Search Results

Search found 3087 results on 124 pages for 'subpixel rendering'.

Page 96/124 | < Previous Page | 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103  | Next Page >

• Guest (and occasional co-host) on Jesse Liberty's Yet Another Podcast

  - by Jon Galloway

  I was a recent guest on Jesse Liberty's Yet Another Podcast talking about the latest Visual Studio, ASP.NET and Azure releases. Download / Listen: Yet Another Podcast #75–Jon Galloway on ASP.NET/ MVC/ Azure Co-hosted shows: Jesse's been inviting me to co-host shows and I told him I'd show up when I was available. It's a nice change to be a drive-by co-host on a show (compared with the work that goes into organizing / editing / typing show notes for Herding Code shows). My main focus is on Herding Code, but it's nice to pop in and talk to Jesse's excellent guests when it works out. Some shows I've co-hosted over the past year: Yet Another Podcast #76–Glenn Block on Node.js & Technology in China Yet Another Podcast  #73 - Adam Kinney on developing for Windows 8 with HTML5 Yet Another Podcast #64 - John Papa & Javascript Yet Another Podcast #60 - Steve Sanderson and John Papa on Knockout.js Yet Another Podcast #54–Damian Edwards on ASP.NET Yet Another Podcast #53–Scott Hanselman on Blogging Yet Another Podcast #52–Peter Torr on Windows Phone Multitasking Yet Another Podcast #51–Shawn Wildermuth: //build, Xaml Programming & Beyond And some more on the way that haven't been released yet. Some of these I'm pretty quiet, on others I get wacky and hassle the guests because, hey, not my podcast so not my problem. Show notes from the ASP.NET / MVC / Azure show: What was just released Visual Studio 2012 Web Developer features ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms Strongly Typed data controls Data access via command methods Similar Binding syntax to ASP.NET MVC Some context: Damian Edwards and WebFormsMVP Two questions from Jesse: Q: Are you making this harder or more complicated for Web Forms developers? Short answer: Nothing's removed, it's just a new option History of SqlDataSource, ObjectDataSource Q: If I'm using some MVC patterns, why not just move to MVC? Short answer: This works really well in hybrid applications, doesn't require a rewrite Allows sharing models, validation, other code between Web Forms and MVC ASP.NET MVC Adaptive Rendering (oh, also, this is in Web Forms 4.5 as well) Display Modes Mobile project template using jQuery Mobile OAuth login to allow Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc. login Jon (and friends') MVC 4 book on the way: Professional ASP.NET MVC 4 Windows 8 development Jesse and Jon announce they're working on a new book: Pro Windows 8 Development with XAML and C# Jon and Jesse agree that it's nice to be able to write Windows 8 applications using the same skills they picked up for Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone development. Compare / contrast ASP.NET MVC and Windows 8 development Q: Does ASP.NET and HTML5 development overlap? Jon thinks they overlap in the MVC world because you're writing HTML views without controls Jon describes how his web development career moved from a preoccupation with server code to a focus on user interaction, which occurs in the browser Jon mentions his NDC Oslo presentation on Learning To Love HTML as Beautiful Code Q: How do you apply C# / XAML or HTML5 skills to Windows 8 development? Q: If I'm a XAML programmer, what's the learning curve on getting up to speed on ASP.NET MVC? Jon describes the difference in application lifecycle and state management Jon says it's nice that web development is really interactive compared to application development Q: Can you learn MVC by reading a book? Or is it a lot bigger than that? What is Azure, and why would I use it? Jon describes the traditional Azure platform mode and how Azure Web Sites fits in Q: Why wouldn't Jesse host his blog on Azure Web Sites? Domain names on Azure Web Sites File hosting options Q: Is Azure just another host? How is it different from any of the other shared hosting options? A: Azure gives you the ability to scale up or down whenever you want A: Other services are available if or when you want them

  Read the article

• WEB203 &ndash; Jump into Silverlight!&hellip; and Become Effective Immediately with Tim Huckaby, Fou

