Its been a long time for posting on the site, but as for a great news from Jochen from rifidi team announcing the monklypse on jMe site http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/jmeforum/index.php?PHPSESSID=fbf3617f90277d8e712913d51a7ec47d&topic=9445.msg72947#new

Take a look at rifidi designer, and the MonkeyWorld3D, and see how eclipse can just enter into the world of the 3d. The very intersting thing about doing all of this, is how can the platform does the 3D, we might be the first ones that uses eclipse RCP for such applications extensivly, and so far its just giving us what we need, and I believe that its doing so with teh great rifidi project. Rifidi guys please keep on rocking.

Eclipse platform just opens the legacy for every thing that has been done for the eclipse project for the years, and believe it that anything that you want to combine with your 3d appilcation is very very possible. For example I believe that rifidi just used something called GEF for building the 3d blocks, or for doing some of the simulation in their project. GEF has been there for a long time, and its a very proven technology, and its at the disposal for the rifidi team in no time. May be you can imagine the possibilities :D, with using other plug-ins.

Talking about us a little :D, our migration is almost done, but lately we are not that active on the project, but things for sure will come back with full thrust.

Thanks.

In the last few days, a lot of interesting discussions have taken place on the jME forums. This is a good sign, that the community is active and commited to the project.

The first discussion is about the future of the jMonkeyEngine. Since the lead developer (Joshua Slack, aka renanse) announced, that he is going to step back, and even create a new engine called Ardor3D, some people were wondering, what direction the jME would take. In my opinion, this discussion is very important, because it helps the project to get more professional.

The jMonkeyEngine has gained a lot of interest in the past, and this is mostly due to the public relations work of Joshua, i'd say. There are already a lot of open source projects out there, that are using the jME or have announced to use it in the future. With all those projects, the popularity of the engine will get even bigger over time. But on the other hand, with more and more projects using the engine, the constraints are getting bigger as well. The jME can't be redesigned so easily anymore, because there is a strong need for backward compatibility. And this is the reason, why it is crucial to have some more professionalism.

I'm sure, that the project is on the right track for that. Another aspect of this, is the current development of a reference implementation for the engine, under the roof of the project. The discussion for this, can be found here and here. I hope that with this project, we can identify some of the missing parts in the jMonkeyEngine. What we will do there, is to simulate a real world gaming project, and that will tell us something about the underlying engine. The goal for this project is not only a reference implementation and a fun game, but also the improvemnet of the jME.