Java 3D News

Conference Information

• Siggraph 2005, Los Angeles, USA
• JavaOne 2005, June 27-30, San Francisco, USA.

News

We've just released the first cut of our SWT JOGL bindings as an Eclipse Plugin, for those of you that like to work in that environment. Head over to the SWT section of the OpenGL sub site or directly to the download page. We expect to release an Aviatrix3D Eclipse plugin within the next day or two.

Java3D 1.4 Beta 2 slipped out the door and I didn't notice it. Doh! You can find the zips of everything right here.

There is a lot of interest in combining SWT with OpenGL. I've added a new section over on the OpenGL site that is starting to detail the various ways of doing that. We also have the initial release of JOGL supporting SWT there as well if you'd like to combine those two together.

JOGL JSR-231 beta 1 is now available for download (there's no version name/number yet). This is the first public build of the JOGL codebase that conforms to the final JSR API set. Because of the major restructuring, including package renaming (javax.media.opengl code is not backwards compatible with the old JOGL code. Download the JSR code from here and also have a read of the summary from the JGO forum announcement here.

Java3D 1.4 Beta 1 is now ready to play with. I was actually out a week ago, but the inital lack of binary builds and then java.net being up and down like a yo-yo had me hang off on writing up a news article. Seems things are stable-ish now (java.net still sometimes doesn't resolve at all for me). There's no installer for it, that will be apparently coming in Beta 2. You can find the zips of everything right here.

17 July 2005

Lots of Java3D news over the past week. Here's the slides from the Java3D BoF at JavaOne (I don't know of any from the JOGL BoF).Java3D now has a new Wiki site to go along with the public development effort. Everyone is encouraged to contribute to it. There is also a new location for the JWS delivered version of Java3D. This new site uses HTTP, and has removed the rather annoying caching problem that was persistent in the old site. Head over to https://j3d-webstart.dev.java.net/ for the details.

JOGL 1.1.1 has now been released. This is probably the last of the existing API/package structure. Most of the current development work is going on in the JSR-231 branch of CVS, using the new package naming etc. Head over to the JOGL downloads area to grab the latest copy.

5 June 2005

Welcome to the reorganised site structure! You will note that most of the main j3d.org site has now been pared back to generic Java + 3D information. Anything related to Java3D specifically is now moved over into it's own sub site at http://java3d.j3d.org/. There is a permanent redirect in place and 404 page that will show you were to find the new documents if you hit a link you were expecting to resolve. These changes may take some time to propogate through the various search engines, so please bare with us as this takes place over the next month or two.

A new amateur game Galaxy3D has been released. This funky little game uses a lot of opensource code - including some of the j3d.org code repository and Xj3D.

JOGL 1.1 beta 12 is released (27 May). The big item is that it now supports OpenGL 2.0 and all the fun bits that come with that (HDR imaging, floating point textures etc) Head to the JOGL homepage to download the latest and greatest.

12 May 2005

We're finally back and running with full facilities now. Bugzilla for the code repository and Aviatrix3D is back and running, as well as the FTP site. Now I just need to get out and fix up a few of the pages around the site, such as the FAQ to bring them all up to date, and we should be back rocking and rolling.

In other happenings around the 3D+Java world:

Java3D 1.4.0 is making progress. The stable -build2 is now available through JWS. Head over to https://j3d-webstart.dev.java.net/ for more information. Cg shaders are currently disabled, but GLSL is available.

JOGL 1.1 beta 11 is released (11 May). A lot of fixes for the MacOSX problems that have been plaguing us for a long time now. There is also a Solaris/x86 build available. Head to the JOGL homepage to download the latest and greatest.

We've started work on a new OpenGL subsite here. This is to cover mostly the JOGL project similar to the way we cover Java3D. However, this is really early yet, and we're still figuring out the best approach to take. Head on over to OpenGL.j3d.org and let us know what you think! As we get further into the project, you'll see this main site become more of an overview to Java and 3D graphics, and then separate sub sites for Java3D, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, code etc.

8 Apr 2005

Anonymous CVS is now up and running. The CVSROOT has changed if you had it previously checked out. The details of the new location can be found on the CVS page.

6 Jan 2005

Java3D 1.3.2 Beta 2 is now available for download. Except for one regression bug due to another fix that went in with this release, nothing else will be fixed before the final release. There will be one further beta 3 release to fix the regression, then the final will be let loose. Following that, all development will be concentrated on the new 1.4 codebase.