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• Create Panoramic Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery

  - by Matthew Guay

  Have you ever wanted to capture the view from a mountain or the full size of a building?  Here’s how you can stitch multiple shots together into the perfect panoramic picture for free with Windows Live Photo Gallery. Getting Started First, make sure you have Windows Live Photo Gallery installed (link below).  Live Photo Gallery is part of the Windows Live Essentials suite, you can select other programs to install along with it if you want. Make sure to uncheck setting your home page to MSN and setting your search provider as Bing if you don’t want them changed.   Now, make sure you have pictures that will work good for a panorama.  These need to be taken from the same spot, and the edges of the pictures need to overlap so the program can find where the pictures connect.  Here we have taken pictures inside a building with a cell phone camera. Make your Panorama Open Live Photo Gallery, and find the pictures you want to use in your panorama.  It will automatically index and display all of the photos in your Pictures folder or Library if you’re using Windows 7. If your pictures are saved elsewhere, add that folder to Photo Gallery.  Click File, Include a folder in the gallery, and select the correct folder at the prompt. Now select all of the pictures that you will use in your panorama.  You can easily do this by clicking the checkbox on each picture that appears when you hover over it.    Once all of the pictures are selected, click Make in the menu bar and select Create panoramic photo… Alternately, right-click on any of the pictures you’ve selected, and click Create panoramic photo… Live Photo Gallery will analyze your photos and compost them together to create a panorama.  The amount of time it takes will vary depending on the number of photos, size of the pictures, and computer speed. When it’s finished making the panorama, you’ll be prompted to enter a file name and save the picture. Your new panorama picture will open as soon as it’s saved.  Depending on your shots, the picture may have quite a bit of black space around the edges where each picture didn’t cover the exact same amount of area. To correct this, click Fix on the menu bar, and then select Crop Photo in the sidebar that opens. Select the center of the picture with the crop tool, and click Apply when you’ve got the selection you want. Live Photo Gallery automatically saves your picture changes, and you can revert back to the original picture if you wish. Now you’ve got a nice panoramic shot, trimmed and ready to print, share, and more. Conclusion Panoramic shots are great ways to capture your whole surroundings, whether it’s a sports stadium, mall, or a scenic mountain view.  They can also be a great way to capture more with low-resolution cameras. Link Download Windows Live Photo Gallery Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Family Fun: Share Photos with Photo Gallery and Windows Live SpacesLearning Windows 7: Manage Photos with Live Photo GalleryEasily Re-Size Photos in Windows Vista or XPInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7Convert Photos to Flash for Your Website TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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• 2D Rendering with OpenGL ES 2.0 on Android (matrices not working)

  - by TranquilMarmot

  So I'm trying to render two moving quads, each at different locations. My shaders are as simple as possible (vertices are only transformed by the modelview-projection matrix, there's only one color). Whenever I try and render something, I only end up with slivers of color! I've only done work with 3D rendering in OpenGL before so I'm having issues with 2D stuff. Here's my basic rendering loop, simplified a bit (I'm using the Matrix manipulation methods provided by android.opengl.Matrix and program is a custom class I created that just calls GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv()): Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, windowWidth, 0, windowHeight, -1, 1); program.setUniformMatrix4f("Projection", projection); At this point, I render the quads (this is repeated for each quad): Matrix.setIdentityM(modelview, 0); Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX, quadY, 0); program.setUniformMatrix4f("ModelView", modelview); quad.render(); // calls glDrawArrays and all I see is a sliver of the color each quad is! I'm at my wits end here, I've tried everything I can think of and I'm at the point where I'm screaming at my computer and tossing phones across the room. Anybody got any pointers? Am I using ortho wrong? I'm 100% sure I'm rendering everything at a Z value of 0. I tried using frustumM instead of orthoM, which made it so that I could see the quads but they would get totally skewed whenever they got moved, which makes sense if I correctly understand the way frustum works (it's more for 3D rendering, anyway). If it makes any difference, I defined my viewport with GLES20.glViewport(0, 0, windowWidth, windowHeight); Where windowWidth and windowHeight are the same values that are pased to orthoM It might be worth noting that the android.opengl.Matrix methods take in an offset as the second parameter so that multiple matrices can be shoved into one array, so that'w what the first 0 is for For reference, here's my vertex shader code: uniform mat4 ModelView; uniform mat4 Projection; attribute vec4 vPosition; void main() { mat4 mvp = Projection * ModelView; gl_Position = vPosition * mvp; } I tried swapping Projection * ModelView with ModelView * Projection but now I just get some really funky looking shapes... EDIT Okay, I finally figured it out! (Note: Since I'm new here (longtime lurker!) I can't answer my own question for a few hours, so as soon as I can I'll move this into an actual answer to the question) I changed Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, windowWidth, 0, windowHeight, -1, 1); to float ratio = windowWwidth / windowHeight; Matrix.orthoM(projection, 0, 0, ratio, 0, 1, -1, 1); I then had to scale my projection matrix to make it a lot smaller with Matrix.scaleM(projection, 0, 0.05f, 0.05f, 1.0f);. I then added an offset to the modelview translations to simulate a camera so that I could center on my action (so Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX, quadY, 0); was changed to Matrix.translateM(modelview, 0, quadX + camX, quadY + camY, 0);) Thanks for the help, all!

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• Next Generation Mobile Clients for Oracle Applications & the role of Oracle Fusion Middleware

  - by Manish Palaparthy

  Oracle Enterprise Applications have been available with modern web browser based interfaces for a while now. The web browsers available in smart phones no longer require special markup language such as WML since the processing power of these handsets is quite near to that of a typical personal computer. Modern Mobile devices such as the IPhone, Android Phones, BlackBerry, Windows 8 devices can now render XHTML & HTML quite well. This means you could potentially use your mobile browser to access your favorite enterprise application. While the Mobile browser would render the UI, you might find it difficult to use it due to the formatting & Presentation of the Native UI. Smart phones offer a lot more than just a powerful web browser, they offer capabilities such as Maps, GPS, Multi touch, pinch zoom, accelerometers, vivid colors, camera with video, support for 3G, 4G networks, cloud storage, NFC, streaming media, tethering, voice based features, multi tasking, messaging, social networking web browsers with support for HTML 5 and many more features.  While the full potential of Enterprise Mobile Apps is yet to be realized, Oracle has published a few of its applications that take advantage of the above capabilities and are available for the IPhone natively. Here are some of them Iphone Apps  Oracle Business Approvals for Managers: Offers a highly intuitive user interface built as a native mobile application to conveniently access pending actions related to expenses, purchase requisitions, HR vacancies and job offers. You can even view BI reports related to the worklist actions. Works with Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle Business Indicators : Real-time secure access to OBI reports. Oracle Business Approvals for Sales Managers: Enables sales executives to review key targeted tasks, access relevant business intelligence reports. Works with Siebel CRM, Siebel Quote & Order Capture. Oracle Mobile Sales Assistant: CRM application that provides real-time, secure access to the information your sales organization needs, complete frequent tasks, collaborate with colleagues and customers. Works with Oracle CRMOracle Mobile Sales Forecast: Designed specifically for the mobile business user to view key opportunities. Works with Oracle CRM on demand Oracle iReceipts : Part of Oracle PeopleSoft Expenses, which allows users to create and submit expense lines for cash transactions in real-time. Works with Oracle PeopleSoft expenses Now, we have seen some mobile Apps that Oracle has published, I am sure you are intrigued as to how develop your own clients for the use-cases that you deem most fit. For that Oracle has ADF Mobile ADF Mobile You could develop Mobile Applications with the SDK available with the smart phone platforms!, but you'd really have to be a mobile ninja developer to develop apps with the rich user experience like the ones above. The challenges really multiply when you have to support multiple mobile devices. ADF Mobile framework is really handy to meet this challenge ADF Mobile can in be used to Develop Apps for the Mobile browser : An application built with ADF Mobile framework installs on a smart device, renders user interface via HTML5, and has access to device services. This means the programming model is primarily web-based, which offers consistency with other enterprise applications as well as easier migration to new platforms. Develop Apps for the Mobile Client (Native Apps): These applications have access to device services, enabling a richer experience for users than a browser alone can offer. ADF mobile enables rapid and declarative development of rich, on-device mobile applications. Developers only need to write an application once and then they can deploy the same application across multiple leading smart phone platforms. Oracle SOA Suite Although the Mobile users are using the smart phone apps, and actual transactions are being executed in the underlying app, there is lot of technical wizardry that is going under the surface. All of this key technical components to make 1. WebService calls 2. Authentication 3. Intercepting Webservice calls and adding security credentials to the request 4. Invoking the services of the enterprise application 5. Integrating with the Enterprise Application via the Adapter is all being implemented at the SOA infrastructure layer.  As you can see from the above diagram. The key pre-requisites to mobile enable an Enterprise application are The core enterprise application Oracle SOA Suite ADF Mobile

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• Oracle Social Network and the Flying Monkey Smart Target

