What to use for 3D graphics?

So I am pretty torn with what to use right now... Open GL seems to have always been a used for most graphic related things; however JOGL is pretty dead, and there isn't much support and help on the net... I had installed the libraries previously, but after a re-install I cannot seem to find them...

I have heard about the LWJGL, but I don't know anything about that... There is also now JavaFX which seems to be super powerful, but is still new @ V 2.0.

The thing is I'm re-coding something in another language, into Java, that is already using OpenGL, so I wanted to stick with that...

Thoughts?

JOGL is far from dead; where did you get that idea? In fact, the finishing touches are being put version on 2.0, which is currently in RC5.

What LWJGL is in relation to JOGL is spelt out on the former's home page, so there's no point in getting into that here.

I can't really speak to how JavaFX compares to JOGL/OpenGL, but my impression is that in terms of 3D capability it isn't anywhere near JOGL. Also be aware that version 2 is not yet available for OS X and Linux, so if you're going for cross-platform compatibility JavaFX isn't a good choice right now.

Tim Moores wrote:JOGL is far from dead; where did you get that idea? In fact, the finishing touches are being put version on 2.0, which is currently in RC5.

What LWJGL is in relation to JOGL is spelt out on the former's home page, so there's no point in getting into that here.

I can't really speak to how JavaFX compares to JOGL/OpenGL, but my impression is that in terms of 3D capability it isn't anywhere near JOGL. Also be aware that version 2 is not yet available for OS X and Linux, so if you're going for cross-platform compatibility JavaFX isn't a good choice right now.

I was just reading up a bit and it seemed like a lot of the support for it was dated and i couldn't really find much recent... There was one thing on yahoo answers saying JOGL was useless for gaming, and to you a "game engine..." I figured I would ask here for "factual" evidence.

Another thing I was just looking at was http://jogamp.org/wiki/index.php/Setting_up_a_JogAmp_project_in_your_favorite_IDE

JogAmp... I wasn't really able to find anything on where to get the latest JOGL GLuten, ETC, but JogAmp seems to have everything about it, but is Jogamp something else entirely?

If you wouldn't mind could you guide me to some places where I can learn more about JOGL and were to get the information? The OpenGL site was pretty useless, when I click "Java Bindings" it brought me to super outdated stuff(Like the Netbeans JOGL bindings which I was soo excited to use...)

Thank you for answering the question about FX vs JOGL, it seems like Open GL is the most powerful graphics, and it's rivaled to Direct X I believe? I dont' know much, haven't researched it a lot, so sorry if this is wrong...

EDIT: IT asks if I want "Stable or Automatic" which would you recommend... it says the Automatic has more features but may fail... I might want the Stable one... I don't know....

Thanks for anything you can help me with,

~JO

The latest released version is JOGL 1.1.1a. The current development version is 2.0 RC5; it's available on Jogamp. That's a site that hosts various libraries, not a library in itself. It also has forums, which are probably the best place to get help and up-to-date information on what's going on with JOGL.

I like Panda3D for this kind of quick rendering of simple scenes. It has both a C++ and Python API, and provides a lot of useful utility types (animations, simple collision detection, etc) which should make the task of writing your game easier.

The aesthetic appeal of the graphics rendered will largely be a factor of your own art quality; the engine is only displaying what you're giving to it and the feature lists (shaders, scene management, etc) are similar between the various open-source engines. I don't think YouTube videos are a good way to compare.

You should make the decision on what you personally like working with, as the time you spend making a more complex/difficult engine do what you want is likely better spent improving the game.

Kerrek is correct in that none of them are truly easy to use.

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