IAmSinistar: I have some Navier-Stokes simulation software I wrote in Java a while back. Part of my interest in simulating natural phenomena. The NS smoke-bloom routine is pretty cool. Anyway, I can share the sources if that will help.
apehater: you mean software that uses numerical methods for simulation and in java that sounds kind of cheap sim, from what i know for such simulation fortran or c++ is used?
It all gets turned in machine instructions before running, so it just depends what layer you want to code at. You could just as easily write it in BASIC for all that it matters, unless you are looking to maximise speed. My NS smoke-bloom code runs plenty fast in Java already, and in fact could use a thread sleep loop to slow it down.
I've written in FORTRAN and C++ as well. FORTRAN is optimised for writing formulae, but not necessarily for running them. In practice it is virtually as high-level as BASIC, and in fact much of the BASIC syntax was derived from it. C++ (and indeed most C dialects) are great if you want to write code that is almost 1-for-1 with machine instructions, but it is far from friendly. I've also written in Assembler, Pascal, Lisp, Scheme, Prolog, C#, Python, Perl, LOGO, and Icon. Each language has its strengths and weaknesses, so you should make your choice based on what you want to do and how you want to express that in code.
TwoHandedSword: Anyone know how to covert a .wps file to a format which the latest version of OpenOffice can handle?
The general consensus seems to be
this.
I didn't find an offline or plugin based solution, so if you are worried about document confidentiality with using an online service, you may have to look elsewhere.