I am about to find a 3d engine which is capable of importing 3d models, detect their collisions and support joints. It's needed for an interactive animation and no platform is specified jet. I would prefer to code Javascript or AS3, but I think to be able to handle this with Java too.
Does Away3d support this? Is their a plain 3D collision detection framework I could use additionally to it? Which is the easiest Java Framework and which creates best Quality?
BTW.:
Proprietary Frameworks might also be an possibility, but I just do not any.
Greetings philipp
Away3D has Awayphysics library that is alchemy port of C++ engine and show very good performance. Away3D has clean readable source code and documentation + good set of example projects. It has 3ds max plugin that can export scene and generate code to render it. Support popular formats like 3ds, obj... and You can write importer plugin for own format. All so developers are pretty cool guys that answer questions on forum :)
For JavaScript the most popular engine is three.js Look what it can do.
General thoughts:
WebGL support isn't good at this time(sometimes it depends not only on user browser but all so on drivers) and You will need to deal with cross browser headache. Flash isn't supported on IOS and get kicked more and more from device browsers. But there is cross-platform adobe air for standalone apps.
Javascript, in my opinion, isn't good for writing such projects and its debugging can cause permanent brain damage. WebGL shader language is GLSL that has nice C-like syntax. Ordinary Flash shaders are written on assembler but You may try pixelbender3d. At this time Flash shaders more limited than WebGL(for example you can't fetch texture in vertex shader) but it's done to make Flash more compatible and it's not a problem for most cases. WebGL is tightly integrated with page.
If you want java WebGL and like pain try GWT 3D engines or gwt-elemental and there is tree-js port at early stage.
x3dom is declarative WebGL 3D engine with fallback to Flash it is ez but pretty limited and unstable.
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If you open the page "Graphics and Gaming (Windows)" on microsoft.com
the last category is described as
Legacy Graphics: Technologies that are obsolete and should not be used in new
applications.
This category includes (among others) the following APIs:
GDI
GDI+
OpenGL
What's your opinion? If i want to roll out a new software today it must support Windows XP (still about 50% of all installed systems). Direct2D requires Windows 7/Vista. What else should be used?
I suspect that Microsoft's definition of "legacy" has little to do with what any sensible developer should do, and is instead based on some Grand Rewrite of the Windows API.
Starting at around Windows Vista, Microsoft has been redesigning many of their API's. We now have MMDevAPI as the One True Sound API, WIC is the One True Image File API, etc. From what I've seen/heard, these new API's are much better than the old ones, and the "legacy" systems all work based on the new ones. In Windows Vista and later, DirectSound is entirely based on MMDevAPI, and components that need to read image files do it via WIC.
Windows 8 will have an ARM version, which it appears will support only a subset of the current Windows API. We won't know for sure until Windows on ARM is released, but, based on the libraries included for the ARM platform in Visual Studio 11 (ref: http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2012-March/094559.html), it's looking like GDI+ and OpenGL will not be available. GDI is available for linking, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's intact.
This new API's from Vista and later roughly correspond to the libraries in the VS11 ARM target. I'm guessing that anything on that list is there because it's either the latest and greatest way to do what it does, or it's too technically important to discard (for now). Thus, "legacy" is anything that's not the latest and greatest way to do at least one thing.
I'm not sure what is the One True Graphics API. Already we have Direct2D, Direct3D, DirectComposition (which, by the way, is not available until Windows 8), DirectWrite, and DXGI. DXGI seems the closest, but I don't have a deep enough understanding of the graphics API's to say. I suspect gdi32 is technically very difficult to get rid of. How are non-legacy applications meant to find out when part of a window has been revealed and therefore must be painted, without using WM_PAINT, which involves an HDC, and how could a library do that on an application's behalf without replacing its window procedure? How are we meant to make semi-transparent windows without using UpdateLayeredWindow, which takes an HDC? How much does user32 depend on gdi32, and can they really be separated?
From a technical standpoint, Windows can easily get rid of GDI+ and OpenGL, but I'm not convinced that getting rid of OpenGL will work out, even on a new platform that doesn't promise any backward compatibility. It seems too valuable to developers. GDI+ isn't so important, but it's very easy for a third party to provide a replacement.