  - by Robert Burger

  Getting ready for the good stuff. Definitely wish there were more Silverlight and WCF RIA sessions, but this is a start.  Was lucky to get a coveted power-enabled seat.  Luckily, due to my trustily slow Verizon data card, I can get these notes out amidst a total Internet outage here.  This is the second breakout session of the day, and is by far standing-room only.  I stepped out before the session started to get a cool Diet COKE and wouldn’t have gotten back in if I didn’t already have a seat. Tim says this is an intro session and that he’s been begging for intro sessions at TechEd for years and that by looking at this audience, he thinks the demand is there.  Admittedly, I didn’t know this was an intro session, or I might have gone elsewhere.  But, it was the very first Silverlight session, so I had to be here. Tim says he will be providing a very good comprehensive reference application at the end of the presentation.  He has just demoed it, and it is a full CRUD-based Sales Manager application based on…  AdventureWorks! Session Agenda What it is / How to get started Declarative Programming Layout and Controls, Events and Commands Working with Data Adding Style to Your Application   Silverlight…  “WPF Light” Why is the download 4.2MB?  Because the direct competitor is a 4.2MB download.  There is no technical reason it is not the entire framework.  It is purely to “be competitive”.   Getting Started Get all of the following downloads from www.silverlight.net/getstarted Install VS2010 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 Install Silverlight 4 Tools for VS2010 Install Expression Blend 4 Install the Silverlight 4 Toolkit   Reference Application Features Uses MVVM pattern – a way to move data access code that would normally be inline within the UI and placing it in nice data access libraries Images loaded dynamically from the database, converting GIF to PNG because Silverlight does not support GIF. LINQ to SQL is the data access model WCF is the data provider and is using binary message encoding   Declarative Programming XAML replaces code for UI representation Attributes control Layout and Style Event handlers wired-up in XAML Declarative Data Binding   Layout Overview Content rendering flows inside of parent Fixed positioning (Canvas) is seldom used Panels are used to house content Margins and Padding over fixed size   Panels StackPanel – Arranges child elements into a single line oriented horizontally or vertically Grid – A flexible grid are that consists of rows and columns Canvas – An are where positions are specifically fixed WrapPanel (in Toolkit) – Positions child elements in sequential position left to right and top to bottom. DockPanel (in Toolkit) – Positions child controls within a dockable area   Positioning Horizontal and Vertical Alignment Margin – Separates an element from neighboring elements Padding – Enlarges the effective size of an element by a thickness   Controls Overview Not all controls created equal Silverlight, as a subset of WPF, so many WPF controls do not exist in the core Siverlight release Silverlight Toolkit continues to add controls, but are released in different quality bands Plenty of good 3rd party controls to fill the gaps Windows Phone 7 is to have 95% of controls available in Silverlight Core and Toolkit.   Events and Commands Standard .NET Events Routed Events Commands – based on the ICommand interface – logical action that can be invoked in several ways   Adding Style to Your Application Resource Dictionaries – Contains a hash table of key/value pairs.  Silverlight can only use Static Resources whereas WPF can also use Dynamic Resources Visual State Manager Silverlight 4 supports Implicit styles ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries combines many different file-based resources   Downloads

  Read the article

• Tips to Make Your Website Cell Phone Friendly

  - by Aditi

  Working on a new website design? or Redesigning your website? There is a lot more to consider now a days not just user experience, clean code, CSS etc. one of the important attribute one must not miss, which is making them mobile friendly! With the growing use of handhelds & unlimited data plans, people browse on their cellphones! and All come in different sizes! it is tough to make a website that would look great not just on a high resolution widescreen monitor/LCD, but also should look equally impressive on the low resolutions of cellphones. We are today going to discuss about such factors that can help you make a website Cellphone Friendly. Fluid Width Layouts As we start discussing about this, Most people speak of the Fluid Width Layouts as vital step in moving your website to be mobile friendly. Fluid width allows the width of your website stretch or shrink depending on the browser size. However, having a layout which flows with the width of the screen’s resolution is certainly convenient, more often than not the website was originally laid out for a desktop in mind. Compressing a fluid layout to 320 pixels can do some serious damage to layout, Thus some people strongly believe it is far better to have a mobile style sheet and lay out the content specifically for that screen and have more control on the display. The best thing to do is to detect the type of platform that is connected to your website and disabling or changing some tools and effects to make it look better if not perfect. Keep Your Web Pages Short length One must avoid long pages on their website, a lot of scroll makes it very non user friendly for people, especially on mobile devices this is a huge draw back because of the longer load time it takes to download the webpage. Everyone likes crisp & concise content such pages are easier to load & browse. This makes your website accessible across all platforms. Also try to keep shorter urls, if they have to type..save them from that much work especially if someone is using a cellphone with no QWERTY keyboard it can be tough. Usable Navigation & Search Unlike Desktops, your website’s Navigation won’t super work on a cellphone. Keep in mind the user experience for cellphone users as you design your Navigation. Try to keep your content centered as they do have difficulty in reading the webpage. I always look upto Google and their pages as available on mobile as a great example. Keeping a functional & very visible search bar helps mobile users navigate by searching. Understanding Clean Website Code : Evolved for Mobile Clean code is important when you consider the diversity out there for handheld devices. Some cell phones may only understand WAP. More capable phones may understand WAP2, which allows rendering websites with XHTML and CSS. Most mobiles won’t display tables, floats, frames, JavaScript, and dynamic menus. Most cellphone will not support cookies. Devices at the high end of the mobile market such as BlackBerry, Palm, or the upcoming iPhone are highly capable and support nearly as much as a standard computer..but masses still do not have such phones. You can use specific emulators to test your website on mobile devices. Make sure your color combinations provide good contrast between foreground and background colors, particularly for devices with fewer color options.

