simple reason that I like it. Not a very professional attitude I admit. 
[quote=“uj1,post:73,topic:27824”]
Why would anyone choose to develop games using Java if it’s not because of the portability (or some degree of it) the platform provides? Wouldn’t be better, cheaper and easier to just stay with C++ or jump to C#, since MS is pushing it and there wouldn’t be much trouble since the tools would be practically the same (Visual Studio)?
Even if a minority would choose Java even in non-portable code, would it be worth spending time and money to produce a “binding” for it? Or would be better to just wait that the afflicted minority develop one for themselves?
I don’t think the benefits justify the costs of such thing. In the other hand OpenGL makes sense, not only for games, but for other applications as well.
uh,
maybe because java is a nice language to code in, and it is as cheap as can be (free), and i dont feel the need to jump to whatever microsoft is pushing, and i didnt come from c++ so i cant just stay there.
If you’re in MD, no kidding openGL is your choice. All the major programs are unix based (or at least many/most people use them on unix). The popular visualization tools use opengl. Why do you care about directx??
Actually, isn’t this an example why lack of interoperability is bad? Opengl lets the researchers use whatever system they want and have invested their time in, while directx forces them to windows. And many use unix. You can’t argue anything about market penetration here.
Who cares!!! Will someone just please get on the case and develop a DX binding for LWJGL and then everybody’s happy. End of story.
Cas 
The Linux and Mac users that won’t be able to run the games because they require Direct X won’t be happy … this sort of thing needs to be done one level removed from Direct X - like Java 3d. Oh, wait, Java 3D is already done. I guess we are all happy
java3d isn’t a dx binding - it’s its own scenegraph ON TOP of dx
Precisely. Write the DX binding for LWJGL, then develop a scenegraph on top of DX and OpenGL, call it the Monkey Engine or something, and job done. Like I said, everyone’s happy.
Cas