>And to add my twopennorth, in so far as 3-D goes, a Java app to simulate, say,
>walking round a room, etc, would have to be completely by the programmer. ie
>Java has no explicit support for 3-D, unlike VRML browsers, where like HTML,
>you need only describe a scene. Also in a Java app one's browser would have to
>download both the data (scene) AND the code to manipulate/render it.
>
>In some respects Java is more general than VRML, but I think VRML is more
>advanced. My mental evolutionary diagram is something like this
>
>WWW
> |
> | Increasing
> V Complexity
>Java
> |
> |
> V
>VRML
>
>Having met some of the Java development team a few weeks ago, I was forced to
>reconsider Java (up till then I expected VRML to mature and "take off" as the
>next step in the Web's evolution). I think hardware demands are a still a bit
>tough re VRML, but Java might run on lesser spec machines. Definite downside:
>Only NT and Solaris/SunOS versions of Java so far 8(
I think that it is an oversimplification to take these three
technologies (WWW, Java, and VRML) and drop them on a complexity
scale. VRML and Java are rsally orthogonal . . . They complement
each other very well, in fact, and it's frustrating to me to see them
so often described as competing technologies.
I've written a VRML browser in Java that downloads new Java classes for
node types that it doesn't recognize . . . the extension node classes
are written using an Open Inventor-like toolkit that's tentatively
named Liquid Reality. We (Dimension X) demonstrated this at Seybold
and Java Day . . . the Seybold demo featured a VRML scene with birds
flying around and a flowing brook, all running inside HotJava. The
behavior nodes used by the bird and the brook were Java classes loaded
across the network.
We're interested in getting some feedback on Liquid Reality before we
make a release that's generally available. Up until now we've had no
external input on our toolkit, so I'm sure that there are some things
in it that could be implemented better. If you'd like a chance to
play with Liquid Reality and make some suggestions, send mail to
[email protected]. Right now, we only want to make this release
available to people who:
- have some experience programming in Java,
- are very familiar with VRML
- have done a considerable amount of 3D graphics programming
Since HotJava is currently only available on Win 95/NT and Solaris
machines, you'll need to be using one of these platforms in order to
use Liquid Reality.
For more information and some screen shots, visit
http://www.dimensionx.com/lr
--Chris Laurel
[email protected]