I've written a Java 3D binding and ported SimpleExample. The physics is working fine, but the Appearances need tweaking to match Xith3D and I've run out of time.

I'll send William a tar of the source.

You may find this project useful, either directly or as a reference.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/nwn-j3d/

It's a Java3D loader for game characters from Never Winter Nights and includes animation.

The game site itself documents the tool path for building your own characters and you can download lots of samples here
http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/viewer.html

Can you provide some more information.

Java3D version, OS, Java version and the steps to reproduce.

OK, I've found the cause of the problem I was seeing.....

When using a awt.Frame as the container the jogl GLEventListener init  is called when the frame is shown.

When using a JFrame as the container the GLEventListener is not called when the frame is shown. Adding an Animator to the canvas forces the initialisation and everything renders correctly.

I'll check the docs carefully and figure out if this is a bug or a feature  

The Java3D high resolution timer uses the highest res timers available in each OS. The timer is in the utils class so should
be reusable in jogl.

Anyone got even a simple jogl program to run with a Swing JFrame ?

I tried changing the Frame constructor in the gears demo to

JFrame frame = new JFrame()
frame.getRootPane.add( canvas )

The Frame appears on the screen but nothing is rendered, it appears that none of the GearRendered methods are called