Java 3D was designed with several goals in mind. Chief
among them is high performance. Several design decisions were made so that Java
3D implementations can deliver the highest level of performance to application
users. In particular, when trade-offs were made, the alternative that benefited
runtime execution was chosen.
Other important Java 3D goals are to
Provide a rich set of features for creating interesting 3D worlds, tempered by the need to avoid nonessential or obscure features. Features that could be layered on top of Java 3D were not included.
Provide a high-level object-oriented programming paradigm that enables developers to deploy sophisticated applications and applets rapidly.
Provide support for runtime loaders. This allows Java 3D to accommodate a wide variety of file formats, such as vendor-specific CAD formats, interchange formats, and VRML97.