http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/
And possibly play around with…
Oh my…I knew Google went off on some wild tangents where JavaScript is concerned, but writing a library for rendering 3D scenes programmed in JavaScript is a little bit crazier than I would expect even from Google… :-o
I don't know, Unity does it rather successfully…
darkfrog said:
Oh my....I knew Google went off on some wild tangents where JavaScript is concerned, but writing a library for rendering 3D scenes programmed in JavaScript is a little bit crazier than I would expect even from Google... :-o
Dunno, man, check out the demos... they look pretty damn good and the code appears to be clean. Of course, these are small demo apps and the api has a long way to go... but as a first offering, I'd say its rather impressive.
This reminds me of a story of me as wee lad. 
I started out programming on an Apple IIe mostly through trial-and-error and some sample code I found on the computer and eventually moved to an IBM PC and started using QBasic. Eventually I got pretty good and wrote this really awesome program for a local programming competition. Well, I ended up winning the competition and one of the judges came up to me after all was said and done and said that it was amazing what I had done in QBasic, but stated that it would have been that much better if I had taken the time trying to accomplish the job in such a crappy language and apply it to a more powerful language how much more could have been done. I didn't know any better but it opened my eyes to other languages out there.
That's kind of the way I see this big push in JavaScript. The browser's have done an incredible job of improving performance, but at the end of the day it's still a scripting language and by nature will be slower than compiled byte-code. Granted, the same argument can and often is made for compiled machine code versus byte-code, but we have to draw the line somewhere.
No matter how fast they make JavaScript, Java will still be faster and a more powerful, full-featured language.
darkfrog said:
This reminds me of a story of me as wee lad. ;)
I started out programming on an Apple IIe mostly through trial-and-error and some sample code I found on the computer and eventually moved to an IBM PC and started using QBasic.
That makes two of us... except I had access to an Apple ][ (black case). What was your sample code? Mine was the game Lemonade ;)
That's kind of the way I see this big push in JavaScript. The browser's have done an incredible job of improving performance, but at the end of the day it's still a scripting language and by nature will be slower than compiled byte-code. Granted, the same argument can and often is made for compiled machine code versus byte-code, but we have to draw the line somewhere. ;)
No matter how fast they make JavaScript, Java will still be faster and a more powerful, full-featured language.
True enough, but I think that a scripted web 3D api (from google or maybe someone else) will find a strong niche for itself... and for smaller 3D apps and games that want a very wide and easy distribution arc it might be just the thing.
And, like I said, this is something to keep an eye on -- not to go balls out apesh*t about ;)
What I find amusing is that you have to install a special plugin to use it, yet people are constantly complaining about having to have the Java Plugin installed if you want to run Java Applets…just a little odd considering you really don't gain anything except one more plugin. :-p
darkfrog said:
....just a little odd considering you really don't gain anything except one more plugin. :-p
you are forgetting about the "because we can" factor that google seems to have.
with todays javascript engines adding JIT compile to native and other optimizations, javascript is getting pretty darn fast…and installing those small plugins like this or unity3d's is very easy and robust (at least in unitys case), which is not something you can say about the java plugin or jre.
the demos are still running at pretty low fps, but i'd say its definitely something to keep an eye on…
MrCoder said:
which is not something you can say about the java plugin or jre.
i never had problems installing jre or java browser plugins on multiple browser/OS combinations, so i dont know what you mean.
darkfrog said:
What I find amusing is that you have to install a special plugin to use it, yet people are constantly complaining about having to have the Java Plugin installed if you want to run Java Applets....just a little odd considering you really don't gain anything except one more plugin. :-p
Aye...if we removed all the plugins that our browsers typically have, the internet would be a fairly dull place ;)
And I wouldn't say installing java is a hard thing...its as easy as most other installations out there...
Anyways, the concept is pretty cool.