Robert Jacobsen wrote:
Being a new member of this list, this is pretty disheartening news, to say the least.
On the other hand, this could be an opportunity for the Open Source community
to lend a hand, working with the folks from Sun who are knowledgeable about
the 3D packages and go beyond 1.4.
We have been trying for about the last 6 months from when we first heard
of its demise. Suffice to say that Sun internally are being very
schizophrenic about it. Everyone you talk to there has something
different to say about who owns the code, or pointing out that the
person claiming it really doesn't own it etc. Right now, everyone and
nobody owns the code and I can guarantee you that it won't be seeing the
light of day for 12 months at least, and I'd lay very good money that
you'll never see any code, nor any further development. There's a few
people internally within Sun that don't want to see it released in any
form due to "job security". We've given up because it's pointless doing
anything. The apple release was a blip on the radar paid for by Apple so
they could secure a large contract. Don't expect to see much more done
on it apart from a final release and it is not a sign that Sun are back
actively developing Java3D.
We're actively moving our customers away from Java3D, sun is doing the
same internally. If you try to mention a project using Java3D, you get
canned very quickly. They only want to know about JOGL projects. The
politics is pretty nasty behind it right now and we're getting shafted
by Sun more than anyone about this. For years we've been trying to help
them out to promote it, doing projects with it etc, now all we get are
really oddball emails from them and being told "you're not kewl enough
anymore".
This is really disappointing and right now I have little faith in
anything to do with Sun and 3D graphics, particularly if Java is
involved. BTW, did you know that SGI have declined to join the OpenGL
Java bindings working group? Pretty sad state of affairs if you consider
all the hoopla that the original announcement had.
--
Justin Couch http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/
Java Architect & Bit Twiddler http://www.yumetech.com/
Author, Java 3D FAQ Maintainer http://www.j3d.org/
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"Humanism is dead. Animals think, feel; so do machines now.
Neither man nor woman is the measure of all things. Every organism
processes data according to its domain, its environment; you, with
all your brains, would be useless in a mouse's universe..."
- Greg Bear, Slant
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