best language for 3D manipulation over web ?

[TGOS]

[Post rewritten and shortened, because of top-posting]

On Thu, 31 May 2001 16:00:45 GMT, Jeff Sandys <sandysj at asme.org> wrote:
>
> "Jacqueline L. Spiegel" wrote:
>>
>> I will be writing a program that needs to be accessible over the web that
>> will seek to manipulate objects in three dimensions through the access of an
>> oracle database.

<snip>

>> Although I am really comfortable with Java and prefer to go this route, I am
>> wondering if there is a better and faster way (I feel that Java is slow in
>> general, even for 2D). 
>
> Alice is a 3d navigator, don't know if it will work for your app though.
> http://www.alice.org

That's a Windows only solution for displaying 3D graphics in Java.
http://www.alice.org/about.htm
See what I mean?

Why not using Java3D instead?
Java3D is a java plug-in that exists for Windows, Linux, Solaris and certainly
for other Unix variations as well. It makes use of OpenGL and thus allows you
to render 3D graphics in pretty good quality with acceptable speed.

There's a Java3D demo where you can fly through a city and it's not slow or
anything. It makes use of modern 3D graphic accelerators and thus has bilinear
filtering, decent shading, etc.

Java itself isn't slower than C++, it's more the way how you usually write
programs in Java that make it slow. IOW, if you know how to optimize Java code,
you can gain a lot of speed.


I can only recommend Java3D if you need good looking 3D graphics, that also can
make use of OpenGL hardware accelerators (in case those exist within the PC of
client). Sure, it means that people have to download a JRE from Sun (or IBM)
and then also download the Java3D plugin for this JRE...


Without Java3D, you'll have to write all the 3D code yourself. With Java3D more
stuff is done by the graphics adapter and thus there are more CPU resources
left for your Java code. OTOH, if you're 3D graphics won't be too complex,
Java3D may not lead to any real speed improvident.

3D graphics can be as simple as that:
http://www.beethovan.org/warstorm/Game/view3dwr.htm

Or more like that:
http://www.brackeen.com/home/scared/
(loading might take a while)


Pseudo 3D is fast in Java.
Go here http://www.minatrix.com/servlet/view?file=games.html and choose to play
"Burning Metal 2"...you'll see what I mean.

How fast real 3D can be without hardware acceleration depends a lot on your
coding skills.

-- 
TGOS