Hello,
I will also need to “fight” with VTK + Java + JOGL + Swing on Mac in the upcoming weeks, so maybe I will be able to share my experience on that environment as well.
As of now, I am working with JOGL on Windows, and I am already encountering some issues unfortunately (see Rendering/interaction issues with VTK 8.2 (Java) + JOGL on Windows for details).
Regarding your problem, you told that the Swing GUI will block if you launch your application with the “-XstartOnFirstThread” JVM parameter. Can you provide more details? When will the Swing GUI block? As soon as the Swing GUI shows up on screen? Will it lock forever, or what?
Please provide some more details, I will check if I have suggestions to provide.
Also, you may want to take a look at this thread:
Not sure if this user was indeed using Swing in his application, but it looks like he was successful in having VTK 8.2 + Java + JOGL to work under macOS.
Best regards,
Marco Sambin