We are looking at speeding up a project with new developers. How long is a typical Java + OpenGl learning curve if anyone has any experience ? The core work is on detailed globe visualization.
A:
JOGL is a thin wrapper around OpenGL, if you know OpenGL, you can do JOGL.
Java - it's easy if you have OO experience in your team, although learning the APIs will take time, as with all new platforms.
JeeBee
2009-09-24 14:12:00
+1
A:
"If anyone has any experience" - what do you mean by that? If you have people who have experience with Java and with OpenGL in another programming language (C or C++ for example), then learning JOGL (the Java OpenGL API that's on its way becoming a standard - JSR-231) is going to be easy, because JOGL is only a thin wrapper around OpenGL - it has the same concepts and same structure as the OpenGL API in C.
If your developers do not have any experience with OpenGL or 3D computer graphics, then it's going to be a lot harder.
Jesper
2009-09-24 14:12:17
I am talking about personal learning experience.
whatnick
2009-09-24 14:33:49
Ok: I found JOGL easy to learn; I'm a professional Java developer and I've played with OpenGL in C before.
Jesper
2009-09-24 14:47:46
Understanding the concepts and mathematics (vectors, matrices, transforms, etc.) in computer graphics will be much harder to learn for people who have no experience with computer graphics than learning Java.
Jesper
2009-09-24 14:49:51
So you would recommend mathematics in addition to plain programming. A lot of CS graduates are not serious mathematecians. I come from an engineering background, vector algebra is the order of the day.
whatnick
2009-09-24 17:37:58
Yes, to really understand how 3D graphics work you need a good understanding of the mathematics. In OpenGL and JOGL things like vectors, matrices and transforms are directly represented in the API and you need to understand what those things are and how they work. There are many good books about 3D computer graphics.
Jesper
2009-09-24 19:24:33
+1
A:
I went through some of the tutorials on http://nehe.gamedev.net/ to try JOGL without a C background, and I found it easy enough to understand.
Kurley
2009-09-24 15:34:09