Submitted by Sun’s Looking Glass 3D desktop can now be executed on any machine which supports Java Web Start.
Project ‘Looking Glass’ Now Available Through Java Web Start
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And supports opengl.
Not terribly useful at the moment, but interesting nonetheless.
The shot heard ’round the geek’s water cooler.
Maybe I’m just skeptical, but Looking Glass looks like a slick demo of nothing I’d ever want to use. Sort of like watching a rare exotic dog roll in a rat carcass.
I’m running a G5 with OS X 10.4 and Java 1.5, and all I’m getting is a blank screen?? Is this for Intel only?
Java is cross platform. Apples java jdk is prob the one with the probs.
I know; I write Java code for a living 🙂
It looks like it was stalling on downloading the Java3D (platform specific to win, linux, etc.) library.
Apple still doesn’t support Java3D on 10.4. Bad Apple!
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/java3dandjavaadvancedim…
Apologies if my post came across as a bit aggressive. That was not my intent. I just meant to say there was prob something wrong with the jdk from Apple and like you said it does not suppor java3d yet.
That’s funny; I am running my java3d application on my powerbook with os x 10.4 just fine.
Do you mean that it doesn’t support it out of the box or not at all? If it’s the latter, I think you are fortunately wrong
Java 3D 1.3.1 is preinstalled on 10.4, which is why the _installer_ you refer too is not supported on 10.4.
Thanks for the clarification.
It’s strange though; the JNLP for Looking Glass tried seems to want to download the Java3D api.
I’ll check this out again when I get home.
If you look at your Console when it runs on a Mac, you’ll see that it crashes on a “class not found” exception, as it tries to run on the Java 3D you already have. All the LG3D JNLP file does (as far as J3D is concerned) is load the Java 3D 1.4 JNLP, but that file doesn’t reference any files for Mac OS X (as Mac OS X is not supported) so no new J3D files are installed. Unfortunately Java 3D requires a native library, so unless Apple updates its version, or someone ports it (Java 3D is now open source), then it won’t be possible to get LG3D working. Java 3D 1.4 requires OpenGL 1.2 or DirectX 9 support, so it won’t run under VirtualPC on a Mac either. Beyond pestering Apple, or porting it yourself, the only thing left to do is wait for Javas 3D 1.5, which will most likely be layered over JOGL.
Edited 2005-11-16 15:42
LG3D requires Java 3D 1.4. Apple hasn’t released a Java 3D update since 1.3.1 in December 2003 so the Java 3D implementation on the Mac is a couple of years old. Java 3D 1.4 provides shaders support and other features that LG3D uses. LG3D should run fine on any system that supports Java 3D 1.4 (ie its not Intel only).
Thanks for the info.
I love my Mac, but am continually disappointed with the level of support Apple provides for Java APIs (standard & optional).
OS X’s Aqua is the second most popular GUI, yet Sun supports the optional APIs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris in near-lockstep. Is this more a problem with Apple than Sun?
“OS X’s Aqua is the second most popular GUI, yet Sun supports the optional APIs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris in near-lockstep. Is this more a problem with Apple than Sun?”
Sun support the two system they sell: Solaris and Linux.
They also support Windows because Microsoft (c/w)ouldn’t handle it.
Middle-clicking and dragging seems to freeze this on Windows XP…
http://download.java.net/lg3d/test/lg3d_with_incubator.jnlp
This will give you some applications (clock, ping-pong, image viewer, etc) from the incubator to play with aswell.
From Polish version of bash.org:
“Saying that Java is good, because it works on all platforms is like saying that anal sex is good, because it works for males and females”.
really idiotic comporation …
Assuming a final version running from harddisk would be smoother and less glitchy, and that the moving background (which is really just a tech toy causing me nausea) is possible to turn off, I’d consider using this as a DM for Linux or BSD.
It is running from a hard-disk. After the initial demo, Sun scaled back the amount of work going into Looking Glass, so I don’t think it’ll get very far. It’d be better to wait for the next X.Org and use one of the next-gen WMs that appear after that (KDE 4 is sounding promising at the moment).
How about letting us know first that the link doesn’t link to an article, but launches an installer.
I am running the demo and see some applications sitting on what looks like a glass shelf. However, clicking/double clicking them doesn’t appear to do anything. Can someone please help me out?
This chap seems to have it running on tiger: http://cappuccino.jp/keisuken/logbook/20050826.html#p02 There is also a thread discussing this problem in greater depth here, with it seems a solution: http://www.javadesktop.org/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=14622&tstart… It’s all a little beyond me, there are suggestions to build J3D in a particular way, but as a previous poster mentioned J3D seems to be incompatible with Tiger. I just want the eye candy, if anyone gets it running I’d appreciate a how to…
(ps how do I get bloody line-breaks to parse here?)
Edited 2005-11-16 18:14
Can’t seem to get it to quit installing 1.5 which goes on server drive so lg doesn’t run. 1.4 is on local machine.
“now be executed”. i clicked the link and it started the java auto downloading program. i didnt want that, i just wanted to read about it.