Sun Microsystems Inc has licensed its Java3D applications programming interface to Silicon Graphics Inc, the two are expected to announce today. SGI will take the technology for its Irix-based Unix line of workstations rather than the newer NT models, and will integrate Java3D with its own Java runtime environment. But it says it believes Fahrenheit, the graphics API it is working on with Microsoft Corp, will be its main focus in the future.
Java3D, launched at the end of last year (CI No 3,555) works as a higher layer to the well-supported but hard to program OpenGL graphics libraries – which originated from SGI – as well as on top of Microsoft Corp’s Direct3D alternative. The current version – 1.1.1 – already runs on Windows 95, 98 and NT, Sun’s own Solaris. It is intended to extend the Java collaborative model to 3D graphics, so that users at different systems can view the same model, with light sources, behavior (such as rotation) and sequencing, all handled in the same way. It can scale from laptops up to supercomputers, and supports a range of input devices and displays, says Sun.
In March, Sun licensed the source of its Java Media Technologies, including Java3D, to the Linux Blackdown Porting Team, an informal group of Linux developers, who are expected to release an open source implementation shortly. Dassault Systemes SA’s SolidWorks, an NT-only MCAD package, uses the technology for cross-platform viewing, while the SAS Institute Inc uses it for business graphics. Since December last year, Sun claims there have been 42,000 downloads.
Sun styled SGI’s adoption of the technology as a very strong endorsement of Java3D. SGI itself said it had licensed the technology because of a select few customer requests. Michael Stebbins, marketing manager, software products at SGI, said he didn’t see it competing with any of our own solutions, such as Open GL Inventor, Open GL Optimizer, and in the future, Fahrenheit. Like Java3D, Fahrenheit is expected to support both OpenGL and Direct3D as its underlying technology.
Stebbins wouldn’t say when Java3D would be available, but said it requires Java 1.2, which has just been released in beta, and should become generally available in the middle of the year. Sun is expected to announce the latest version of Java3D – version 1.1.2 – next week, adding support for geometry compression.
