Java3D performance?

After using OpenGL (windows, c++)for the last couple of years for all our company’s rendering needs. The powers that be (read “new ceo”) are considering switching to java. Now, I know a little about Java3D and have heard of others (j4gl magician i think they are called).

From what I have read from other posts in this forum and others, is that the java opengl ports are slower and consume lots of memory.

A little background…our company uses opengl for rendering complex simulations, ie. particle engines with ~90,000 particles.
and our current venture is in field of radiosity.

What I would like to know from others is:

Are the java ports or java3d robust enough to handle large amounts of geometric data?

Are they as up-to-date s opengl? I mean, i read somewhere that the opengl version of java3d is built on top of opengl1.1. Are there extensions available for them?

Basically, my question is:

Are these java 3d apis able to meet the performance and flexibility of opengl?

I might add that telling the boss, Java3D Sucks! is not what I am looking for
J

[This message has been edited by bumby (edited 11-08-2002).]

[This message has been edited by bumby (edited 11-08-2002).]

Hi !

Forget about Magician, it’s a dead project, gl4java is a better choice, this a thin layer on top of OpenGL, you get an almost 100% complete 1.2 API.

If you go for Java3D you get an API at a much higher level, it has pretty ok performance, some people complain about the Direct3D version, but teh OpenGL version is pretty good.

One problem you might run into is that Java objects use more memory then a C++ object for example so if you create lots of objects in your scenes you might need lots of memory, but there are ways around this.

I would suggest that you post a message on the Java3D forum (java.sun.com) and explain what you want to do, maybe they can give you a better idea of how good it would work.

I hope that helps a bit.

Mikael

Thanks,

I will post this there also.

J