I would say use any of the API's you listed, and the worst that's likely to happen is that you have to rewrite your UI if you want to port your app to metro or Windows on ARM. GDI is a fine choice if your needs are simple and you'll be coding directly for the Windows API. There aren't many situations where I'd recommend GDI+ over OpenGL as a drawing API. GDI+ is slow, limited, and only available on Windows. The GDI+ API is simpler because it's 2D, so maybe it's worthwhile if you need to do something very simple but with anti-aliasing.
OpenGL isn't deprecated, Microsoft's implementation of it is. Microsoft's implementation is stuck at version 1.1, which is old. The current version of the standard is past version 4. If you want to use OpenGL, it is fully supported by NVidia, ATI, and Intel graphics cards on the Windows desktop, but not in Metro Windows Modern UI apps, is an industry standard, and also works on Mac and Linux. If you need a software fallback implementation, Mesa has got you covered, and it even works on DOS. (Since Mesa can render into memory buffers, there's no reason it won't work in Modern UI apps, but you probably don't want to do this because it can be slow.) One thing of note is that WGL, the API for accessing OpenGL functionality on the Windows desktop, depends on GDI (which is deprecated) so you probably want to use something like FreeGLUT or SDL instead if you want to future-proof your application, which also nets you platform independence.
OpenGL ES is a variant of OpenGL which works on Android and Apple iOS. It is also accessible in JavaScript via WebGL, which Internet Explorer 11 will support (and pretty much every other browser already does.) ANGLE provides a hardware-accelerated implementation of GLES for Windows which piggybacks off of DirectX (version 9 or 11) and thus should work in Modern UI apps as well. Once again, Mesa's got the software implementation covered.
TL;DR: OpenGL is not only not deprecated, it is cross-platform, standard, and has tremendous momentum in the industry. GDI and GDI+, well, not so much.
If you want to support Windows XP, then you're supporting a "legacy" operating system, and as such, using a "legacy" graphics framework is the logical choice.
Even if that weren't true, let's just say that I disagree with the advice given by the linked MSDN article. The "legacy" status here has more to do with which technology the Windows team thinks is cool this week. The status designation of "obsolete" just means that the group responsible is no longer accepting or fulfilling bug reports (except for critical security issues). Not too big of a deal—these technologies have been around long enough that they're fairly feature-complete and stable.
GDI isn't going anywhere, so if you need something rock-solid that is guaranteed to be supported anywhere and everywhere, that's what I would go with.
If you need a bit more 2D capabilities than GDI offers (e.g., alpha channel transparency), then you could consider using GDI+. It's nearly an order of magnitude slower than GDI, but that's not too big of an issue on modern machines with more power than you could ever want. This, too, is going to be supported for a very long time to come.
That said, if I were writing a new app today, I probably wouldn't bother with OpenGL. There's very little that it offers in benefits over Direct2D and DirectWrite, which are both what Microsoft is pushing as the replacements for GDI/GDI+. There might be some benefit to using OpenGL if you absolutely must target Windows XP because as far as I can tell, Direct2D/DirectWrite are only supported on Vista and later, but that's because (as I mentioned originally), Windows XP falls squarely into the "legacy" or "obsolete" camp itself. Alternatively, if you already know OpenGL well and don't have time or the desire to learn Direct2D/DirectWrite, then it might make sense to continue using it in a new application.
Don't let the verbiage of the MSDN article scare you. Choose whatever technology makes the most sense for your specific use case given all of the available information. By the time any of these technologies go away completely, you'll have to re-write the app completely for a dozen other reasons.
Edit: Hmm, it looks like DirectWrite has also been declared (by some people at least) "obsolete" as well, having been replaced by Direct2D. That's funny, it hasn't even been around long enough for me to bother learning it. I guess that only goes to support my earlier argument that "obsolete" simply designates that a particular technology is not what is currently considered to be in vogue by the Microsoft devs.
I'm personally waiting until all the bugs get worked out of this stuff (and we decide on a semi-permanent standard) before I make the switch for any of my applications. Everything I've seen written in DirectDraw or Direct2D has had serious rendering bugs and is a performance nightmare, even on reasonably competent machines. Sure, they only show up sometimes, under the right conditions, but that's too much for me. And I swear, the blurry text shows up all the time. Not being able to read what's on screen is a deal-killer for me and my users. GDI doesn't have this problem, and it's not going anywhere.