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. I teased this before OpenWorld, and for those of you who didn’t make it to the show or didn’t come by the Office Hours to take the Oracle Social Network Technical Tour Noel (@noelportugal) ran, I give you the Flying Monkey Smart Target. In brief, Noel built a target, about two feet tall, which when struck, played monkey sounds and posted a comment to an Oracle Social Network Conversation, all controlled by a Raspberry Pi. He also connected a Dropcam to record the winner just prior to the strike. I’m not sure how it all works, but maybe Noel can post the technical specifics. Here’s Noel describing the Challenge, the Target and a few other tidbit in an interview with Friend of the ‘Lab, Bob Rhubart (@brhubart). The monkey target bits are 2:12-2:54 if you’re into brevity, but watch the whole thing. Here are some screen grabs from the Oracle Social Network Conversation, including the Conversation itself, where you can see all the strikes documented, the picture captured, and the annotation capabilities: #gallery-1 { margin: auto;? } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }    That’s Diego in one shot, looking very focused, and Ernst in the other, who kindly annotated himself, two of the development team members. You might have seen them in the Oracle Social Network Hands-On Lab during the show. There’s a trend here. Not by accident, fun stuff like this has becoming our calling card, e.g. the Kscope 12 WebCenter Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. Not only are these entertaining demonstrations, but they showcase what’s possible with RESTful APIs and get developers noodling on how easy it is to connect real objects to cloud services to fix pain points. I spoke to some great folks from the City of Atlanta about extending the concepts of the flying monkey target to physical asset monitoring. Just take an internet-connected camera with REST APIs like the Dropcam, wire it up to Oracle Social Netwok, and you can hack together a monitoring device for a datacenter or a warehouse. Sure, it’s easier said than done, but we’re a lot closer to that reality than we were even two years ago. Another noteworthy bit from Noel’s interview, beginning at 2:55, is the evolution of social developer. Speaking of, make sure to check out the Oracle Social Developer Community. Look for more on the social developer in the coming months. Noel has become quite the Raspberry Pi evangelist, and why not, it’s a great tool, a low-power Linux machine, cheap ($35!) and highly extensible, perfect for makers and students alike. He attended a meetup on Saturday before OpenWorld, and during the show, I heard him evangelizing the Pi and its capabilities to many people. There is some fantastic innovation forming in that ecosystem, much of it with Java. The OTN gang raffled off five Pis, and I expect to see lots of great stuff in the very near future. Stay tuned this week for posts on all our Challenge entrants. There’s some great innovation you won’t want to miss. Find the comments. Update: I forgot to mention that Noel used Twilio, one of his favorite services, during the show to send out Challenge updates and information to all the contestants.

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• Create bullet physics rigid body along the vertices of a blender model

  - by Krishnabhadra

  I am working on my first 3D game, for iphone, and I am using Blender to create models, Cocos3D game engine and Bullet for physics simulation. I am trying to learn the use of physics engine. What I have done I have created a small model in blender which contains a Cube (default blender cube) at the origin and a UVSphere hovering exactly on top of this cube (without touching the cube) I saved the file to get MyModel.blend. Then I used File -> Export -> PVRGeoPOD (.pod/.h/.cpp) in Blender to export the model to .pod format to use along with Cocos3D. In the coding side, I added necessary bullet files to my Cocos3D template project in XCode. I am also using a bullet objective C wrapper. -(void) initializeScene { _physicsWorld = [[CC3PhysicsWorld alloc] init]; [_physicsWorld setGravity:0 y:-9.8 z:0]; /*Setup camera, lamp etc.*/ .......... ........... /*Add models created in blender to scene*/ [self addContentFromPODFile: @"MyModel.pod"]; /*Create OpenGL ES buffers*/ [self createGLBuffers]; /*get models*/ CC3MeshNode* cubeNode = (CC3MeshNode*)[self getNodeNamed:@"Cube"]; CC3MeshNode* sphereNode = (CC3MeshNode*)[self getNodeNamed:@"Sphere"]; /*Those boring grey colors..*/ [cubeNode setColor:ccc3(255, 255, 0)]; [sphereNode setColor:ccc3(255, 0, 0)]; float *cVertexData = (float*)((CC3VertexArrayMesh*)cubeNode.mesh).vertexLocations.vertices; int cVertexCount = (CC3VertexArrayMesh*)cubeNode.mesh).vertexLocations.vertexCount; btTriangleMesh* cTriangleMesh = new btTriangleMesh(); // for (int i = 0; i < cVertexCount * 3; i+=3) { // printf("\n%f", cVertexData[i]); // printf("\n%f", cVertexData[i+1]); // printf("\n%f", cVertexData[i+2]); // } /*Trying to create a triangle mesh that curresponds the cube in 3D space.*/ int offset = 0; for (int i = 0; i < (cVertexCount / 3); i++){ unsigned int index1 = offset; unsigned int index2 = offset+6; unsigned int index3 = offset+12; cTriangleMesh->addTriangle( btVector3(cVertexData[index1], cVertexData[index1+1], cVertexData[index1+2] ), btVector3(cVertexData[index2], cVertexData[index2+1], cVertexData[index2+2] ), btVector3(cVertexData[index3], cVertexData[index3+1], cVertexData[index3+2] )); offset += 18; } [self releaseRedundantData]; /*Create a collision shape from triangle mesh*/ btBvhTriangleMeshShape* cTriMeshShape = new btBvhTriangleMeshShape(cTriangleMesh,true); btCollisionShape *sphereShape = new btSphereShape(1); /*Create physics objects*/ gTriMeshObject = [_physicsWorld createPhysicsObjectTrimesh:cubeNode shape:cTriMeshShape mass:0 restitution:1.0 position:cubeNode.location]; sphereObject = [_physicsWorld createPhysicsObject:sphereNode shape:sphereShape mass:1 restitution:0.1 position:sphereNode.location]; sphereObject.rigidBody->setDamping(0.1,0.8); } When I run the sphere and cube shows up fine. I expect the sphere object to fall directly on top of the cube, since I have given it a mass of 1 and the physics world gravity is given as -9.8 in y direction. But What is happening the spere rotates around cube three or times and then just jumps out of the scene. Then I know I have some basic misunderstanding about the whole process. So my question is, how can I create a physics collision shape which corresponds to the shape of a particular mesh model. I may need complex shapes than cube and sphere, but before going into them I want to understand the concepts.

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• 256 Worker Role 3D Rendering Demo is now a Lab on my Azure Course

  - by Alan Smith

  Ever since I came up with the crazy idea of creating an Azure application that would spin up 256 worker roles (please vote if you like it ) to render a 3D animation created using the Kinect depth camera I have been trying to think of something useful to do with it. I have also been busy working on developing training materials for a Windows Azure course that I will be delivering through a training partner in Stockholm, and for customers wanting to learn Windows Azure. I hit on the idea of combining the render demo and a course lab and creating a lab where the students would create and deploy their own mini render farms, which would participate in a single render job, consisting of 2,000 frames. The architecture of the solution is shown below. As students would be creating and deploying their own applications, I thought it would be fun to introduce some competitiveness into the lab. In the 256 worker role demo I capture the rendering statistics for each role, so it was fairly simple to include the students name in these statistics. This allowed the process monitor application to capture the number of frames each student had rendered and display a high-score table. When I demoed the application I deployed one instance that started rendering a frame every few minutes, and the challenge for the students was to deploy and scale their applications, and then overtake my single role instance by the end of the lab time. I had the process monitor running on the projector during the lab so the class could see the progress of their deployments, and how they were performing against my implementation and their classmates. When I tested the lab for the first time in Oslo last week it was a great success, the students were keen to be the first to build and deploy their solution and then watch the frames appear. As the students mostly had MSDN suspicions they were able to scale to the full 20 worker role instances and before long we had over 100 worker roles working on the animation. There were, however, a few issues who the couple of issues caused by the competitive nature of the lab. The first student to scale the application to 20 instances would render the most frames and win; there was no way for others to catch up. Also, as they were competing against each other, there was no incentive to help others on the course get their application up and running. I have now re-written the lab to divide the student into teams that will compete to render the most frames. This means that if one developer on the team can deploy and scale quickly, the other team still has a chance to catch up. It also means that if a student finishes quickly and puts their team in the lead they will have an incentive to help the other developers on their team get up and running. As I was using “Sharks with Lasers” for a lot of my demos, and reserved the sharkswithfreakinlasers namespaces for some of the Azure services (well somebody had to do it), the students came up with some creative alternatives, like “Camels with Cannons” and “Honey Badgers with Homing Missiles”. That gave me the idea for the teams having to choose a creative name involving animals and weapons. The team rendering architecture diagram is shown below.   Render Challenge Rules In order to ensure fair play a number of rules are imposed on the lab. ·         The class will be divided into teams, each team choses a name. ·         The team name must consist of a ferocious animal combined with a hazardous weapon. ·         Teams can allocate as many worker roles as they can muster to the render job. ·         Frame processing statistics and rendered frames will be vigilantly monitored; any cheating, tampering, and other foul play will result in penalties. The screenshot below shows an example of the team render farm in action, Badgers with Bombs have taken a lead over Camels with Cannons, and both are  leaving the Sharks with Lasers standing. If you are interested in attending a scheduled delivery of my Windows Azure or Windows Azure Service bus courses, or would like on-site training, more details are here.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 28 - November 3, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of Oct 28 - Nov 3, 2012. Eventually, 90% of tech budgets will be outside IT departments | ZDNet Another interesting post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick about changing roles in IT. ADF Mobile - Login Functionality | Andrejus Baranovskis "The new ADF Mobile approach with native deployment is cool when you want to access phone functionality (camera, email, sms and etc.), also when you want to build mobile applications with advanced UI," reports Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. Mobile Development Platform Strategy Chart: ADF Mobile, WebCenter Sites, Portal, Content and Social "Unlike desktop web focused efforts, the world of mobile has undergone change at a feverish pace," says social enterprise expert John Brunswick. His extensive post charts various resources that will help you keep up. ADF Essentials - The Bare Necessities | Floyd Teter The experiment is over… And now Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter shares his impressions after spending some time with Oracle ADF Essentials, the free version of Oracle ADF. A review of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook | RedStack "More so than any other single piece of content that I have seen on the topic, it provides the information that a SOA administrator needs to know in order to successfully configure, manage, monitor, troubleshoot and backup an Oracle SOA environment." So says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team solution architect Mark Nelson of Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator’s Handbook, by Ahmed Aboulnaga and Arun Pareek. Expanding the Oracle Enterprise Repository with functional documentation Capgemini middleware specialist Marc Kuijpers shares information on how Oracle Enterprise Repository can be configured "to contain functional assets, i.e. functional designs, use cases and a logical data model" to aid in SOA governance efforts. Podcast: Are You Future Proof? - Part 2 In Part 2, practicing architects and Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen discuss re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what’s truly valuable. Easy way to access JPA with REST (JSON / XML) | Edwin Biemond Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond shows you "what is possible with JPA-RS, how easy it is and howto setup your own EclipseLink REST service." Clustering ODI11g for High-Availability Part 1: Introduction and Architecture | Richard Yeardley "JEE agents can be deployed alongside, or instead of, standalone agents," says Rittman Meade's Richard Yeardley. "But there is one key advantage in using JEE agents and WebLogic: when you deploy JEE agents as part of a WebLogic cluster they can be configured together to form a high availability cluster." Learn more in Yeardley's extensive post. 2012 IOUG Virtualization SIG – Online Symposium on Nov 7 and Nov 8 | Kai Yu Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu shares information on this week's IOUG Virtualization SIG online event. Does that make it a virtual virtualization event? Thought for the Day "If McDonalds were run like a software company, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning — and the response would be, 'We’re sorry, here’s a coupon for two more.'" — Mark Minasi Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• How to fix OpenGL Co-ordinate System in SFML?

