Running the Project Looking Glass Developer's Release on Microsoft Windows

Project Looking Glass runs on Windows!

Project Looking Glass is built using platform independent Java technology which means that it can run on many platforms. This document provides specific instructions for configuring your Windows based system to run the Project Looking Glass Developer's Release.

To get started you'll first need to set up your environment. Once you've verified that your environment is set up correctly you can download and install Project Looking Glass.

1. Platform Requirements Hardware and software requirements
2. Known Issues with Project Looking Glass on Windows
3. Setting up your Project Looking Glass environment Downloading and installing the required components
4. Installing the Project Looking Glass Developer's Release
5. Running Project Looking Glass How to start a Project Looking Glass desktop session
6. Resizing the Project Looking Glass Desktop

1. Platform Requirements

Before you start setting up your Project Looking Glass development environment, first check to make sure your system meets the following minimal requirements:

Component Windows Platform
Operating System Project Looking Glass has been tested on Windows 2000 and Windows XP
CPU 1.4 GHz or faster recommended
RAM 512MB recommended
Graphics Card 3D accelerated graphics card, with at least 16MB VRAM and driver support for OpenGL, version 1.2 or greater.
16bit or 32bit color.

Tested cards:
  • ATI MOBILITY RADEON
  • ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
  • NVIDIA GeForce4/6600/6800
  • Intel 855GM/915G

If you are successful in getting Project Looking Glass to run on other cards, or want to report problems with specific cards, please let us know using the discussion forum

Disk Space 250MB

2. Known Issues with Project Looking Glass on Windows

X11 support

Project Looking Glass includes support for running X11 applications within the Project Looking Glass desktop. Windows does not provide native support for X11, so it is not possible to run X11 applications in Project Looking Glass on Windows. It is also not possible to run native Windows applications within Project Looking Glass. You can, however, develop and run Project Looking Glass 3D applications, such as the CD viewer and other 3D Java applications.

Full-screen mode

You cannot replace the Windows desktop with the Project Looking Glass desktop, however you can configure the Project Looking Glass window to occupy the entire screen area. See section 6, "Resizing the Project Looking Glass Desktop" for details on how to do this.

3. Setting up your Project Looking Glass environment

Before you can run Project Looking Glass, you need to install a number of Java components. The simplest way to do this is to download all of the components and then install them in the order listed below.

Download the components

  1. Java Development Kit 5.0 or later (the latest version is 5.0 Update3 at 18/05/2005)
    http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp

    - Navigate to download page and select Download JDK 5.0 Update3. You should choose the JDK download, not the JRE. (fig 1)

    - Choose Accept and click "Continue" on the License Agreement Page.

    - Choose the Windows Offline Installation, Multi Language. (fig 2)

    - Select a directory to download the file to, such as c:\temp


    JDK 1.5 Download Page 1 JDK 1.5 Download Page 2
    Fig 1 JDK 5.0 Download Page 1 Fig 2 JDK 5.0 Download Page 2

  2. Java 3D SDK 1.4.0 or later
    https://java3d.dev.java.net/binary-builds.html

    - Navigate to https://java3d.dev.java.net/binary-builds.html

    - Download the latest Stable builds 1.4.0 - build4 or later ( java3d-1_4_0-build4-windows-i586.zip at 22/06/2005 ).

    Java 3D Download Page
    Fig 3 Java 3D Download Page

  3. Java Advanced Imaging API (JAI) 1.1.2_01 JDK or later
    http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/jai/downloads/download-1_1_2_01.html - Navigate to the JAI Download Page .

    - There are four types of JAI install: JDKTM, JRE, CLASSPATH and Signed Auto Installation for browser. You should select the JDKTM install. (fig 4)

    - Choose Accept and click "Continue" on the License Agreement Page.

    - On this page , in the Windows Platform section, choose : Windows JDK Install (jai-1_1_2_01-lib-windows-i586-jdk.exe, 5.29 MB) (fig 5)

    JAI Download Page 1 JAI Download Page 2
    Fig 1 JAI Download Page 4 Fig 2 JAI Download Page 5

Install the components

After downloading all of the components, install them by following the instructions below.

  1. Log on as a user with "Computer Administrator" privileges.

  2. Install the Java 2 SDK.

    - Using Windows Explorer, locate the Java 2 JDK installer (jdk-1_5_0_03-windows-i586-p.exe) and run it.

    - Follow the instructions in the installer to install the JDK.

    - The JDK will be installed in C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_03 (the DOS 8.3 path is c:\progra~1\java\jdk1.5.0_03) by default.

  3. Several environment variables now need to be set.

    JAVA_HOME=c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_03
    PATH=%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%PATH%

    You can set these permanently by using the System Properties dialog:

    - Select Start->Control Panel

    - Select Performance and Maintenance

    - Select System

    - Select the [Advanced] tab and click [Environment Variables]

    - In System variables create a new JAVA_HOME variable:

    - Press [New] and enter the following parameters:

      Variable name: JAVA_HOME
      Variable value: c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_03

    - Press [OK]

    - Update the Path variable:

    - Select the Path entry and click [Edit]

    - Prepend the following to the path:

      %JAVA_HOME%\bin;

    - Press [OK]

    - Press the [OK] buttons to dismiss the Environment Variables and System Properties dialogs.

