I suppose it _could_ be possible to render the border and displayed data into a texture and then assign that to poly representing the area. But wouldn't that be quite expensive - after all that it should be achieved by using a 3D engine in the first place..

Sure...just a thought to use the TextureEffect for that somehow. I think the best solution for the time being would be to use an extra object that represents the outlines, attach it to the object to "highlight" as a child object and only set it visible if the object should be highlighted and invisible otherwise.

Another thing I forgot to mention in the first post - propably because it's completely different topic - is continous picking. The user interface should employ some method of mouse tracking, with highlighting and additional information show when cursor hovers over certain object in the scene; this propably needs to be done by firing picking rays at certain intervals to see if something is available.

I'm a bit concerned by performance issues - in Java3D this took too long, at least with unoptimized code and large scenes, and degraded performance too much on not-so-high-end machines..

Shouldn't be that much of a problem. Picking in jPCT takes place in Camera-space (that's why the methods in Interact2D require the VisList), so only polygons on screen will be checked. Just try it...it should be fast enough.

For the time being: bump-mapping. I'm planing to add this to the OpenGL-renderer, but i'm not sure how fast i'll get it working in a way that it looks similar to software. You've already mentioned overbright lighting. That's it...all other things should work. Some optimizations like OptiZ and Spanbased HSR won't do anything for OpenGL, but that doesn't matter anyway. Transparency may look a little bit different when comparing both renderers, but that's nothing to worry about. In addition, everything that manipulate textures and/or the framebuffer (TextureEffects and some kinds of blitting) will be slower in OpenGL, because transfering new textures to the card is expensive in terms of performance. If there could be problems, this is documented in the methods itself.

LWJGL doesn't render into a standard component but its own. Therefor, the standard Java-stuff like Listeners and the like doesn't work on the OpenGL windows/fullscreen view. You have to use the LWJGL way of doing these things (which is quite simple (polling)) and if your application should be run without LWJGL when using the software renderer, you'll most likely have to write your own wrapper for such things...but there's nothing i can do about that...it's a limitation or feature (whatever you like to call it) of LWJGL, which isn't my project.

Hope this helps.

Edit: And anti-aliasing. I'm not enabling it ATM in the OpenGL mode. It can still be enabed via the drivers or tools...depending on your hardware.

Hmmm...i have to think about this when i have a little more time, but i think that i understand what you are trying to achieve. Just one question: Would it help to draw the border into a texture, i.e. does the texture cover the polygon and ONLY the polygon that should show the outlines? I guess it doesn't, but i had to ask...that would make things easier.

0.83 beta 2 is out, the 3DS loader is in.

Finally, i decided to add support for the 3DS format to the next beta. I already have an alpha version of the loader running and it's working quite well so far.

0.83 beta 1 is out and hopefully fixes this flaw as well as some others.
Look here for more info: http://www.jpct.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19

Quick question for Helge... I can't find a way to cast shadows.

It's not a big problem (because I can always burn them onto my textures :wink: ), but... is there a way to do it using the engine?

No, there isn't. You'll have to do it the "texture-way". I thought about shadows some weeks ago, but i ran into some problems (virtual ones...i didn't really implement something) with the software rasterizer. That, and they would be veeery slow in software. Maybe the upcoming support for OpenGL will make me re-evaluate this decision...but for now: No support for casting shadows, sorry.

Update: The OpenGL version is showing nice progress, Here is a screenshot of the terrain example converted to OpenGL (i.e. converted to an application...there's really not much more required to make it use OGL).
Some features of the software renderer like 2D blitting won't be supported by the first version of the OpenGL renderer. Anyway, the release date of the new version is...when it's done!
Edit: At least 2D blitting from textures WILL be supported...