JavaCAVE : a 3D immersive environment in Java

Abstract

Three-dimensional immersive environments have traditionally been developed using the C and C++ programing language. Do to the increasing performance of the Java platform, the Java language is becoming more accepted for scientific and graphical applications. Currently developers who choose to use Java are being excluded from visualizing the results of their programs in a rich three-dimensional immersive environment. This thesis will work towards correcting this problem by implementing a Java library called JavaCAVE to control a CAVETM immersive environment. In addition to being a Java library JavaCAVE also tried to reduce the costs of a CAVETM by being designed to run on a cluster, which is more affordable than a super computer. In order to be cross-platform and to support a variety of hardware manufacturers a plugin system was used. Special care was also taken to provide a simple and easy interface for the users of JavaCAVE. Two test applications were created to test the functionality of JavaCAVE. They prove that JavaCAVE is able to control the necessary hardware and that the Java Platform ran quickly enough to be a viable choice for controlling a three-dimensional immersive environment.