Question about using javaFX in an external OpenGL context

[Herve Girod]

Hello again,

This time I have a completely different question. We know that at some
point in the future, they will be a way to use JavaFX in an external
graphic context.

However we would need to do this kind of thing sooner. In fact we will need
to render JavaFX context on top of OpenGL terain or video images (for
example XPLane or Flightgear content). We have 3 options we consider:
- not bothering with the context but drawing the JavaFX content on top
using the alwaysOnTop property for frames. But we have a problem because
this is still not AFAIK available directly from JavaFX (we could still wrap
JavaFX in a Swing container an use this option in Swing, however)
- wrap the JavaFX structure in a Swing container, and draw the Swing
Graphics2D context in the external OpenGL context. We have an OpenGL
Graphicsd2D "driver" which does this (open sourced, and using JOGL), but it
will maybe cause us performance issues
- Go in the depths of the rendering implementation and draw directly in
OpenGL ourselves, but it's maybe a lot of work (the Swing OpenGL renderer
was not something we did in a few days work for example).

We know which approach will be the simplest, but how much work for the last
(we fear a lot). We will try the two first ones in the coming months.

Hervé