Thank goodness they chucked out the pointless fx script for regular java syntax.
Sounds like javafx 2 is just a lighter weight java with a new graphics backend, chucking out the bloat of awt, swing and java 2d. Yay!

Potentially a dream come true.

It might not be needed, Im sure it will contain its own way of handling 3D.

Prism is built on DirectX, OpenGL and has a software fallback. I don't think you will have direct access to what's under Prism. But now that its a standalone Java library I'm sure someone will hack it.

Actually I would like to use JavaFX only for its 2D GUI elements and another scenegraph instead of porting any code to Prism.

My favourite bit's from Richard Bair's podcast:

This release will have pretty much all the features that we had in JavaFx 1.3

We have the Web-view which is one of the things that people have been waiting for forever; essentially it's an embedded web browser; we will have the ability to modify the DOM in the browser; or attach listeners to it so you can get callbacks and handle it in java and so forth;

We also have 3D so in the current release we've got 3D transforms such as translating in the Z or rotating about a different axis. However in a followup release, the one after 2.0, we will have 3D primitive shapes and more support for 3D animations and so forth.

There's a couple of different ways that you can deploy on desktop right now; we have the ability to do executable jars. You can also run it, you know, from your IDE or from the command line just like any other normal java application; as well as through JNLP and so forth. Now in EA and JavaFx 2.0 one of the big features that we have is are new hardware accelerated graphics platform that we call Prism. And Prism runs without any support on Swing or AWT which can really help out on our startup time and performance. However that requires changes in the plug-in to be able to do that because the normal java plug-in is AWT based. So there is a lot of work going into Java 7 plug-in in order to allow you to have an AWT-less or non-AWT plug-in implementation. So that will be going out with Java 7 but in the mean time what that means is until that is into proper circulation we aren't able to run the full hardware accelerated Prism inside of a browser. So at the time of EA, we are not going to be supporting running javafx in the browser but by the time we get to Beta you will be able to run javafx inside the browser.

Seems that Applet support will need Java 7 and 3D animations will be coming (but not quite yet.)

This topic seems to be completely the opposite of the 'doors are closing' one, even in regards to my own personal opinions on Java. It sounds like Oracle is doing everything right with Java and we'll be getting new, fast, powerful stuff to use for client-side Java in the near future. Awesome!

There is already a Java2D/JOGL integration but JavaFX is quite different.

Here's a new interview with Stephen Chin, maker of the Visage language, on JavaFX 2:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/chin-on-javafx-185052.html

How can I get JavaFX 2 EA?

Hey Guys,

I'm glad to see some excitement about javafx 2. My name is Joe and I am one of the main engineers working on Prism. I'll be looking to spend some more time on these forums to hopefully get a sense of what you guys are looking for or don't like about what we are doing. Understand we are doing the best we can to get you the best java apis possible.

To clear up some things (as best I can without spilling the beans)....


I personally think fx script was great. You could do a lot of neat things in that language that are verbose to do in Java.



That is a fairly accurate statement. Prism is very j2d esque in the sense that the shaders accelerate a lot of 2D paths. It is not trivial however to hardware accelerate every render path, but it is something we are working on doing.


I am working day and night for this to become a reality SOME day. full 3d support wont be in 2.0, but the future looks promising  .


Yep, that is accurate.


I can assure you that Prism will stand toe to toe with those you just mentioned. Keep in mind this will be the first real release with Prism support, just give us time.


the stuff under prism is not useful on its own to developers. It's the combination of prism with the scenegraph that makes it so powerful.


If you have to resort to using JOGL, then we have failed. The idea is that the JavaFX api's provide you with enough stuff. Granted, for a full 3d game, we aren't there yet.


Interesting, but I don't see us being able to support this in the general form. I know that dev's have been asking for swing interoperability for a while.


I think others can answer this for you. remember prism implements javafx on ogl and d3d. java + ogl = ?
As for integration, 2.0 will not have this, and I kind of address this point earlier, if you feel like you have to resort to using jogl, we have failed.


Ouch, that stings! I shouldnt comment on this, but i hope we can meet your expectations.

Correct about it being in private beta. You can check out our release plans I think?

Ayways, I better keep my mouth shut as to not get in trouble!

I will be attending GDC next week, if any of you are interested in JavaFX development and are going. lemme know!

Lastly, I can speak for all the developers in saying that we thrive off of your enthusiasm. The applause we got for our J1 Demos in the keynote was so cool! We really do appreciate it.

And... Notch... I will be finding you...

Thanks for answering some questions JFXJoe. Sounds like JavaFx is heading in the right direction.

So you trying to make prism just as powerful as the current OpenGL libraries?

Still don't know why the language couldn't of been officially supported. But still have the library able to be used by Java and JavaFX Script. I personally liked coding in it.

MinecraftFx?  

Is there any up to date demo videos on JavaFx 2 online?

I think everyone will agree to that. It has to have really good usability. The current JavaFX front page still freezes(the whole page) when the JavaFX loads.
Fast load up and instant user friendly loading screens is the key.

I feel somewhat bemused by all this hype - I've yet to see a javafx demo that actually worked smoothly and provided something *interesting* that I couldn't do better with regular java and opengl.

Are there some demos somewhere that I've missed? Ones where the user experience doesn't suck?

You will notice a huge leap in performance with prism.


i agree


I personally Agree, but you have to understand that javafx is not just for games =(


Soon... keep an eye out.

It is not quiiiiteeeee possible to do minecraft in fx.

No. We are trying to make it so you don't need to refer to it as "OpenGL libraries". Think of unity.


not sure i can link anything yet... but search youtube for JavaFX 2010 javaone keynote. I was on the team that wrote those demos. come on... that isn't interesting? We managed to improve upon air hockey after the fact.


As i said, i think providing interoperability in general is not going to work. Never say never

I will communicate as much as i can without getting in trouble.


This is accurate, however, 2.0 will be a good basis for prototyping these things. For example, A* in our scenegraph would be a FANTASTIC test, Maybe with thousands of cubes. In fact, maybe EA worthy.

Cool stuff Joe, thanks for the info. I'm really excited about your work. So glad to hear that there's a graphics dude working on java at Oracle 

There's so much uncertainty about what the future is for java on the desktop so to have you answering our questions here is fantastic.

I don't know what Prism is, but what I hope it will provide is:
1) access to Direct3D (there's no D3D binding in java)
2) an API that abstracts the differences between OGL and D3D but is still fast and flexible.

The closer it is to the metal the better. To be honest, a scenegraph over the top of D3D sounds unnecessary and will probably just thwart performance. It's really the D3D part which is exciting. Everyone here likes to make their own scenegraphs.

But it sounds like the JavaFX scenegraph is already in. My queston is, will it be possible to use Prism as a minimal binding over D3D and OGL without using the scenegraph? For example, can OGL/D3D be used with DisplayLists or VBO's, ie without 'immediate mode' rendering? Sounds like this is not the case if you couldn't do a minecraft-like game in it.