Are GDI, GDI+ and OpenGL really obsolete/deprecated?
This is not true for OpenGL. OpenGL 4 allows you to use geometry shaders on winxp. Which isn't possible with DirectX (DirectX 10 and up isn't supported on WInXP). It is also one of the only cross-platform 3D APIs out there.
From a business point of view MS is interested in promoting DirectX since it is their technology that lock Developer into windows platform (they're also interested in making DirectX more attractive for developer, but that's another story). So it makes sense that they aren't keen on promoting OpenGL.
What else should be used?
I'd advise to stop using platform-specific tecnologies when possible. Grab cross-platform framework and use it for your application. There's Qt, GTK, wxWidgets and other toolkits for GUI apps, and SDL(and alternatives) for games. This way when platform developer decide to make ridiculous decision (like not supporting DX10 on WinXP) you dislike, you'll be able to move elsewhere with minimum development cost. Qt is also ridiculously powerful and at the moment I have no reason to use something else for GUI development. Still, situation can change in the future.
In short, while developing for certain platform you should keep in mind that platform developer might have their goals that are not compatible with your wishes. Discovering that your source has become locked into single platform isn't very pleasant experience. Your own goals should be the first priority, and if os developer tries to make you use certain technology you don't like, then you shouldn't support that technology.
Because OpenGL is a standard, it should be considered equally deprecated as C or C++ so it is a matter of time before the entire Windows API -- which today has become a compile once run on every x86 machine API thanks to Wine -- is considered deprecated in favour of .NET and C#.
I use GDI for simple graphics and OpenGL, when I need accelerated 3d.
Another aspect is that Microsoft's build-in implementation of OpenGL is definitely to be considered as deprecated since it is just version 1.1 or something, but that has been for a long time.
Yeah, about OpenGL, it actually outperforms DirectX in many ways both resource and display wise. It will never be promoted by Microsoft because it can't own OpenGL, not to mention most people don't do their research and Microsoft can claim it is old. Truth is opengl is opensource standard and evolves at a much faster rate than closed does because it is more than 1 room of developers paid to work on it. Also Microsoft has contracts with many companies to release using only Microsoft's software, this causes more business for Microsoft and less to use the more advanced OpenGL standard. It is a interesting lock up if you will, Microsoft creates these contracts so that many programs are written in DirectX to keep business for Microsoft, and no company will refuse it because Microsoft has about 80%+ home user market.
I want to make a 2D desktop GUI application with DirectX but I don't know which version to use. I initially tried Direct2D but it never really gained popularity, thus there isn't a lot of community support or documentation for it compared to the rest of DirectX, so it's not an option.
So I have three options:
DirectX 9.0c
DirectX 10
DirectX 11 (not 11.1, I'm not getting Windows 8)
A knowledgeable friend of mine strongly encouraged DirectX 9.0c saying that's all I need, but I am wary of using an 8-year old platform. Microsoft is pretty much the zenith of legacy support but I think that they must have a limit. I have no idea of the difference between DX10 and DX11.
Keep in mind that I'm very much a novice programmer so this is mostly a learning project.
Any advice is appreciated!
Edit: I'd also appreciate advice on any significant differences in functionality or programming paradigms between the versions.
What version of DirectX should I use to make a 2D desktop GUI application?
DirectX 9, because you'll get more users.
A knowledgeable friend of mine strongly encouraged DirectX 9.0c saying that's all I need, but I am wary of using an 8-year old platform.
Many DirectX 7 and DirectX 5 games still work just fine, not to mention titles that use DirectDraw. So there's no problem with 8-year old platform. Using newer (than 9) version might not even benefit you, so blindly going for higher version number isn't a good idea.
Depending on your circumstances you could also consider using OpenGL but that choice makes sense only if your app has to be cross-platform. If you know that application will be windows-only, then choosing DirectX 9 makes sense.
Microsoft's primary commitment is to its Windows customers. Who still run 15 years old games that use whatever DirectX version was in use back then. IDirectDraw is alive and well. Clearly you'll benefit from that as a developer secondarily. And sure, DX 9 is most widely supported by hardware so that's an excellent choice. Consider something higher if your game performs poorly on old hardware, the DX version is an automatic selector.
