3D OSX Desktop Applications With Ruby-Processing
A two-part screencast series demonstrating two different 3D desktop applications using ruby-processing on JRuby. Source code by Preston Lee available on his GitHub account: Starfield.app and Twiverse.app.
Comments
Dangit.. here is the correct Screencast URL.
It says I just need Ruby 1.8 or 1.9, but I have the sneaking suspicion that I need JRuby… Somebody care to comment?
“All that you need to get Ruby-Processing going is Ruby (1.8 or 1.9) and Java (1.5 or 1.6) — and your machine probably came with both of those baked-in.”
I wouldn’t recommend the 1.8 MRI for anything requiring thread concurrency. The green threading implementation is ridiculously slow. JRuby, however, maps Ruby threads to native threads; In the Starfield.app example I’ve tried cranking it up to 500+ plus threads/stars just for fun, and despite making my CPU fan peg and being a bit sluggish, it does work.
JRuby and Processing are a very appealing combination. I hope that there is enough interest in 3D Ruby apps that we see some serious forward momentum, though it’s always a bit shocking when you see some cool technology and discover you’re the first one to make a Twitter client out of it. :)
Hold on – since when can you use Java from Ruby MRI?
AFAIK you can’t sanely use Jave from a pure MRI context. When running plain Ruby on JRuby, though, you have full access to your favorite Java libraries since it is, after all, just the JVM. :)
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