Since the source code is readily available for these demos, they could serve as a great starting point
for aspiring Java applet programmers who may or may not have experience with OpenGL.  You DO
need to know Java in order to understand what is going on.  Additionally, I STRONGLY recommend
that you buy the "OpenGL Programmer's Guide" (often called the "Red Book") if you plan to do
OpenGL programming, whether for C, Java or any other language.

*** YOU MUST INSTALL THE GL4JAVA LIBRARIES BEFORE RUNNING THE DEMOS ***
If you haven't installed the GL4Java libraries yet, go do that first, then come back here and enjoy!

Here are the demos:

 Renormal, originally by Brian Paul : a sphere that grows and shrinks; demonstrates how to use auto-normalization.
 Gears, originally by Brian Paul : three animated gears; user can rotate the scene using the mouse.
 Texobj, originally by Brian Paul : two animated, texture-mapped squares.
 Reflect, originally by Brian Paul : rotating, textured, reflective platform with hovering objects.
 Star, originally by Silicon Graphics : particle animation of stars flying toward the viewer.
 Movelight, originally by Silicon Graphics : interactive directional lighting demonstration.
 Molehill, author unknown : shiny nurbs/evaluators example.
 Fog, originally by Silicon Graphics : red spheres fading into a fog background.
 Surface, originally by Silicon Graphics : NURBS surface demo.
 Moth, originally by Robert Doyle : simulation of a moth flying around a light.
 Shadowvol, originally by Tom McReynolds, SGI : demonstrates the use of shadow volumes.
 Softshadow, originally by Tom McReynolds, SGI : demonstrates use of the accumulation buffer for soft shadows.
 Material, originally by Silicon Graphics : demonstrates the use of the OpenGL lighting model and materials.
 Logo, author unknown : 3D SGI logo with textures and user-adjustable rendering parameters.
 Glutplane, originally by Mark J. Kilgard : Paper airplanes demo. Originally written for Mark J Kilgard's GL Utility Toolkit (GLUT).
 Spots, originally by Mark J. Kilgard : Spot light demo.
 Rings, originally by Philip Winston : Do a slow zoom on a bunch of rings (ala Superman III?).
 Steam, originally by Troy Robinette : Miniature steam engine simulation.
 DOF, originally by Silicon Graphics : Uses accumulation buffer to create an out-of-focus depth-of-field effect.
 Pointblast, originally by Mark J. Kilgard : Particle animation demo.
 Quadric, originally by Silicon Graphics : Demonstrates the use of some of the gluQuadric* routines.
 Mipmap, originally by Silicon Graphics : Demonstrates the use of mipmaps for texture maps.
 Teapots, originally by Silicon Graphics : Demonstrates lots of material properties.
 Texgen, originally by Silicon Graphics : Demonstrates the use of automatically generated texture coordinates.
 Polyoff, originally by Silicon Graphics : Uses polygon offset to draw wireframe over shaded polygons without ugly "stitching" artifacts.
 Scube, originally by David G Yu/Mark J. Kilgard/Silicon Graphics : Displays a spinning cube and its shadow.
 Particle, originally by Nate Robins : An example of a simple particle system.
 Text3d, originally by Robert J. Doyle, Jr. : 3D animated text.
 Dinoshade, originally by Mark J. Kilgard : Combines texturing, reflections, and projected shadows.