Doug Twilleager writes:As for Java 3D, it is not dead. No one ever said it was dead. Sun is a big company. Different organizations have different priorities, and resources are tight. We are working on the whole J3D issue to try and do what is right for the tremendous number of developers using J3D. Just hang tight for a bit longer. When we have an answer, you will be the first to know.
That's the best news I've heard in a month of Mondays. I've spent quite a long time learning Java3D. And I know the time I've spent pales to the amount others have done. It would be a shame to see all that work get tabled.
If Java3D is EOL'ed at some point, it would be nice if there were first a scenegraph framework built on top of jogl and joal that was a compatible, or at least similar API. This would make porting existing applications less painful. The distribtion of Java3D has been hard enough and we're still waiting for a decent (legal) solution.
Projects like the ones David, Shawn and Artur are working on are great, but serious projects cannot leap to these solutions. A hobbyist can happily play with one-man/small team OpenSource APIs. But larger groups and companies would be foolheardy to adopt these at this early of a stage. The political battle to adopt them once they become mature is hard enough.