  - by Marc Alexander Reed

  My OpenGL setup is somehow configured to work like so: (-1, 1) (0, 1) (1, 1) (-1, 0) (0, 0) (1, 0) (-1, -1) (0, -1) (1, -1) How do I configure it so that it works like so: (0, 0) (SW/2, 0) (SW, 0) (0, SH/2) (SW/2, SH/2) (SW, SH/2) (0, SH) (SW/2, SH) (SW/2, SH) SW as Screen Width. SH as Screen Height. This solution would have to fix the problem of I can't translate significantly(1) on the Z axis. Depth doesn't seem to be working either. The Perspective code I'm using is that of my WORKING GLUT OpenGL code which has a cool 3d grid and camera system etc. But my OpenGL setup doesn't seem to work with SFML. Help me guys. :( Thanks in advance. :) #include <SFML/Window.hpp> #include <SFML/Graphics.hpp> #include <SFML/Audio.hpp> #include <SFML/Network.hpp> #include <SFML/OpenGL.hpp> #include "ResourcePath.hpp" //Mac-only #define _USE_MATH_DEFINES #include <cmath> double screen_width = 640.f; double screen_height = 480.f; int main (int argc, const char **argv) { sf::ContextSettings settings; settings.depthBits = 24; settings.stencilBits = 8; settings.antialiasingLevel = 2; sf::Window window(sf::VideoMode(screen_width, screen_height, 32), "SFML OpenGL", sf::Style::Close, settings); window.setActive(); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glEnable(GL_LIGHTING); glEnable(GL_LIGHT0); glEnable(GL_NORMALIZE); glEnable(GL_COLOR_MATERIAL); glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); glViewport(0, 0, screen_width, screen_height); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); //glOrtho(0.0f, screen_width, screen_height, 0.0f, -100.0f, 100.0f); gluPerspective(45.0f, (double) screen_width / (double) screen_height , 0.f, 100.f); glClearColor(0.f, 0.f, 1.f, 0.f); //blue while (window.isOpen()) { sf::Event event; while (window.pollEvent(event)) { switch (event.type) { case sf::Event::Closed: window.close(); break; } switch (event.key.code) { case sf::Keyboard::Escape: window.close(); break; case 'W': break; case 'S': break; case 'A': break; case 'D': break; } } glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); glTranslatef(0.f, 0.f, 0.f); glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glColor3f(1.f, 0.f, 0.f); glVertex3f(-1.f, 1.f, 0.f); glColor3f(0.f, 1.f, 0.f); glVertex3f(1.f, 1.f, 0.f); glColor3f(1.f, 0.f, 1.f); glVertex3f(1.f, -1.f, 0.f); glColor3f(0.f, 0.f, 1.f); glVertex3f(-1.f, -1.f, 0.f); glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); window.display(); } return EXIT_SUCCESS; }

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• Where to start with game development?

  - by steven_desu

  I asked this earlier in this thread at stackoverflow.com. One of the early comments redirected me here to gamedev.stackexchange.com, so I'm reposting here. Searching for related questions I found a number of very specific questions, but I'm afraid the specifics have proved fruitless for me and after 4 hours on Google I'm no closer than I started, so I felt reaching out to a community might be in order. First, my goal: I've never made a game before, although I've muddled over the possibility several times. I decided to finally sit down and start learning how to code games, use game engines, etc. All so that one day (hopefully soon) I'll be able to make functional (albeit simple) games. I can start adding complexity later, for now I'd be glad to have a keyboard-controlled camera moving in a 3D world with no interaction beyond that. My background: I've worked in SEVERAL programming languages ranging from PHP to C++ to Java to ASM. I'm not afraid of any challenges that come with learning the new syntax or limitations inherent in a new language. All of my past programming experience, however, has been strictly non-graphical and usually with little or extremely simple interaction during execution. I've created extensive and brilliant algorithms for solving logical and mathematical problems as well as graphing problems. However in every case input was either defined in a file, passed form an HTML form, or typed into the console. Real-time interaction with the user is something with which I have no experience. My question: Where should I start in trying to make games? Better yet- where should I start in trying to create a keyboard-navigable 3D environment? In searching online I've found several resources linking to game engines, graphics engines, and physics engines. Here's a brief summary of my experiences with a few engines I tried: Unreal SDK: The tutorial videos assume that you already have in-depth knowledge of 3D modeling, graphics engines, animations, etc. The "Getting Started" page offers no formal explanation of game development but jumps into how Unreal can streamline processes it assumes you're already familiar with. After downloading the SDK and launching it to see if the tools were as intuitive as they claimed, I was greeted with about 60 buttons and a blank void for my 3D modeling. Clicking on "add volume" (to attempt to add a basic cube) I was met with a menu of 30 options. Panicking, I closed the editor. Crystal Space: The website seemed rather informative, explaining that Crystal Space was just for graphics and the companion software, CEL, provided entity logic for making games. A demo game was provided, which was built using "CELStart", their simple tool for people with no knowledge of game programming. I launched the game to see what I might look forward to creating. It froze several times, the menus were buggy, there were thousands of graphical glitches, enemies didn't respond to damage, and when I closed the game it locked up. Gave up on that engine. IrrLicht: The tutorial assumes I have Visual Studio 6.0 (I have Visual Studio 2010). Following their instructions I was unable to properly import the library into Visual Studio and unable to call any of the functions that they kept using. Manually copying header files, class files, and DLLs into my project's folder - the project failed to properly compile. Clearly I'm not off to a good start and I'm going in circles. Can someone point me in the right direction? Should I start by downloading a program like Blender and learning 3D modeling, or should I be learning how to use a graphics engine? Should I look for an all-inclusive game engine, or is it better to try and code my own game logic? If anyone has actually made their own games, I would prefer to hear how they got their start. Also- taking classes at my school is not an option. Nothing is offered.

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• Where to start with game development?

  - by steven_desu

  Searching for related questions I found a number of very specific questions, but I'm afraid the specifics have proved fruitless for me and after 4 hours on Google I'm no closer than I started, so I felt reaching out to a community might be in order. First, my goal: I've never made a game before, although I've muddled over the possibility several times. I decided to finally sit down and start learning how to code games, use game engines, etc. All so that one day (hopefully soon) I'll be able to make functional (albeit simple) games. I can start adding complexity later, for now I'd be glad to have a keyboard-controlled camera moving in a 3D world with no interaction beyond that. My background: I've worked in SEVERAL programming languages ranging from PHP to C++ to Java to ASM. I'm not afraid of any challenges that come with learning the new syntax or limitations inherent in a new language. All of my past programming experience, however, has been strictly non-graphical and usually with little or extremely simple interaction during execution. I've created extensive and brilliant algorithms for solving logical and mathematical problems. However in every case input was either defined in a file, passed form an HTML form, or typed into the console. Real-time interaction with the user is something with which I have no experience. My question: Where should I start in trying to make games? Better yet- where should I start in trying to create a keyboard-navigable 3D environment? In searching online I've found several resources linking to game engines, graphics engines, and physics engines. Here's a brief summary of my experiences with a few engines I tried: Unreal SDK: The tutorial videos assume that you already have in-depth knowledge of 3D modeling, graphics engines, animations, etc. The "Getting Started" page offers no formal explanation of game development but jumps into how Unreal can streamline processes it assumes you're already familiar with. After downloading the SDK and launching it to see if the tools were as intuitive as they claimed, I was greeted with about 60 buttons and a blank void for my 3D modeling. Clicking on "add volume" (to attempt to add a basic cube) I was met with a menu of 30 options. Panicking, I closed the editor. Crystal Space: The website seemed rather informative, explaining that Crystal Space was just for graphics and the companion software, CEL, provided entity logic for making games. A demo game was provided, which was built using "CELStart", their simple tool for people with no knowledge of game programming. I launched the game to see what I might look forward to creating. It froze several times, the menus were buggy, there were thousands of graphical glitches, enemies didn't respond to damage, and when I closed the game it locked up. Gave up on that engine. IrrLicht: The tutorial assumes I have Visual Studio 6.0 (I have Visual Studio 2010). Following their instructions I was unable to properly import the library into Visual Studio and unable to call any of the functions that they kept using. Manually copying header files, class files, and DLLs into my project's folder - the project failed to properly compile. Clearly I'm not off to a good start and I'm going in circles. Can someone point me in the right direction? Should I start by downloading a program like Blender and learning 3D modeling, or should I be learning how to use a graphics engine? Should I look for an all-inclusive game engine, or is it better to try and code my own game logic? If anyone has actually made their own games, I would prefer to hear how they got their start. Also- taking classes at my school is not an option. Nothing is offered.

