Using Swing toolkit to build Java GUI

Question

I'm about to start a project where I will be building a road network simulator. The program will in terms of the GUI, be in 2D so basically a top down view of roads with simple moving cars etc.

I do have some experience with Swing , and I've used it to build a simulator before but not in the sense of providing an actual animation of moving objects etc. Hence, my question is, do you recommend using swing for such a project, or is there other possibilities which will be more suited for this type of application? I don't know too much about other toolkits, but the main reason I ask is to make sure that swing does not limit me in any way from what I need to achieve.

Answer 1

There's nothing wrong with using Swing for this purpose. There are a number of excellent open source animation API's that will make you're life a lot easier.

• TimingFramework
• Trident

You'll have evaluate each of these yourself to see which will meet your requirements.