Working stuff!

Last time I wrote a new, JCHAI3D was buggy, slow and not working at all... but why? The answer is simple: pointers. Yeah. CHAI3D uses LOTS of pointers through it's code and this gave to us LOT, LOT and LOT of work. Since Java does not have pointers, we have to mimic the behaviours to JCHAI3D and make sure that the effects are the same. Furthermore, our team was with slow computers to develop and spare time to work.

But now, we got new equipments: brand new Dell XPS laptops, iMac servers and workstations and a Novint Falcon haptic device. Thanks to LNCC [http://www.lncc.br]!!

And now? How is JCHAI3D? It's near to the end. Note that we will not port the GEL and ODE modules to JCHAI3D, since we will implements our own dynamics code.

What we have working now:
- All graphics rendering and properties(material, illumination, textures, bitmaps, labels and all shapes);
- All math framework(vectors, matrix, glmatrix);
- Extended support for image files(BMP,TGA,JPG and PNG);
- Wavefront .OBJ file format support;
- Haptic device recognition and communication(currently tested with Omega.7 and PHANTOM).

What we expect to work soon:
- Collision detection(by now the binary trees are created, but not working yet);
- Force feedback algorithms(again, lots of pointers...);
- 3DS file support.
- Haption haptic devices support[http://www.haption.com].

This week I will post some screenshots to show what can you with JCHAI3D now =)

Kinds regards!