My company (which, by the way, does not write games) is sending me to JavaOne this year, and while browsing the sessions I found this one. Maybe somebody should put it on the front page of the site?
Session ID: TS-1550
Session Title: Behind the Virtual Flying Dukes Programming Contest
Session Abstract: This year's JavaOne conference features the Virtual Flying Dukes contest, in which participants create a 3-D avatar and write code to control its behavior, enabling it to catch a virtual T-shirt launched from a virtual stage.
This session discusses all aspects of the contest, from creating avatars by using 3-D modeling tools to building 3-D scenes with textures and objects, building jMonkey Engine (jME) scene graphs, writing jME code to invoke behavior, building NetBeans software plug-ins, and the use of Project GlassFish for the back-end submission system.
Code samples and contest hints are provided.
Track: Cool Stuff - Desktop
Duration: 60
Room: North Meeting Room
Speaker/Company: John Wetherill, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Kevin McDonnell, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Mojo or Renanse, had you seen anything about this?
Yes, they contacted us when they were considering switching to jME for the contest. Josh has been in contact with them a few times leading up to this point.
Nobody ever tells me anything. 
It wasn't something to talk about yet. :) I guess that's changed now. There isn't much to tell that you can't see in that description, but I've been talking to them some about it and offering my assistance in troubleshooting if needed, etc. Fortunately, jME is a strong platform and they've been able to run with it just fine on their own so far.
That's great. 
I'm honestly quite surprised…I assumed that Sun would cling to Java3D until the bitter end.
There's no reason the world needs only one 3d Java API. :P We can happily share the stage with Java3D as well as the others out there. There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all APi in my mind.
renanse said:
There's no reason the world needs only one 3d Java API. :P We can happily share the stage with Java3D as well as the others out there. There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all APi in my mind.
Okay, just for the sake of argument we'll say you're right. Where would you suggest using Java3D? :P
Where someone is already very skilled in the API and needs to do something quickly.
renanse said:
Where someone is already very skilled in the API and needs to do something quickly. :)
That's a cop-out. :P
darkfrog said:
renanse said:
There's no reason the world needs only one 3d Java API. :P
sangudo said:
* Compatible with both OpenGL and Direct3D (whereas jME supports only OGL)
This is true, but I don't necessarily see it as an advantage. OpenGL is perfectly sufficient in my opinion since it is available on nearly every platform and offers nearly every feature that Direct3D does anyway.
sangudo said:
* multi-screen support, great for immersive environments, etc.
You can do multiple screens in jME.
sangudo said:
* much more sophisticated threading model (one thread per display, one thread per behavior)
jME still has a ways to go to be fully multithread capable, but in the long-run the goal is to provide thread-safety and leave threading to the developer using jME. This way they can architect it however they want and are not forced to have multiple threads, nor are they forced to have a single thread.
sangudo said:
* runs on Solaris
I believe LWJGL could be built for Solaris, it just hasn't ever been to my knowledge. This is something I don't really know much about though.
sangudo said:
* supports and takes advantage of 64 bit architectures
LWJGL has natives for 64-bit processors but how much it utilizes that 64-bit architecture I don't know.
You do make some valid points about Java3D being useful in certain circumstances. Just because I personally do not see a benefit in using anything but jME / LWJGL that's not to say many other people don't have valid reasons to do so. I guess I'm more of a "jME Evangelist" because of the time I've spent using Java3D and others was not the greatest experience. I'm sure it's changed quite a bit over the past couple years though.