Espresso3D
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Espresso3D (E3D) is a middle layer 3D library written in the Java programming language that sits between OpenGL and 3D applications. This middle layer is sometimes called a game engine, 3D application engine, or, although not truly descriptive of Espresso3D because it provides more features, a scene graph. Essentially, it assists a developer in writing 3D enabled programs in Java easily without having to understand the underlying principles of OpenGL, mathematics of collision detection, and many other low-level, but very useful features. An engine such as Espresso3D also assists the developer by providing a useful suite of utilities built-in for things such as sound, input, networking, and collision detection.
Development of the Espresso3D engine began in October, 2004 and continues to this day by an Iowa State University Computer Science alumni named Curt Moxley who currently resides in Iowa. There are currently many hobbyist using the engine in its non-commercial format and also some commercial vendors evaluating it.
Although in its current state it's not as feature-rich as some comparable engines written in C or C++ (though it's still under very active development and working its way towards that goal), it is an extremely easy to use engine and one of only a handful of engines written in Java using no external non-crossplatform libraries. This allows a developer to have true cross-platform development of 3D applications without worry of which operating system(OS) it will be run on. Any OS supporting OpenGL and Java (which includes Windows, MacOS, and many flavors of Linux) will be able to run applications written on top of Espresso3D provided the application itself doesn't tie itself to a given OS.