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• Encode two integers into colour values and compare them in a HLSL shader

  - by Ben Slinger

  I am writing a 2D point and click adventure game in Monogame, and I'd like to be able to create an image mask for every room which defines which parts of the background a character can walk behind, and at which Y value a character needs to be at for the background to be drawn above the character. I haven't done any shader work before but after doing some reading I thought the following solution should work: Create a mask for the room with different walk behind areas painted in a colour that defines the baseline Y value (Walk Behind Mask) Render all objects to a RenderTarget2D (Base Texture) Render all objects to a different RenderTarget2D, but changing every pixel of each object to a colour that defines its Y value (Position Mask) Pass these two textures plus the image mask into the shader, and for each pixel compare the colour of the image mask to the colour of the Position Mask to the Walk Behind Mask - if the Position Mask pixel is larger (thus lower on the screen and closer to the camera) than the Walk Behind Mask, draw the pixel from the Base Texture, otherwise draw a transparent pixel (allowing the background to show through). I've got it mostly working, but I'm having trouble packing and unpacking the Y values into colours and retrieving them correctly in the shader. Here are some code examples of how I'm doing it so far: (When drawing to the Position Mask RenderTarget2D) Color posColor = new Color(((int)Position.Y >> 16) & 255, ((int)Position.Y >> 8) & 255, (int)Position.Y & 255); So as far as I can tell, this should be taking the first 3 bytes of the position integer and encoding them into a 4 byte colour (ignoring the alpha as the 4th byte). This seems to work fine, as when my character is at Y = 600, the resulting Color from this is: {[Color: R=0, G=2, B=88, A=255, PackedValue=4283957760]}. I then have an area in my Walk Behind Mask that I only want the character to be displayed behind if his Y value is lower than 655, so I've painted it with R=0, G=2, B=143, A=255. Now, I think I have the shader OK as well, here's what I have: sampler BaseTexture : register(s0); sampler MaskTexture : register(s1); sampler PositionTexture : register(s2); float4 mask( float2 coords : TEXCOORD0 ) : COLOR0 { float4 color = tex2D(BaseTexture, coords); float4 maskColor = tex2D(MaskTexture, coords); float4 positionColor = tex2D(PositionTexture, coords); float maskCompare = (maskColor.r * pow(2,24)) + (maskColor.g * pow(2,16)) + (maskColor.b * pow(2,8)); float positionCompare = (positionColor.r * pow(2,24)) + (positionColor.g * pow(2,16)) + (positionColor.b * pow(2,8)); return positionCompare < maskCompare ? float4(0,0,0,0) : color; } technique Technique1 { pass NoEffect { PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 mask(); } } This isn't working, however - currently all characters are displayed behind the walk behind area, regardless of their Y value. I tried printing out some debug info by grabbing the pixel from both the Position Mask and the Walk Under Mask under the current mouse position, and it seems like maybe the colours aren't being rendered to the Position Mask correctly? When calculating the colour in that code above I'm getting R=0, G=2, B=88, A=255, but when I mouseover my character I get R=0, G=0, B=30, A=255. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? It seems like maybe I'm losing some information when rendering to the RenderTarget2D, but I'm now knowledgeable enough to figure out what's happening. Also, I should probably ask, is this an efficient way to do this? Will there be a performance impact? Edit: Whoops, turns out there was a bug that I'd introduced myself, I was drawing out the Position Mask with the position Color, left over from some early testing I was doing. So this solution is working perfectly, though I'm still interested in whether this is an efficient solution performance wise.

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: Fishbowl Solutions

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Today, I give you the final entry in the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge, held last week during OpenWorld. This one comes from Friend of the ‘Lab and Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowle20) hacker, John Sim (@jrsim_uix), whom you might remember from his XBox Kinect demo at COLLABORATE 12 (presentation slides and abstract) hacks and other exploits with WebCenter. We put this challenge together specifically for developers like John, who like to experiment with new tools and push the envelope of what’s possible and build cool things, and as you can see from his entry John did just that, mashing together Google Maps and Oracle Social Network into a mobile app built with PhoneGap that uses the device’s camera and GPS to keep teams on the move in touch. He calls it a Mobile GeoTagging Solution, but I think Avengers Assemble! would have equally descriptive, given that was obviously his inspiration. Here’s his description of the mobile app: My proposed solution was to design and simplify GeoLocation mapping, and automate updates for users and teams on the move; who don’t have access to a laptop or want to take their ipads out – but allow them to make quick updates to OSN and upload photos taken from their mobile device – there and then. As part of this; the plan was to include a rules engine that could be configured by the user to allow the device to automatically update and post messages when they arrived at a set location(s). Inspiration for this came from on{x} – automate your life. Unfortunately, John didn’t make it to the conference to show off his hard work in person, but luckily, he had a colleague from Fishbowl and a video to showcase his work.    Here are some shots of John’s mobile app for your viewing pleasure: John’s thinking is sound. Geolocation is usually relegated to consumer use cases, thanks to services like foursquare, but distributed teams working on projects out in the world definitely need a way to stay in contact. Consider a construction job. Different contractors all converge on a single location, and time is money. Rather than calling or texting each other and risking a distracted driving accident, an app like John’s allows everyone on the job to see exactly where the other contractors are. Using his GPS rules, they could easily be notified about how close each is to the site, definitely useful when you have a flooring contractor sitting idle, waiting for an electrician to finish the wiring. The best part is that the project manager or general contractor could stay updated on all the action (or inaction) using Oracle Social Network, either sitting at a desk using the browser app or desktop client or on the go, using one of the native mobile apps built for Oracle Social Network. I can see this being used by insurance adjusters too, and really any team that, erm, assembles at a given spot. Of course, it’s also useful for meeting at the pub after the day’s work is done. Beyond people, this solution could also be implemented for physical objects that are in route to a destination. Say you’re a customer waiting on rail shipment or a package delivery. You could track your valuable’s whereabouts easily as they report their progress via checkins. If they deviated from the GPS rules, you’d be notified. You might even be able to get a picture into Oracle Social Network with some light hacking. Thanks to John and his colleagues at Fishbowl for participating in our challenge. We hope everyone had a good experience. Make sure to check out John’s blog post on his work and the experience using Oracle Social Network. Although this is the final, official entry we had, tomorrow, I’ll show you the work of someone who finished code, but wasn’t able to make the judging event. Stay tuned.

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• problem with frustum AABB culling in DirectX

  - by Matthew Poole

  Hi, I am currently working on a project with a few friends, and I am trying to get frustum culling working. Every single tutorial or article I go to shows that my math is correct and that this should be working. I thought maybe posting here, somebody would catch something I could not. Thank you. Here are the important code snippets /create the projection matrix void CD3DCamera::SetLens(float fov, float aspect, float nearZ, float farZ) { D3DXMatrixPerspectiveFovLH(&projMat, D3DXToRadian(fov), aspect, nearZ, farZ); } //build the view matrix after changes have been made to camera void CD3DCamera::BuildView() { //keep axes orthoganal D3DXVec3Normalize(&look, &look); //up D3DXVec3Cross(&up, &look, &right); D3DXVec3Normalize(&up, &up); //right D3DXVec3Cross(&right, &up, &look); D3DXVec3Normalize(&right, &right); //fill view matrix float x = -D3DXVec3Dot(&position, &right); float y = -D3DXVec3Dot(&position, &up); float z = -D3DXVec3Dot(&position, &look); viewMat(0,0) = right.x; viewMat(1,0) = right.y; viewMat(2,0) = right.z; viewMat(3,0) = x; viewMat(0,1) = up.x; viewMat(1,1) = up.y; viewMat(2,1) = up.z; viewMat(3,1) = y; viewMat(0,2) = look.x; viewMat(1,2) = look.y; viewMat(2,2) = look.z; viewMat(3,2) = z; viewMat(0,3) = 0.0f; viewMat(1,3) = 0.0f; viewMat(2,3) = 0.0f; viewMat(3,3) = 1.0f; } void CD3DCamera::BuildFrustum() { D3DXMATRIX VP; D3DXMatrixMultiply(&VP, &viewMat, &projMat); D3DXVECTOR4 col0(VP(0,0), VP(1,0), VP(2,0), VP(3,0)); D3DXVECTOR4 col1(VP(0,1), VP(1,1), VP(2,1), VP(3,1)); D3DXVECTOR4 col2(VP(0,2), VP(1,2), VP(2,2), VP(3,2)); D3DXVECTOR4 col3(VP(0,3), VP(1,3), VP(2,3), VP(3,3)); // Planes face inward frustum[0] = (D3DXPLANE)(col2); // near frustum[1] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 - col2); // far frustum[2] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 + col0); // left frustum[3] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 - col0); // right frustum[4] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 - col1); // top frustum[5] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 + col1); // bottom // Normalize the frustum for( int i = 0; i < 6; ++i ) D3DXPlaneNormalize( &frustum[i], &frustum[i] ); } bool FrustumCheck(D3DXVECTOR3 max, D3DXVECTOR3 min, const D3DXPLANE* frustum) { // Test assumes frustum planes face inward. D3DXVECTOR3 P; D3DXVECTOR3 Q; bool ret = false; for(int i = 0; i < 6; ++i) { // For each coordinate axis x, y, z... for(int j = 0; j < 3; ++j) { // Make PQ point in the same direction as the plane normal on this axis. if( frustum[i][j] > 0.0f ) { P[j] = min[j]; Q[j] = max[j]; } else { P[j] = max[j]; Q[j] = min[j]; } } if(D3DXPlaneDotCoord(&frustum[i], &Q) < 0.0f ) ret = false; } return true; }

