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Java 3D: The New Kid on the Block
By Andrea L. Ames
As programming languages go, Java is easy to learn and use, but its application programming interfaces (APIs) provide even easier access to its features. One API group, the Java Media and Communications APIs, provides an interface for creating applications involving graphics, telephony, media players and capture, and conferencing. Here, I'll focus on the Java 3D API, which provides higher-than-Java-level constructs for creating, manipulating, and rendering 3D geometry. These constructs allow you to write applications that create and manipulate virtual worlds more easily and quickly than possible with Java itself. Java 3D draws from and synthesizes the best concepts of the following 3D technologies: (Also see "
Online".)
- Direct3D, the realtime 3D graphics component of Microsoft's DirectX 2 interactive media technologies supported in Windows 95.
- OpenGL, the software interface from Silicon Graphics used for creating applications that generate interactive 2D and 3D computer graphics.
- QuickDraw 3D, Apple's API for creating and rendering workstation-class, 3D graphics in real time.
- XGL, Sun's 2D and 3D graphics library for creating animation, simulation, modeling, and geographic-information applications.
Java 3D uses these low-level, platform-specific, 3D graphics libraries and APIs for high-performance rendering and other tasks where performance can be improved through platform-dependent programming calls.<>
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