Are you writing this for work, or for fun?
If it's for work, then you have to go by the minimum system requirements that someone in business or marketing has defined. If your minimum OS can be Win7 or Vista SP2 w/ Platform Update, then Direct2D is a viable option. Otherwise, DX9 is the way you have to go.
If it's for fun on your own personal time, then do whatever you think will be the most fun :) Direct2D will certainly be MUCH easier to work with if you just want to do 2D graphics. I wouldn't worry much about the "it hasn't gained popularity/community support" angle, especially because it's being used by all the major desktop apps nowadays (Firefox, Internet Explorer, and even the next version of Paint.NET). Also, Win8 will update Direct2D with a whole bunch of interesting new features (and this update will also be available for Win7 from what I understand).
Direct2D can be clumsy to work with at first, but that's mainly due to all the COM stuff. Once you get used to it and build up your own little utilities warchest, it's really not any more complicated than GDI+. In fact, I've been able to port a bunch of old GDI+ code to using Direct2D/DirectWrite and often it's just a line-by-line substitution, e.g. SolidBrush -> SolidColorBrush (this is in the Paint.NET 4.0 code base, btw).
I used the Direct 2D to render graphs of functions and it's pretty easy to use - I'd say, as simple as GDI+. I'd guess, that level of complexity of DirectX 11 and DirectX 9 (in terms of 2D graphics) is quite similar, so don't worry about that.
DirectX 9.0 runs on (let's say) all modern computers, and 11 restricts you to Windows Vista (with platform pack) and Windows 7. Take into consideration, though, that Windows XP will eventually vanish and DirectX will evolve, so I'm not sure, is it worth investing your time into technology, which won't be developed anymore. I would suggest DirectX 11's Direct2D then.
I noticed windows phone 7 only has one hardware standard now.
I just wonder if the compatibilities of wp7 devices provided by different hardware vendors are better than the complex and headache android devices?
Welcome any comment
Microsoft's standards for the WP7 make it so that app compatibility is now solid (unlike past version of WinMo). If you have an app that runs on one phone, it will run on them all.
When the original specs came out it was intended that there would be 2 chassis specs. The first with a screen resolution of 480x800 and another, coming later, with a resolution of 320x480.
Since the Nokia deal it is very unlikely that devices with a 320x480 screen, and other features as previously described, will now be released. Other chassis specs are expected but we'd only be guessing at what these would be.
The current templates include hard coded margins, etc. which are appropriate for the 480x800 resolution. Until we know what, if any other resolutions the platform will support it's not known if just hard coded values will still be appropriate.
The most recent recommendations I've had from the WP7 development and design teams are to focus purely on the 800x480 resolution devices and worry about other resolutions as and when they're announced.
It has been suggested that if devices with smaller screens are released then the framework will include the ability to automatically scale the apps/pages for such resolutions. I imagine there will also be the ability to adjust the sceen design based on the resolution but this is currently just a guess. If other resolutions don't support the same ratios then this will be particularly important.
To do anything else, before details of what other resolutions may need to be supported is additional work for now and is based purely on guesswork. I'd recommend following the advice and just sticking to creating apps which are designed for 480x800. If and when the need to support other resolutions arises we can worry about how best to do so then.
According from Emulator Color Depth on Windows Phone 7 forum, I just heard about limitation of Silverlight on Windows Phone 7 that it display only 16-bit color-depth image on Silverlight application just like previous version of Windows Mobile.
Is it true? Anyone can confirm this.
PS.Normally, Silverlight natively support 32-bit color-depth and all modern smart phones also support 24-bit color-depth. I'm not sure what color-depth will be displayed. I have quite bad experience for using HTC Sense in windows mobile 6.5 on my Omnia Pro 2(OLED display with 24-bit color-depth support).
Thanks,
It's been suggested that the minimum spec for devices is 16 bpp, however I haven't seen the documentation for this despite looking for it. OEMs are free to go beyond this... arguably it will be up to them to put their best foot forward.
There was more background to that discussion you linked in other threads, including the one below. The one you linked doesn't offer a lot of context.
Emulator gradient quality different from Blend
I think the thing to do at this point will be to look at what's being done on specific devices.
As yet, hardware spec tables I've seen aren't documenting this detail, but it would be good to see.