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THIS Would Excite Me
At 4:54 PM on Dec 13, 2007, Mikael Grev
wrote:
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What would really excite a desktop/graphics geek like me is some fast, trouble free, image 3D graphics. 3D is not main stream in that we are going to need cubes and spheres in 3D running around our screen anytime soon. What IS mainstream is images shown in 3D, you know the Cover Flow kind. This would of course include reflections and such.
Doing these kind of effects in Java means you would either have to go native in some way, sacrificing portability, or do a software loop that makes only smaller images possible in 30FPS.
Sexy for me is an API in the JDK that takes care of all the problematic stuff (OpenGL vs Direct3D and such) in accelerating image transitions in 3D. The Java2D API today have support for transformations in 2D, which means rotate, shear and zoom. What Chet and gang should be working on is a JavaImage3D API that you feed an image, or Image Buffer, the 3D transform and some other goodies like translucency, a composite and a simple scene, and outputs another image that can be drawn to a typical Swing surface. Cover Flow with speed and simplicity.
THAT would be sexy, the desktop way. PDF is sexy like Rosanne Barr. We want Michelle Pfeiffer!.
Put the effort where it matters.
Cheers,
Mikael Grev
35 replies so far (
Post your own)
This would not excite me
It does not excite me, because its already here - Java3D.Furthermore its getting more and more boring to hear people telling SUN what they should focus on to be successful - especially now where everbody can hack on the OpenJDK source themself.
If you want to see something, implement it - otherwise ... well ... post it on javalobby ^^
lg Clemens
Re: This would not excite me
Java 3D is an add on and thus can not be used out of the box (and thus, nobody does actually use it). It also is not optimized to do image transitions, it is a full blown 3D API which means it is large and somewhat clunky.And if anything is going to make it into the JDK Sun need to write it. And since this needs native rendering hooks to be fast Sun it the only option.
MiG Java Calendar Component, MiG Layout for Swing/SWT (Vote -> JDK)
Re: This would not excite me
> And if anything is going to make it into the JDK Sun> need to write it. And since this needs native
> rendering hooks to be fast Sun it the only option.
If so, what about openjdk? am I missing something?
Re: THIS Would Excite Me
Somehow, a PDF viewer seems to matter more than a Cover Flow library...Anyway, there's already something similar in the Iris demo from Sun. It contains a small scene graph API for JOGL that lets you write hardware accelerated transitions between images as well as regular 3D scenes, easily. You can look at how they implemented Cover Flow with it.
Romain Guy's Java Weblog, #ProgX, Jext
Re: THIS Would Excite Me
I believe the scenegraph module does what you're saying.Some of the nodes in the scenegraph provide effects including rotation, scaling, and shearing. It seems you can put an SGTransform node above other nodes in the tree and those nodes will render based on the transformation.
Re: This would not excite me
> And if anything is going to make it into the JDK Sun need to write it. And since this needs native rendering hooks to be fast Sun it the only option.This isn't true. We have been open to taking contributions for quite some time, first under the JDK6 'peabody' process and now under OpenJDK. You have to sign the SCA and that has some legal and ownership ramifications. So long as you're agreeable to those conditions then you're good to go. (er.. so long as you can get a Sun engineer to agree.. it is, however, commonplace for open source projects to have core committers who gatekeep contributions from others)
Re: This would not excite me
That is only half the story. Just by signing the SCA you don't get the actual commit rights to the source base, correct? This has still to go through the approval channels (whatever those might be). This is understandable, of course, but saying that the process is open to contributions doesn't mean that Mikael (or anybody else) can freely add whatever functionality he will like to see in JDK.Point in question - if he wants to see Java3D in JDK, can he just sign SCA and add it? I would be very surprised to hear "yes". And no, it's not only the gatekeeping. It goes far above the head of the Sun engineer responsible for the specific submodule. Can Mikael add MigLayout to JDK (something that he has been pushing for quite some time now)?
Re: THIS Would Excite Me
Unfortunately not. The scene graph still uses AffineTransform which is purely 2D. If it did support 3D transforms that would surely be a good enough solution.MiG Java Calendar Component, MiG Layout for Swing/SWT (Vote -> JDK)
Re: THIS Would Excite Me
> Somehow, a PDF viewer seems to matter more than a Cover Flow library...But PDF is not sexy! Cover Flow is sexy! Surely you must appreciate this as a Frenchman and all?
Seriously though.. How many knows where to find this? If Java is going to get cred for being a bit cool, anybody must be able to do it and that basically means that it must be supported out of the box.
Cheers,
MiG Java Calendar Component, MiG Layout for Swing/SWT (Vote -> JDK)
Re: This would not excite me
So basically you are saying that we should all shut up now since we can do it ourself?MiG Java Calendar Component, MiG Layout for Swing/SWT (Vote -> JDK)
Re: This would not excite me
Well, I happen to have tested this out quite recently with MigLayout. It beamed right into the Top 25 RFE list, it is BSD and very popular, yet Sun stays lukewarm to add it.IMO, if one want to work for free to fix Sun bugs that is OK and you can get your fix committed, but to add something a bit larger seems to be a bit harder.
Cheers,
MiG Java Calendar Component, MiG Layout for Swing/SWT (Vote -> JDK)
Re: THIS Would Excite Me
JavaImage 3D APIs might be erotic to some people.I mean, you might be pitching for the average developer, but everything that's been announced/proposed lately, including your suggestion, are still rather toolkit-y to me. (As a casual Swing coder), I'd be quite pleased to just see JXTreeTable and painters be blessed with a tutorial. Open Source has so come to mean documentation beyond a blog entry be damned.
Re: THIS Would Excite Me
If you read the slides, you'd see that adding support for 3D and video media is planned.Romain Guy's Java Weblog, #ProgX, Jext
Re: THIS Would Excite Me
Sure. Whenever Sun releases something cool, people complain that Sun does not focus enough on what really matters to companies. When Sun releases something more serious but more useful, people complain that there's not enough sexy.:)
Romain Guy's Java Weblog, #ProgX, Jext