Q:

JOGL -Does it work? Questions + Comments and experiences

The story:
I been googling for some way of displaying computer graphics over the web using acceleration from video cards (no software renders). I know it is possible to write and activeX module for IE but that is not a complete solution as that would alinate a good amount of users (firefox + macOS fans).
Here is an example of more less what I have in mind:
Example of a hardware acceleration on top of browser link

The query:
I recently found out that you can bind opengl calls with java from a browser using JOGL. So I was wondering some things:

A) Is JOGL the best solution for my story?

B) Can i query opengl extensions from JOGL?

C) How do i load textures from JOGL?

The comments:
If you have used JOGL from a browser please please let me know what problems/experiences you had from it.

A:

I'm using JOGL on a major desktop application, and it's been successful. It's essentially as fast as OpenGL. I can't speak for anything about over the web - I suspect your best bet is to write a JOGL applet using WebStart. Have a look at some of the JOGL examples.
JOGl is a very thin wrapper over OpenGL. If you know OpenGL you can use JOGL. If you don't know OpenGL, learning JOGl is the same as learning OpenGL (not an easy task). Virtually anything you can do in OpenGL you can do in JOGL.
We have had issues with hardware acceleration on Linux (who doesn't) and some configurations of Linux will crash our JOGL app (not necessarily others). This is something of a known issue, and you are probably going to have some problems with 3D on Linux whatever you do.
I also know of other people using JME and LWJGL successfully on the desktop.

A:

You did not mention 'applet' in your question. Try searching for 'jogl applet' or 'lwjgl applet'. I have had more joy with LWJGL than JOGL but they should both satisfy your needs. You may also be interested in Java Web Start. Try the demos here for both Java Web Start and Applet-based examples using LWJGL, and here for a JOGL applet.

