While Application Programming Environments aren’t generally exciting for non-programmers, it’s important to know what they make possible.
I got a chance to see a demo of the Java 3-D API with Ken Tallman, a senior product manager at Sun Microsystems Inc.
In this case, Java 3-D, which has recently been ported to SGI Irix and Linux
as well as almost every other major platform except the Mac, allows large
3-D models to be easily transported, viewed, and manipulated over even
dialup Internet connections due to geometry compression. In addition, the
API lets programmers write high-level, portable Java applications without
worrying about the implementation details. The result is high-speed,
high-quality 3-D displays.
For a good real-world example of what can be done with Java 3-D, check out the Animation Science Web site. They’ve developed
a Web interaction engine which lets developers construct interactive 3-D environments which can be used for things such as e-commerce, events and virtual chats.