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• OpenGL not rendering my images to the screen

  - by Brendan Webster

  for some reason my game isn't showing the image I am rendering to the screen. My engine is state based, and at the beginning I set the logo, but it isn't showing on the screen. Here is my method of doing so first I create one image and assign some values to it's preset values. //create one image instance for the logo background O_File.v_Create_Images(1); //set the atributes of the background //first Image O_File.sImage[0].nImageDepth = -30.0f; O_File.sImage[0].sImageLocation = "image.bmp"; //load the images int O_File.v_Load_Images(); Then I load them with DevIL void C_File_Manager::v_Load_Images() { ilGenImages(1, &image); ilBindImage(image); for(int i = 0;i < sImage.size();i++) { success = ilLoadImage(sImage[i].sImageLocation.c_str()); if (success) { success = ilConvertImage(IL_RGBA, IL_UNSIGNED_BYTE); glGenTextures(1, &image); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, image); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, 4, ilGetInteger(IL_IMAGE_WIDTH), ilGetInteger(IL_IMAGE_HEIGHT), 0, ilGetInteger(IL_IMAGE_FORMAT), GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, ilGetData()); //asign values to the width and height of the image if they are already not assigned if(sImage[i].nImageHeight == 0) sImage[i].nImageHeight = ilGetInteger(IL_IMAGE_HEIGHT); if(sImage[i].nImageWidth == 0) sImage[i].nImageWidth = ilGetInteger(IL_IMAGE_WIDTH); std::cout << sImage[i].nImageHeight << std::endl; const std::string word = sImage[i].sImageLocation.c_str(); std::cout << sImage[i].sImageLocation.c_str() << std::endl; ilLoadImage(word.c_str()); ilDeleteImages(1, &image); } } } and then I apply them to the screen void C_File_Manager::v_Apply_Images() { glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); for(int i = 0;i < sImage.size();i++) { //move the image to where it should be on the screen; glTranslatef(sImage[i].nImageX,sImage[i].nImageY,sImage[i].nImageDepth); //rotate image around the 3 axes glRotatef(sImage[i].fImageAngleX,1,0,0); glRotatef(sImage[i].fImageAngleY,0,1,0); glRotatef(sImage[i].fImageAngleZ,0,0,1); //scale the image glScalef(1,1,1); //center the image glTranslatef((sImage[i].nImageWidth/2),(sImage[i].nImageHeight/2),0); //draw the box that will encase the loaded image glBegin(GL_QUADS); //change the color of the loaded image; glColor4f(1,1,1,1); //top left corner of image glNormal3f(0.0,0,0.0); glTexCoord2f (1.0, 0.0); glVertex3f(0,0,sImage[i].nImageDepth); //top right corner of image glNormal3f(1.0,0,0.0); glTexCoord2f (1.0, 1.0); glVertex3f(0,sImage[i].nImageHeight,sImage[i].nImageDepth); //bottom right corner of image glNormal3f(-1.0,0,0.0); glTexCoord2f (0.0, 1.0); glVertex3f(sImage[i].nImageWidth,sImage[i].nImageHeight,sImage[i].nImageDepth); //bottom left corner of image glNormal3f(-1.0,0,0.0); glTexCoord2f(0.0, 0.0); glVertex3f(sImage[i].nImageWidth,0,sImage[i].nImageDepth); glEnd(); } } when I debug there is no errors at all, but yet the images don't show up on the screen, I have positioned the camera at (0,0,-1) and that is where the images should show up. the clipping plane is set 1 to 1000. There is probably some random problem with the code, but I just can't catch it.

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• Microsoft Build 2012 Day 1 Keynote Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  So I have finally dried the tears after watching the Keynote for Build 2012.  This wasn’t because it was an emotional presentation, but because for the second year I missed the goodies.  Each on site attendee got a Surface RT, a Lumia 920 and a voucher for 100GB of SkyDrive storage. The event was opened with the announcement that in the three days since the launch of Windows 8 over 4 million upgrades have been sold.  I don’t care who you are that is an impressive stat.  Ballmer then spent a fair amount of time remaking the case for the Windows and Windows Phone platforms similar to what we have heard over the last to launch events. There were some cool, but non-essential demos.  The one that was the most fun was the Perceptive Pixel 82” slate device.  At first glance I wondered why I would ever want such a device, but then Ballmer explained it’s possible use for schools and boardrooms.  The actually made sense. Then things got strange.  Steve started explaining features that developers could leverage.  Usually this type of information is left to the product leads.  He focused on the integration with the Charms features such as Search and Share. Steve “Guggs” Guggenheim showed off an app that would appeal to my kids from Disney called “Agent P” which is base on Phineas and Ferb.  Then he got to the meat of the presentation.  We found out that you could add a tile that can be used to sell ad space.  In the same vein we also found out that you could use Microsoft’s, Paypal’s or any commerce engine of your own creation or choosing. For those who are interested in sports and especially developing sports apps you would have found the small presentation from Michael Bayle of ESPN.  He introduced the ESPN app which has tons of features.  For the developers in the crowd he also mentioned that ESPN has an API available at developer.espn.com. During the launch events we were told apps were coming.  In this presentation we were actually shown a scrolling list of logos and told about a couple of them.  Ballmer mentioned specifically Twitter, SAP and DropBox.  These are impressive names that were just a couple of the list impressive names. Steve Ballmer addressed the question of why you should develop for the Windows 8 platform.  He feels that Microsoft has the best commercial terms for developers, a better way to build apps than other platforms and a variety of form factors.  His key point though was the available volume of customers given the current Windows install base and assuming even a flat growth of the platform.  This he backed with a promise that Microsoft is going to do better at marketing and you won’t be able to avoid the ads that they are bringing out. The last section of the key note was present by Kevin Gallo from the Windows Phone team.  This was the real reason I tuned into the webcast.  He impressed upon those watching that the strength of developing for the Microsoft platform is the common programming model that now exist.  While there are difference between form factor implementations you can leverage code across them. He claimed that 90% of developer requests for Windows Phone 8 had been implemented.  These include: More controls with better performance Better live tiles including lock screen integration Speech support in custom apps Easier submission to the market place App camera integration VOIP and chat support Bluetooth and NFC support Native C++ development Direct 3D development   The quote from Kevin that stood out for me was that “Take your Dramamine and buckle your seatbelt type of games are coming to Windows Phone 8”.  He back this up by displaying a list of game development frameworks and then having Unity come out and do a demo. Ok, almost done … The last two things of note for me were the announcement that the SDK is immediately available at dev.windowsphone.com and that they were reducing the cost of an individual developer account to $8 for the next 8 days. Let the development commence. del.icio.us Tags: Build 2012,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Windows Phone

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• Review&ndash;Build Android and iOS apps in Visual Studio with Nomad

  - by Bill Osuch

  Nomad is a Visual Studio extension that allows you build apps for both Android and iOS platforms in Visual Studio using HTML5. There is no need to switch between .Net, Java and Objective-C to target different platforms - write your code once in HTML5 and build for all common mobile platforms and tablets. You have access to the native hardware functions (such as camera and GPS) through the PhoneGap library, UI libraries such as jQuery mobile allow you to create an impressive UI with minimal work. Nomad is still in an early access beta stage, so the documentation is a bit sparse. In fact, the only documentation is a simple series of steps on how to install the plug-in, set up a project, build and deploy it. You're going to want to be a least a little familiar with the PhoneGap library and jQuery mobile to really tap into the power of this. The sample project included with the download shows you just how simple it is to create projects in Visual Studio. The sample solution comes with an index.html file containing the HTML5 code, the Cordova (PhoneGap) library, jQuery libraries, and a JQuery style sheet: The html file is pretty straightforward. If you haven't experimented with JQuery mobile before, some of the attributes (such as data-role) might be new to you, but some quick Googling will fill in everything you need to know. The first part of the file builds a simple (but attractive) list with some links in it: The second part of the file is where things get interesting and it taps into the PhoneGap library. For instance, it gets the geolocation position by calling position.coords.latitude and position.coords.longitude: ...and then displays it in a simple span: Building is pretty simple, at least for Android (I'm not an iOS developer so I didn't look at that feature) - just configure the display name, version number, and package ID. There's no need to specify Android version; Nomad supports 2.2 and later. Enter these bits of information, click the new "Build for Android" button (not the regular Visual Studio Build link...) and you get a dialog box saying that your code is being built by their cloud build service (so no building while away from a WiFi signal apparently). After a couple minutes you wind up with a .apk file that can be copied over to your device. Applications built with Nomad for Android currently use a temporary certificate, so you can test the app on your devices but you cannot publish them in the Google Play Store (yet). And I love the "success" dialog box: Since Nomad is still in Beta, no pricing plans have been announced yet, so I'll be curious to see if this becomes a cost-effective solution to mobile app development. If it is, I may even be tempted to spring for the $99 iOS membership fee! In the meantime, I plan to work on porting some of my apps over to it and seeing how they work. My only quibble at this time is the lack of a centralized documentation location - I'd like to at least see which (if any) features of JQuery and PhoneGap are limited or not supported. Also, some notes on targeting different Android screen sizes would be nice, but it's relatively easy to find jQuery examples out on the InterWebs. Oh well, trial and error! You can download the Nomad extension for Visual Studio by going to their web site: www.vsnomad.com. Technorati Tags: Android, Nomad

