From F3 to JavaFX 1.0 – Effects

how-to
Jan 5, 20091 min

An important and impressive innovation between F3 and JavaFX is the Effects framework created by Chris Campbell.

F3 had a simple system of software pixel filters, which could be applied to any Node or group of Nodes in a scene. However, thanks to Chris, JavaFX 1.0 includes a much more complete set of effects, and a sophisticated framework that enables GPU hardware acceleration where available.

Underlying the simple declarative expression of effects at the JavaFX script level, effect implementations are described in a GPU-shader-like procedural language, which Chris created, called JSL. Chris’s JSL compiler then compiles to various targets, either GPU-based (GLSL/HLSL), or CPU-based (Java/Native).