  Read the article

• Anatomy of a serialization killer

  - by Brian Donahue

  As I had mentioned last month, I have been working on a project to create an easy-to-use managed debugger. It's still an internal tool that we use at Red Gate as part of product support to analyze application errors on customer's computers, and as such, should be easy to use and not require installation. Since the project has got rather large and important, I had decided to use SmartAssembly to protect all of my hard work. This was trivial for the most part, but the loading and saving of results was broken by SA after using the obfuscation, rendering the loading and saving of XML results basically useless, although the merging and error reporting was an absolute godsend and definitely worth the price of admission. (Well, I get my Red Gate licenses for free, but you know what I mean!)My initial reaction was to simply exclude the serializable results class and all of its' members from obfuscation, and that was just dandy, but a few weeks on I decided to look into exactly why serialization had broken and change the code to work with SA so I could write any new code to be compatible with SmartAssembly and save me some additional testing and changes to the SA project.In simple terms, SA does all that it can to prevent serialization problems, for instance, it will not obfuscate public members of a DLL and it will exclude any types with the Serializable attribute from obfuscation. This prevents public members and properties from being made private and having the name changed. If the serialization is done inside the executable, however, public members have the access changed to private and are renamed. That was my first problem, because my types were in the executable assembly and implemented ISerializable, but did not have the Serializable attribute set on them!public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {        }The second problem caused by the pruning feature. Although RedFlagResults had public members, they were not truly properties, and used the GetObjectData() method of ISerializable to serialize the members. For that reason, SA could not exclude these members from pruning and further broke the serialization. public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions;                 #region ISerializable Members                 public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)                {                                info.AddValue("Exceptions", Exceptions);                }                 #endregionSo to fix this, it was necessary to make Exceptions a proper property by implementing get and set on it. Also, I added the Serializable attribute so that I don't have to exclude the class from obfuscation in the SA project any more. The DoNotPrune attribute means I do not need to exclude the class from pruning.[Serializable, SmartAssembly.Attributes.DoNotPrune]        public class RedFlagResults        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions {get;set;}        }Similarly, the Exception class gets the Serializable and DoNotPrune attributes applied so all of its' properties are excluded from obfuscation.Now my project has some protection from prying eyes by scrambling up the code so it's harder to reverse-engineer, without breaking anything. SmartAssembly has also provided the benefit of merging so that the end-user doesn't need to extract all of the DLL files needed by RedFlag into a directory, and can be run directly from the .zip archive. When an error occurs (hey, I'm only human!), an exception report can be sent to me so I can see what went wrong without having to, er, debug the debugger.

  Read the article

• RTL (Arabic and Hebrew) Support for Windows Phone 7

  - by Daniel Moth

  Problem and Background Currently there is no support for Right-To-Left rendering in Windows Phone 7, when developing with Silverlight (itself built on .NET Compact Framework). When I encountered that limitation, I had a flashback to 2005 when I complained about the luck of RTL on NETCF. Unfortunately, the partial solution I proposed back then requires PInvoke and there is no such support on Windows Phone today. Fortunately, my RTL requirements this time were more modest: all I wanted to do was display correctly a translation (of Hebrew or Arabic) in my FREE WP7 translator app. For v1.0 of the app, the code received a string from the service and just put it up on the screen as the translated text. In Arabic and Hebrew, that string (incorrectly) appeared reversed. I knew that, but decided that since it is a platform limitation, I could live with it and so could the users. Yuval P, a colleague at Microsoft, pushed me to offer support for Hebrew (something that I wasn't motivated to pursue if I am honest). After many back and forths, we landed on some code that works. It is certainly not the most efficient code (quite the opposite), but it works and met the bar of minimum effort for v1.1. Thanks Yuval for insisting and contributing most of the code! After Hebrew support was there, I thought the same solution would work for Arabic. Apparently, reversing the Arabic text is not enough: Arabic characters render themselves differently dependent on what preceded/succeeds them(!). So I needed some kind of utility that takes a reversed Arabic string and returns the same string but with the relevant characters "fixed". Luckily, another MS colleague has put out such a library (thanks Bashar): http://arabic4wp7.codeplex.com/. RTL Solution So you have a reversed RTL string and want to make it "right" before displaying on the screen. This is what worked for me (ymmv). Need to split the string into "lines". Not doing this and just reversing the string and sticking it a wrapping text control means that the user not only has to read right to left, they also have to read bottom up. The previous step must take into account a line length that works for both portrait and landscape modes, and of course, not break words in the middle, i.e. find natural breaks. For each line, break it up into words and reverse the order of the words and the order of the letters within each word On the previous step, do not reverse words that should be preserved, e.g. Windows and other such English words that are mixed in with the Arabic or Hebrew words. The same exclusion from reversal applies to numbers. Specifically, for Arabic, once there is a word that is reversed also change its characters. For some code paths, the above has to take into account whether the translation is "from" an RTL language or if it is "to" an RTL language. I packaged the solution in a single code file containing a static class (see the 'Background" section above for… background and credits). Download RTL.cs for your Windows Phone app (to see its usage in action download for FREE "The best translator app") Enjoy, and if you decide to improve on the code, feel free to share back with me… Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