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for October 2012. OAM/OVD JVM Tuning | @FusionSecExpert Vinay from the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Group (known as the A-Team) shares a process for analyzing and improving performance in Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Access Manager. SOA Galore: New Books for Technical Eyes Only Shake up up your technical skills with this trio of new technical books from community members covering SOA and BPM. Clustering ODI11g for High-Availability Part 1: Introduction and Architecture | Richard Yeardley "JEE agents can be deployed alongside, or instead of, standalone agents," says Rittman Meade's Richard Yeardley. "But there is one key advantage in using JEE agents and WebLogic – when you deploy JEE agents as part of a WebLogic cluster they can be configured together to form a high availability cluster." Learn more in Yeardley's extensive post. Solving Big Problems in Our 21st Century Information Society | Irving Wladawsky-Berger "I believe that the kind of extensive collaboration between the private sector, academia and government represented by the Internet revolution will be the way we will generally tackle big problems in the 21st century. Just as with the Internet, governments have a major role to play as the catalyst for many of the big projects that the private sector will then take forward and exploit. The need for high bandwidth, robust national broadband infrastructures is but one such example." -- Irving Wladawsky-Berger Eventually, 90% of tech budgets will be outside IT departments | ZDNet Another interesting post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick about changing roles in IT. ADF Mobile - Login Functionality | Andrejus Baranovskis "The new ADF Mobile approach with native deployment is cool when you want to access phone functionality (camera, email, sms and etc.), also when you want to build mobile applications with advanced UI," reports Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. Podcast: Are You Future Proof? - Part 2 In Part 2, practicing architects and Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen (Vennster) discuss re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what's truly valuable. ADF Mobile Custom Javascript — iFrame Injection | John Brunswick The ADF Mobile Framework provides a range of out of the box components to add within your AMX pages, according to John Brunswick. But what happens when "an out of the box component does not directly fulfill your development need? What options are available to extend your application interface?" John has an answer. Oracle Solaris 11.1 update focuses on database integration, cloud | Mark Fontecchio TechTarget editor Mark Fontecchio reports on the recent Oracle Solaris 11.1 release, with comments from IDC's Al Gillen. Architects Matter: Making sense of the people who make sense of enterprise IT Why do architects matter? Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens suggests that you ask yourself this question the next time you take the elevator to the Oracle offices on the 45th floor of the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois (or any other skyscraper, for that matter). If you had to take the stairs to get to those offices, who would you blame? "You get the picture," he says. "Architecture is essential for any necessarily complex structure, be it a building or an enterprise." (Read the article) Thought for the Day "I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas." — Frederick P. Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• OpenGl / C++ and some strange light problem on half board

  - by mlodziaszka

  I have some problem with lights in my opengl "game". I have board with is square (-50,50), (50, 50), (50, -50), (-50,-50) x and z since y doesn't matter at all. I tried to make something like flashlight its moving and rotating with camera (me), but when i try to rotate more then 90 degree to left or right it just give diffrend light: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/688/lightij.jpg/ (left is spotlight, right point light) There is also a point light in the middle, but its working strange(not like a pointlight) it shines only on half of the board from (-50,50), (50, 50), (50, 0), (-50,-0) x and y: Link to my repo where u can find game exe in download and full code in source: https://bitbucket.org/mlodziaszka/my_game All more fragments of light: float gl_amb[] = { 0.2f, 0.2f, 0.2f, 1.0f }; glLightModelfv(GL_LIGHT_MODEL_AMBIENT, gl_amb); glEnable(GL_LIGHTING); // Wlaczenie oswietlenia glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); // Wybor techniki cieniowania glEnable(GL_LIGHT0); // Wlaczenie 0-go zrodla swiatla glEnable(GL_LIGHT1); Cubes parametri: float m1_amb[] = { 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f }; float m1_dif[] = { 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f }; float m1_spe[] = { 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f }; glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_AMBIENT, m1_amb); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_DIFFUSE, m1_dif); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_SPECULAR, m1_spe); glMaterialf(GL_FRONT, GL_SHININESS, 50.0f); Texture parametri: float m1_amb[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float m1_dif[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float m1_spe[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_AMBIENT, m1_amb); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_DIFFUSE, m1_dif); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_SPECULAR, m1_spe); glMaterialf(GL_FRONT, GL_SHININESS, 0.0f); glTexEnvf( GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_MODULATE ); Light0: //with some magic sn't working anyway float l0_amb[] = { 0.2f, 0.2f, 0.2f, 1.0f }; float l0_dif[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float l0_spe[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float l0_pos[] = { g_Camera.m_vPosition.x, g_Camera.m_vPosition.y, g_Camera.m_vPosition.z, 1.0f }; float temp = 0.0f, temp2 = 0.0f, temp3 = 0.0f; if(g_Camera.m_vView.z < g_Camera.m_vPosition.z) { temp = g_Camera.m_vView.x - g_Camera.m_vPosition.x; temp2 = g_Camera.m_vView.z - g_Camera.m_vPosition.z; } else { temp = g_Camera.m_vView.x - g_Camera.m_vPosition.x; temp2 = g_Camera.m_vView.z - g_Camera.m_vPosition.z; } float l0_pos1[] = {temp, 0.0f, temp2}; //float l0_pos1[] = {-1.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f}; glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_AMBIENT, l0_amb); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_DIFFUSE, l0_dif); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_SPECULAR, l0_spe); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_POSITION, l0_pos); glLightf (GL_LIGHT0, GL_SPOT_CUTOFF, 15.0f); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_SPOT_DIRECTION, l0_pos1); Light1: float l1_amb[] = { 0.2f, 0.2f, 0.2f, 1.0f }; float l1_dif[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float l1_spe[] = { 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; float l1_pos[] = { 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f }; glLightfv(GL_LIGHT1, GL_AMBIENT, l1_amb); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT1, GL_DIFFUSE, l1_dif); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT1, GL_SPECULAR, l1_spe); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT1, GL_POSITION, l1_pos); I know that way I made this very old, but for now i want to keep this like that. I wouldbe realy gratefull if someone can tell me what is wrong with my lights xD full code: link up ^^

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• Texture errors in CubeMap

  - by shade4159

  I am trying to apply this texture as a cubemap. This is my result: Clearly I am doing something with my texture coordinates, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what. I don't even see a pattern to the texture fragments. They just seem like a jumble of different faces. Can anyone shed some light on this? Vertex shader: #version 400 in vec4 vPosition; in vec3 inTexCoord; smooth out vec3 texCoord; uniform mat4 projMatrix; void main() { texCoord = inTexCoord; gl_Position = projMatrix * vPosition; } My fragment shader: #version 400 smooth in vec3 texCoord; out vec4 fColor; uniform samplerCube textures void main() { fColor = texture(textures,texCoord); } Vertices of cube: point4 worldVerts[8] = { vec4( 15, 15, 15, 1 ), vec4( -15, 15, 15, 1 ), vec4( -15, 15, -15, 1 ), vec4( 15, 15, -15, 1 ), vec4( -15, -15, 15, 1 ), vec4( 15, -15, 15, 1 ), vec4( 15, -15, -15, 1 ), vec4( -15, -15, -15, 1 ) }; Cube rendering: void worldCube(point4* verts, int& Index, point4* points, vec3* texVerts) { quadInv( verts[0], verts[1], verts[2], verts[3], 1, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[6], verts[3], verts[2], verts[7], 2, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[4], verts[5], verts[6], verts[7], 3, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[4], verts[1], verts[0], verts[5], 4, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[5], verts[0], verts[3], verts[6], 5, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[4], verts[7], verts[2], verts[1], 6, Index, points, texVerts); } Backface function (since this is the inside of the cube): void quadInv( const point4& a, const point4& b, const point4& c, const point4& d , int& Index, point4* points, vec3* texVerts) { quad( a, d, c, b, Index, points, texVerts, a.to_3(), b.to_3(), c.to_3(), d.to_3()); } And the quad drawing function: void quad( const point4& a, const point4& b, const point4& c, const point4& d, int& Index, point4* points, vec3* texVerts, const vec3& tex_a, const vec3& tex_b, const vec3& tex_c, const vec3& tex_d) { texVerts[Index] = tex_a.normalized(); points[Index] = a; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_b.normalized(); points[Index] = b; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_c.normalized(); points[Index] = c; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_a.normalized(); points[Index] = a; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_c.normalized(); points[Index] = c; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_d.normalized(); points[Index] = d; Index++; } Edit: I forgot to mention, in the image, the camera is pointed directly at the back face of the cube. You can kind of see the diagonals leading out of the corners, if you squint.

