Re: [JAVA3D] MathEngine is " Windows only " : Y U C K !

[Matthew Gahan]

Mathengine isn't the only runner in this race, www.ipion.com should be considered a major contender. Not least because Ipion's costs a tenth of what Mathengine's kit costs ($5000 ~ish for Ipion with some royalty's...). According to the doc's this is a highly modular native c/c++ library, which I am guessing would lend itself well to JNI integration... The Open Media Group managed this with Mathengine. The results were ok...but still slugish by current standards...   Ipion has a very low overhead (20% cpu usage estimate). It also has some very nice optimizations for dealing with very large numbers of Free body systems (ideal for particles).         -----Original Message----- From: The Casteels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 06 February 2000 15:19 Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] MathEngine is " Windows only " : Y U C K !   P. Flavin wrote: Java3d is a portable rendering solution. MathEngine is a non-portable thing limited to rendering on a single OS : [.......]   Java3d is about  RENDERING   ( with collision detection ).    Pure Java is portable.  Be portable.  Be on the Web.  Be everywhere. With the exception of Java3D being about Rendering (a limited view of Java3D's potential), I agree with everything you say, and I think Java3D is the greatest,  however without dynamics (mathengine) and isosurface generation (vtk) built into the core processes, Java3D can not realize it's true potential. Although I'll admit that I hadn't considered that mathengine and vtk wouldn't be portable. Perhaps I wasn't clear in what I was suggesting.  I would like nothing more than to be able to accomplish what I need with 100% pure Java. What I was really after is development of Java packages like, JavaDynamics3D, JavaParticles3D, and JavaVolume3D. I'm suggesting that since MathEngine and VTK are open source, most of the work is already done. Imagine how cool it would be to be able to: Build a web based multiplayer pool game with realistic dynamics. Render smoke, fire, and explosions. Animate fluids, like tipping over a can of paint. (or two can's of paint and watch the colors blend) Animate cubes of Jell-O falling onto a surface, jiggling and bouncing. At this point I can't do those things without using mathengine or vtk. (or spending months figuring out how to write it in java, then ending up with something that's really slow)