Pros and Cons of Keyframe Animation

Full-Screen Exclusive Mode (FSEM)

FSEM was introduced back in J2SE 1.4 as a way of switching off Java's windowing system and allowing direct drawing to the screen. The principal reason for this is speed, an obvious advantage for games. Secondary benefits include the ability to control the bit depth and size of the screen (its display mode). Advanced graphics techniques such as page flipping and stereo buffering are often only supported by display cards when FSEM is enabled.

FSEM was discussed in the context of 2D games in Chapter 4. The code described in this section uses passive rendering, which means that Java 3D is left in control of when to render to the screen.

An excellent Java tutorial on FSEM is at http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/extra/fullscreen/, which includes good overviews of topics like passive and active rendering, page flipping, and display modes. A few examples include the useful CapabilitiesTest.java program, which allows you to test your machine for FSEM support.