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• Projective texture and deferred lighting

  - by Vodácek

  In my previous question, I asked whether it is possible to do projective texturing with deferred lighting. Now (more than half a year later) I have a problem with my implementation of the same thing. I am trying to apply this technique in light pass. (my projector doesn't affect albedo). I have this projector View a Projection matrix: Matrix projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(-halfWidth * Scale, halfWidth * Scale, -halfHeight * Scale, halfHeight * Scale, 1, 100000); Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(Position, Target, Vector3.Up); Where halfWidth and halfHeight is are half of the texture's width and height, Position is the Projector's position and target is the projector's target. This seems to be ok. I am drawing full screen quad with this shader: float4x4 InvViewProjection; texture2D DepthTexture; texture2D NormalTexture; texture2D ProjectorTexture; float4x4 ProjectorViewProjection; sampler2D depthSampler = sampler_state { texture = <DepthTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D normalSampler = sampler_state { texture = <NormalTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D projectorSampler = sampler_state { texture = <ProjectorTexture>; AddressU = Clamp; AddressV = Clamp; }; float viewportWidth; float viewportHeight; // Calculate the 2D screen position of a 3D position float2 postProjToScreen(float4 position) { float2 screenPos = position.xy / position.w; return 0.5f * (float2(screenPos.x, -screenPos.y) + 1); } // Calculate the size of one half of a pixel, to convert // between texels and pixels float2 halfPixel() { return 0.5f / float2(viewportWidth, viewportHeight); } struct VertexShaderInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; }; struct VertexShaderOutput { float4 Position :POSITION0; float4 PositionCopy : TEXCOORD1; }; VertexShaderOutput VertexShaderFunction(VertexShaderInput input) { VertexShaderOutput output; output.Position = input.Position; output.PositionCopy=output.Position; return output; } float4 PixelShaderFunction(VertexShaderOutput input) : COLOR0 { float2 texCoord =postProjToScreen(input.PositionCopy) + halfPixel(); // Extract the depth for this pixel from the depth map float4 depth = tex2D(depthSampler, texCoord); //return float4(depth.r,0,0,1); // Recreate the position with the UV coordinates and depth value float4 position; position.x = texCoord.x * 2 - 1; position.y = (1 - texCoord.y) * 2 - 1; position.z = depth.r; position.w = 1.0f; // Transform position from screen space to world space position = mul(position, InvViewProjection); position.xyz /= position.w; //compute projection float3 projection=tex2D(projectorSampler,postProjToScreen(mul(position,ProjectorViewProjection)) + halfPixel()); return float4(projection,1); } In first part of pixel shader is recovered position from G-buffer (this code I am using in other shaders without any problem) and then is tranformed to projector viewprojection space. Problem is that projection doesn't appear. Here is an image of my situation: The green lines are the rendered projector frustum. Where is my mistake hidden? I am using XNA 4. Thanks for advice and sorry for my English. EDIT: Shader above is working but projection was too small. When I changed the Scale property to a large value (e.g. 100), the projection appears. But when the camera moves toward the projection, the projection expands, as can bee seen on this YouTube video.

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• libgdx draw issue and animation

  - by johnny-b

  it seems as though i cannot get the draw method to work??? it seems as though the bullet.draw(batcher) does not work and i cannot understand why as the bullet is a sprite. i have made a Sprite[] and added them as animation. could that be it? i tried batcher.draw(AssetLoader.bulletAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), bullet.getX(), bullet.getY(), bullet.getOriginX() / 2, bullet.getOriginY() / 2, bullet.getWidth(), bullet.getHeight(), 1, 1, bullet.getRotation()); but that dont work, the only way it draws is this batcher.draw(AssetLoader.bulletAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), bullet.getX(), bullet.getY()); below is the code. // this is in a Asset Class texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("SpriteN1.png")); texture.setFilter(TextureFilter.Nearest, TextureFilter.Nearest); bullet1 = new Sprite(texture, 380, 350, 45, 20); bullet1.flip(false, true); bullet2 = new Sprite(texture, 425, 350, 45, 20); bullet2.flip(false, true); Sprite[] bullets = { bullet1, bullet2 }; bulletAnimation = new Animation(0.06f, bullets); bulletAnimation.setPlayMode(Animation.PlayMode.LOOP); // this is the GameRender class public class GameRender() { private Bullet bullet; private Ball ball; public GameRenderer(GameWorld world) { myWorld = world; cam = new OrthographicCamera(); cam.setToOrtho(true, 480, 320); batcher = new SpriteBatch(); // Attach batcher to camera batcher.setProjectionMatrix(cam.combined); shapeRenderer = new ShapeRenderer(); shapeRenderer.setProjectionMatrix(cam.combined); // Call helper methods to initialize instance variables initGameObjects(); initAssets(); } private void initGameObjects() { ball = GameWorld.getBall(); bullet = myWorld.getBullet(); scroller = myWorld.getScroller(); } private void initAssets() { ballAnimation = AssetLoader.ballAnimation; bulletAnimation = AssetLoader.bulletAnimation; } public void render(float runTime) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0, 0, 0, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL30.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); batcher.begin(); // Disable transparency // This is good for performance when drawing images that do not require // transparency. batcher.disableBlending(); // The ball needs transparency, so we enable that again. batcher.enableBlending(); batcher.draw(AssetLoader.ballAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), ball.getX(), ball.getY(), ball.getWidth(), ball.getHeight()); batcher.draw(AssetLoader.bulletAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), bullet.getX(), bullet.getY()); // End SpriteBatch batcher.end(); } } // this is the gameworld class public class GameWorld { public static Ball ball; private Bullet bullet; private ScrollHandler scroller; public GameWorld() { ball = new Ball(480, 273, 32, 32); bullet = new Bullet(10, 10); scroller = new ScrollHandler(0); } public void update(float delta) { ball.update(delta); bullet.update(delta); scroller.update(delta); } public static Ball getBall() { return ball; } public ScrollHandler getScroller() { return scroller; } public Bullet getBullet() { return bullet; } } is there anyway so make the sprite work?

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• How change LOD in geometry?

  - by ChaosDev

  Im looking for simple algorithm of LOD, for change geometry vertexes and decrease frame time. Im created octree, but now I want model or terrain vertex modify algorithm,not for increase(looking on tessellation later) but for decrease. I want something like this Questions: Is same algorithm can apply either to model and terrain correctly? Indexes need to be modified ? I must use octree or simple check distance between camera and object for desired effect ? New value of indexcount for DrawIndexed function needed ? Code: //m_LOD == 10 in the beginning //m_RawVerts - array of 3d Vector filled with values from vertex buffer. void DecreaseLOD() { m_LOD--; if(m_LOD<1)m_LOD=1; RebuildGeometry(); } void IncreaseLOD() { m_LOD++; if(m_LOD>10)m_LOD=10; RebuildGeometry(); } void RebuildGeometry() { void* vertexRawData = new byte[m_VertexBufferSize]; void* indexRawData = new DWORD[m_IndexCount]; auto context = mp_D3D->mp_Context; D3D11_MAPPED_SUBRESOURCE data; ZeroMemory(&data,sizeof(D3D11_MAPPED_SUBRESOURCE)); context->Map(mp_VertexBuffer->mp_buffer,0,D3D11_MAP_READ,0,&data); memcpy(vertexRawData,data.pData,m_VertexBufferSize); context->Unmap(mp_VertexBuffer->mp_buffer,0); context->Map(mp_IndexBuffer->mp_buffer,0,D3D11_MAP_READ,0,&data); memcpy(indexRawData,data.pData,m_IndexBufferSize); context->Unmap(mp_IndexBuffer->mp_buffer,0); DWORD* dwI = (DWORD*)indexRawData; int sz = (m_VertexStride/sizeof(float));//size of vertex element //algorithm must be here. std::vector<Vector3d> vertices; int i = 0; for(int j = 0; j < m_VertexCount; j++) { float x1 = (((float*)vertexRawData)[0+i]); float y1 = (((float*)vertexRawData)[1+i]); float z1 = (((float*)vertexRawData)[2+i]); Vector3d lv = Vector3d(x1,y1,z1); //my useless attempts if(j+m_LOD+1<m_RawVerts.size()) { float v1 = VECTORHELPER::Distance(m_RawVerts[dwI[j]],m_RawVerts[dwI[j+m_LOD]]); float v2 = VECTORHELPER::Distance(m_RawVerts[dwI[j]],m_RawVerts[dwI[j+m_LOD+1]]); if(v1>v2) lv = m_RawVerts[dwI[j+1]]; else if(v2<v1) lv = m_RawVerts[dwI[j+2]]; } (((float*)vertexRawData)[0+i]) = lv.x; (((float*)vertexRawData)[1+i]) = lv.y; (((float*)vertexRawData)[2+i]) = lv.z; i+=sz;//pass others vertex format values without change } for(int j = 0; j < m_IndexCount; j++) { //indices ? } //set vertexes to device UpdateVertexes(vertexRawData,mp_VertexBuffer->getSize()); delete[] vertexRawData; delete[] indexRawData; }

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• iOS 5 New Features vs Android

