#+HTML_HEAD: </style>
* Project description
-In software, pure Java realtime 3D rendering engine. With the final goal of
-becoming a platform for buildng 3D user interfaces.
+In-software, pure Java realtime 3D rendering engine. With the final
+goal of becoming a platform for buildng 3D user interfaces and
+interactive data visualization.
+ See: [[http://www2.svjatoslav.eu/gitbrowse/sixth-3d-demos/doc/index.html][demos of current 3D engine capabilities]]
System is implemented in Java because:
-- It scales well to handle great complexity.
- It is easy to refactor and experiment with.
-- It is fast enough thanks to Java virtual machine just-in-time compiler.
-- Easy to run on various hardware platforms and operating systems.
-3D rendering is done in software, 100% pure Java on CPU. At least for now.
-Modern CPU cores count keeps growing and therefore rendering by CPU is not as
-expensive as it used to be for the old single core systems.
+- It scales well to handle great complexity.
+ - Allows to implement clever performance optimizations (instead of
+ going for GPU offered brute-force rendering approach).
+
+- No limitations imposed by:
+ - requirement for decent GPU
+ - GPU missing features
+ - GPU missing/incomplete/buggy drivers
+ - OpenGL specification
+
+- It is fast enough thanks to:
+ - Java virtual machine just-in-time compiler.
+ - Growing CPU cores count.
-CPU rendering performance is already good enough to implement usable 3D UI at
-sufficient detail level, resolution and frame rate.
+- As a result it is easy to run on various hardware platforms and
+ operating systems.
-Pure Java also means easy portability and installation. No need to deal with
-platform specific dependencies.
+3D rendering is done in software, 100% pure Java on CPU. At least for
+now. Modern CPU cores count keeps growing and therefore rendering by
+CPU is not as expensive as it used to be for the old single core
+systems.
-Also CPU rendering allows to easily test different rendering algorithms and
-retains complete control of every rendered pixel.
+CPU rendering performance is already good enough to implement usable
+3D UI at sufficient detail level, resolution and frame rate.
-* Software development
-** TODO
-+ partial (region) frame repaint
-+ antialiazing
-** Instructions to embed Sixth-3D in your project
+Pure Java also means easy portability and installation. No need to
+deal with platform specific dependencies.
+
+Also CPU rendering allows to easily test different rendering
+algorithms and retains complete control of every rendered pixel.
+
+
+* Instructions to embed Sixth-3D in your project
Maven *pom.xml* file snippet:
#+BEGIN_SRC xml
<dependencies>
#+END_SRC
See [[file:codeGraph/index.html][generated code graph]] using [[http://www2.svjatoslav.eu/gitbrowse/javainspect/doc/index.html][this tool]].
+* TODO features to add
++ Partial region/frame repaint: when only one small object changed on
+ the scene, it would be faster to re-render that specific area.
+
++ Once partial rendering works, in would be easy to add multi-core
+ rendering support. So that each core renders it's own region of the
+ screen.
+
++ Antialiazing. Would improve text readability. If antialiazing is too
+ expensive for every frame, it could be used only for last frame
+ before animations become still and waiting for user input starts.
+
++ Render only visible polygons.
+ + This would significantly reduce RAM <-> CPU traffic.
+
+ + General algorithm description:
+ + For each horizontal scanline:
+ + sort polygon edges from left to right
+ + while iterating and drawing pixels over screen X axis (left to
+ right) track next appearing/disappearing polygons.
+ + For each polygon edge update Z sorted active polygons list.
+ + Only draw pixel from the top-most polygon.
+ + Only if polygon area is transparent/half-transparent add
+ colors from the polygons below.
+
+ + As a bonus, this would allow to track which polygons are really
+ visible in the final scene for each frame.
+
+ + Such information allows further optimizations:
+
+ + Dynamic geometry simplification:
+ + Dynamically detect and replace invisible objects from the
+ scene with simplified bounding box.
+
+ + Dynamically replace boudnig box with actual object once it
+ becomes visible.
+
+ + Dynamically unload unused textures from RAM.
projects / sixth-3d.git / blobdiff