  4. Install the Java 3D SDK.

    - Unzip the file java3d-1_4_0-build3-windows-i586 to a temporary directory.

    - Go to this directory and unzip the content of j3d-140-build3-win.zip to C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_03\jre (if you installed java 1.5 to another place modify this)


  5. Install the Java Advanced Imaging API.


  6. - Using Windows Explorer, locate the Java Advanced Imaging EXE file (jai-1_1_2_01-lib-windows-i586-jdk.exe). - Run jai-1_1_2_01-lib-windows-i586-jdk.exe.

    - After license agreement, the installer checks JDK

    - If the installer doesn't detect JDK that you want to install JAI, click Browse button and choose JDK that you want.

    - After that, follow the instructions in the installer.


4. Installing the Project Looking Glass Developer's Release

Download the Project Looking Glass installation package
https://lg3d-core.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=1516&expandFolder=1516&folderID=0

  1. Navigate to https://lg3d-core.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=1516&expandFolder=1516&folderID=0
  2. Navigate to lg3d-core/stable_builds in the tree view in the right hand pane. You'll see a table containing a list of stable builds (See Fig. 6).
  3. Right click on the link of the named release_x.y (where x.y is the version of the build, the actual being 0.70) and choose "Save As..". Choose a temporary directory such as c:\temp to store the file.
  4. To install the software you'll need a uncompression utility such as WinZip which can handle gzip compressed tar files.
  5. Use your uncompression software  to first uncompress the downloaded file and then extract the files from the tar archive. WinZip automates this two stage process.
    Note: If you extract the files to the root of your system drive (C:\) then Project Looking Glass will be installed in C:\lg3d

5. Running Project Looking Glass

On Windows, Project Looking Glass can only run inside a native Window, not as a full-screen desktop.

Project Looking Glass Screenshot

In this mode, a Project Looking Glass session runs in a window in your desktop. This mode only allows you to run Project Looking Glass 3D applications, such as the CD chooser. X11 applications and Windows applications cannot be run inside the Project Looking Glass desktop.

  1. To start the Project Looking Glass session open a DOS command window (Start->Accessories->Command Prompt) and enter the following command :

     C:\>cd lg3d 
    
     C:\lg3d>cd bin
    
     C:\lg3d\bin>lg3d-dev
    

If you have successfully installed Project Looking Glass you should see the familiar Project Looking Glass desktop in a window on your desktop:

Clicking the CD icon on the taskbar will open the CD viewer, a 3D demo application. Mouse over the stack of CDs and click on the CD images to see the application in action. For additionaloperational information, click the icon to the left of the CD Viewer on the taskbar. This will open a panel that summarizes the operations supported by the demo. Note that the left most icon, a computer, requires an X11 environment and will not work on Windows.

6. Resizing the Project Looking Glass Desktop

By default, Project Looking Glass assumes a screen resolution of 800x600 and a screen size of 36cm by 28.8cm. These may not match the size and resolution of your desktop. To run Project Looking Glass full screen you must change these properties so that the Project Looking Glass desktop can utilize the entire display. The following steps explain how to do this.

  1. Locate the file j3d1x1 which should be in the following location:
  2. \lg3d\etc\lg3d\displayconfig 
  3. Make a copy of the j3d1x1 file:
  4. c:\>cd \lg3d\etc\lg3d\displayconfig 
    c:\lg3d\etc\lg3d\displayconfig>copy j3d1x1 j3d1x1.orig 
  5. Edit the j3d1x1 file and change the following properties to reflect the resolution and size of your display:

    First specify the width and height in meters (multiply inches by 0.0254 to get the size in meters, so 11" = 0.2794m). The default entry specifies a screen that is 14.2" (0.360m) wide by 11.3" (0.288m) high:

    (ScreenAttribute center PhysicalScreenWidth  0.360)
    (ScreenAttribute center PhysicalScreenHeight 0.288)

    Now change the WindowSize attribute which defines the display resolution. By default, the resolution is set to 800x600:

    (ScreenAttribute center WindowSize           (800 600))

    Finally, to run the Project Looking Glass desktop full screen without window borders, remove the // comment characters from the start of the following line:

  6. //(ScreenAttribute center       WindowSize           NoBorderFullScreen)
  7. Now, when you start Project Looking Glass, it should utilize the entire display:
     C:\>cd lg3d 
    
     C:\lg3d>cd bin
    
     C:\lg3d\bin>lg3d-dev 

Explore the Project Looking Glass desktop and start dreaming of new ways to enhance the desktop user experience with 3D! When you're ready to do development, skip over to the Project Looking Glass Developer's Guide for information about developing with Project Looking Glass.

Note :

If you installed the lg3d binaries in another directory than c:\lg3d
don't forget to modify c:\lg3d\ in all the commands above.
$Revision: 1.13 $ $Date: 2005/06/25 09:09:40 $