  - by kerry

  Browsing through the iOS 5 features list, I can’t help but notice a lot of it is catch up. Having owned both an iPhone and an Android for a considerable amount of time, I figured I would jot down my opinions. Notification Center – Completely ripped off from Android but looks good and is a much needed addition iMessage – This is very interesting as most people who would think it’s cool, probably really wouldn’t understand the significance.  Basically, Apple is adding an IM application to iOS.  Now iPhone / iPad users can sit around messaging each other how cool it is like Crackberry users circa 2003.  I guess the only real improvement over MMS is that you can easily setup groups, see when each other are typing, and don’t incur text messaging charges; at the expense of leaving your non-iOS buddies out (who wants to talk to those losers anyways?). Newstand – An app update and not an OS one (Apple typically doesn’t make distinctions).  It all seems like stuff my current Nook stuff will do.  Note: I did look to compare prices but it seems that information is not available without downloading iTunes.  lame. Reminders – TODO lists are ho hum, but the ability to have reminders when you arrive or leave a position is pretty cool. Twitter integration – The fact that the best Apple can come up with is ‘one at a timing’ online service integration is laughable at best. Camera – Can control it from the lock screen.  Now you’ll have tons of pocket lint photos in your iCloud to go along with the wicked shot of that cheetah that just unexpectedly ran by your apartment. Photos – Speaking of iCloud, all of your devices photos will be synced through it.  That’s cool I guess, not sure if Android will do the same. Safari – What?  You haven’t been reading rss feeds on your device this whole time?  Something tells me you aren’t about to start. PC Free – Finely Apple untethers the iPhone.  What took them so long? Game Center – This should be an interesting service.  Attention Apple fanboys immediately forget how they are blatantly copying Microsoft achievements (at least rename them). Wifi Sync – Just couldn’t cut the cord completely could they?  For what it’s worth, the Zune has been doing this for 5 years now. All in all a pretty big update.  Mostly iCloud.  Mostly keeping up the mobile status quo.  As an Android user, I can’t say there is anything I am envious of.

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• Why RenderTarget2D overwrites other objects when trying to put some text in a model?

  - by cad

  I am trying to draw an object composited by two cubes (A & B) (one on top of the other, but for now I have them a little bit more open). I am able to do it and this is the result. (Cube A is the blue and Cube B is the one with brown text that comes from a png texture) But I want to have any text as parameter in the cube B. I have tried what @alecnash suggested in his question, but for some reason when I try to draw cube B, cube A dissapears and everything turns purple. This is my draw code: public void Draw(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice, SpriteBatch spriteBatch, Matrix viewMatrix, Matrix projectionMatrix) { graphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; graphicsDevice.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default; graphicsDevice.RasterizerState = RasterizerState.CullCounterClockwise; graphicsDevice.SamplerStates[0] = SamplerState.LinearClamp; // CUBE A basicEffect.View = viewMatrix; basicEffect.Projection = projectionMatrix; basicEffect.World = Matrix.CreateTranslation(ModelPosition); basicEffect.VertexColorEnabled = true; foreach (EffectPass pass in basicEffect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); drawCUBE_TOP(graphicsDevice); drawCUBE_Floor(graphicsDevice); DrawFullSquareStripesFront(graphicsDevice, _numStrips, Color.Red, Color.Blue, _levelPercentage); DrawFullSquareStripesLeft(graphicsDevice, _numStrips, Color.Red, Color.Blue, _levelPercentage); DrawFullSquareStripesRight(graphicsDevice, _numStrips, Color.Red, Color.Blue, _levelPercentage); DrawFullSquareStripesBack(graphicsDevice, _numStrips, Color.Red, Color.Blue, _levelPercentage); } // CUBE B // Set the World matrix which defines the position of the cube texturedCubeEffect.World = Matrix.CreateTranslation(ModelPosition); // Set the View matrix which defines the camera and what it's looking at texturedCubeEffect.View = viewMatrix; // Set the Projection matrix which defines how we see the scene (Field of view) texturedCubeEffect.Projection = projectionMatrix; // Enable textures on the Cube Effect. this is necessary to texture the model texturedCubeEffect.TextureEnabled = true; Texture2D a = SpriteFontTextToTexture(graphicsDevice, spriteBatch, arialFont, "TEST ", Color.Black, Color.GhostWhite); texturedCubeEffect.Texture = a; //texturedCubeEffect.Texture = cubeTexture; // Enable some pretty lights texturedCubeEffect.EnableDefaultLighting(); // apply the effect and render the cube foreach (EffectPass pass in texturedCubeEffect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); cubeToDraw.RenderToDevice(graphicsDevice); } } private Texture2D SpriteFontTextToTexture(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice, SpriteBatch spriteBatch, SpriteFont font, string text, Color backgroundColor, Color textColor) { Vector2 Size = font.MeasureString(text); RenderTarget2D renderTarget = new RenderTarget2D(graphicsDevice, (int)Size.X, (int)Size.Y); graphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(renderTarget); graphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); spriteBatch.Begin(); //have to redo the ColorTexture //spriteBatch.Draw(ColorTexture.Create(graphicsDevice, 1024, 1024, backgroundColor), Vector2.Zero, Color.White); spriteBatch.DrawString(font, text, Vector2.Zero, textColor); spriteBatch.End(); graphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(null); return renderTarget; } The way I generate texture with dynamic text is: Texture2D a = SpriteFontTextToTexture(graphicsDevice, spriteBatch, arialFont, "TEST ", Color.Black, Color.GhostWhite); After commenting several parts to see what caused the problem, it seems to be located in this line graphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(renderTarget);

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• DirectX particle system. ConstantBuffer

  - by Liuka

  I'm new in DirectX and I'm making a 2D game. I want to use a particle system to simulate a 3D starfield, so each star has to set its own constant buffer for the vertexshader es. to set it's world matrix. So if i have 500 stars (that move every frame) i need to call 500 times VSsetconstantbuffer, and map/unmap each buffer. with 500 stars i have an average of 220 fps and that's quite good. My bottelneck is Vs/PsSetconstantbuffer. If i dont call this function i have 400 fps(obliviously nothing is display, since i dont set the position of the stars). So is there a method to speed up the render of the particle system?? Ps. I'm using intel integrate graphic (hd 2000-3000). with a nvidia (or amd) gpu will i have the same bottleneck?? If, for example, i dont call setshaderresource i have 10-20 fps more (for 500 objcets), that is not 180.Why does SetConstantBuffer take so long?? LPVOID VSdataPtr = VSmappedResource.pData; memcpy(VSdataPtr, VSdata, CszVSdata); context->Unmap(VertexBuffer, 0); result = context->Map(PixelBuffer, 0, D3D11_MAP_WRITE_DISCARD, 0, &PSmappedResource); if (FAILED(result)) { outputResult.OutputErrorMessage(TITLE, L"Cannot map the PixelBuffer", &result, OUTPUT_ERROR_FILE); return; } LPVOID PSdataPtr = PSmappedResource.pData; memcpy(PSdataPtr, PSdata, CszPSdata); context->Unmap(PixelBuffer, 0); context->VSSetConstantBuffers(0, 1, &VertexBuffer); context->PSSetConstantBuffers(0, 1, &PixelBuffer); this update and set the buffer. It's part of the render method of a sprite class that contains a the vertex buffer and the texture to apply to the quads(it's a 2d game) too. I have an array of 500 stars (sprite setup with a star texture). Every frame: clear back buffer; draw the array of stars; present the backbuffer; draw also call the function update( which calculate the position of the sprite on screen based on a "camera class") Ok, create a vertex buffer with the vertices of each quads(stars) seems to be good, since the stars don't change their "virtual" position; so.... In a particle system (where particles move) it's better to have all the object in only one vertices array, rather then an array of different sprite/object in order to update all the vertices' position with a single setbuffer call. In this case i have to use a dynamic vertex buffer with the vertices positions like this: verticesForQuad={{ XMFLOAT3((float)halfDImensions.x-1+pos.x, (float)halfDImensions.y-1+pos.y, 1.0f), XMFLOAT2(1.0f, 0.0f) }, { XMFLOAT3((float)halfDImensions.x-1+pos.x, -(float)halfDImensions.y-1+pos.y, 1.0f), XMFLOAT2(1.0f, 1.0f) }, { XMFLOAT3(-(float)halfDImensions.x-1+pos.x, (float)halfDImensions.y-1.pos.y, 1.0f), XMFLOAT2(0.0f, 0.0f) }, { XMFLOAT3(-(float)halfDImensions.x-1.pos.x, -(float)halfDImensions.y-1+pos.y, 1.0f), XMFLOAT2(0.0f, 1.0f) }, ....other quads} where halfDimensions is the halfsize in pixel of a texture and pos the virtual position of a star. than create an array of verticesForQuad and create the vertex buffer ZeroMemory(&vertexDesc, sizeof(vertexDesc)); vertexDesc.Usage = D3D11_USAGE_DEFAULT; vertexDesc.BindFlags = D3D11_BIND_VERTEX_BUFFER; vertexDesc.ByteWidth = sizeof(VertexType)* 4*numStars; ZeroMemory(&resourceData, sizeof(resourceData)); resourceData.pSysMem = verticesForQuad; result = device->CreateBuffer(&vertexDesc, &resourceData, &CvertexBuffer); and call each frame Context->IASetVertexBuffers(0, 1, &CvertexBuffer, &stride, &offset); But if i want to add and remove obj i have to recreate the buffer each time, havent i?? There is a faster way? I think i can create a vertex buffer with a max size (es. 10000 objs) and when i update it set only the 250 position (for 250 onjs for example) and pass this number as the vertexCount to the draw function (numObjs*4), or i'm worng

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