  Read the article

• glsl shader to allow color change of skydome ogre3d

  - by Tim

  I'm still very new to all this but learning a lot. I'm putting together an application using Ogre3d as the rendering engine. So far I've got it running, with a simple scene, a day/night cycle system which is working okay. I'm now moving on to looking at changing the color of the skydome material based on the time of day. What I've done so far is to create a struct to hold the ColourValues for the different aspects of the scene. struct todColors { Ogre::ColourValue sky; Ogre::ColourValue ambient; Ogre::ColourValue sun; }; I created an array to store all the colours todColors sceneColours [4]; I populated the array with the colours I want to use for the various times of the day. For instance DayTime (when the sun is high in the sky) sceneColours[2].sky = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); sceneColours[2].ambient = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); sceneColours[2].sun = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); I've got code to work out the time of the day using a float currentHours to store the current hour of the day 10.5 = 10:30 am. This updates constantly and updates the sun as required. I am then calculating the appropriate colours for the time of day when relevant using else if( currentHour >= 4 && currentHour < 7) { // Lerp from night to morning Ogre::ColourValue lerp = Ogre::Math::lerp<Ogre::ColourValue, float>(sceneColours[GT_TOD_NIGHT].sky , sceneColours[GT_TOD_MORNING].sky, (currentHour - 4) / (7 - 4)); } My original attempt to get this to work was to dynamically generate a material with the new colour and apply that material to the skydome. This, as you can probably guess... didn't go well. I know it's possible to use shaders where you can pass information such as colour to the shader from the code but I am unsure if there is an existing simple shader to change a colour like this or if I need to create one. What is involved in creating a shader and material definition that would allow me to change the colour of a material without the overheads of dynamically generating materials all the time? EDIT : I've created a glsl vertex and fragment shaders as follows. Vertex uniform vec4 newColor; void main() { gl_FrontColor = newColor; gl_Position = ftransform(); } Fragment void main() { gl_FragColor = gl_Color; } I can pass a colour to it using ShaderDesigner and it seems to work. I now need to investigate how to use it within Ogre as a material. EDIT : I created a material file like this : vertex_program colour_vs_test glsl { source test.vert default_params { param_named newColor float4 0.0 0.0 0.0 1 } } fragment_program colour_fs_glsl glsl { source test.frag } material Test/SkyColor { technique { pass { lighting off fragment_program_ref colour_fs_glsl { } vertex_program_ref colour_vs_test { } } } } In the code I have tried : Ogre::MaterialPtr material = Ogre::MaterialManager::getSingleton().getByName("Test/SkyColor"); Ogre::GpuProgramParametersSharedPtr params = material->getTechnique(0)->getPass(0)->getVertexProgramParameters(); params->setNamedConstant("newcolor", Ogre::Vector4(0.7, 0.5, 0.3, 1)); I've set that as the Skydome material which seems to work initially. I am doing the same with the code that is attempting to lerp between colours, but when I include it there, it all goes black. Seems like there is now a problem with my colour lerping.

  Read the article

• LibGDX Box2D Body and Sprite AND DebugRenderer out of sync

  - by Free Lancer

  I am having a couple issues with Box2D bodies. I have a GameObject holding a Sprite and Body. I use a ShapeRenderer to draw an outline of the Body's and Sprite's bounding boxes. I also added a Box2DDebugRenderer to make sure everything's lining up properly. My problem is the Sprite and Body at first overlap perfectly, but as I turn the Body moves a bit off the sprite then comes back when the Car is facing either North or South. Here's an image of what I mean: (Not sure what that line is, first time to show up) BLUE is the Body, RED is the Sprite, PURPLE is the Box2DDebugRenderer. Also, you probably noticed a purple square in the top right corner. Well that's the Car drawn by the Box2D Debug Renderer. I thought it might be the camera but I've been playing with the Cameras for hours and nothing seems to work. All give me weird results. Here's my code: Screen: public void show() { // --------------------- SETUP ALL THE CAMERA STUFF ------------------------------ // battleStage = new Stage( 720, 480, false ); // Setup the camera. In Box2D we operate on a meter scale, pixels won't do it. So we use // an Orthographic camera with a Viewport of 24 meters in width and 16 meters in height. battleStage.setCamera( new OrthographicCamera( CAM_METER_WIDTH, CAM_METER_HEIGHT ) ); battleStage.getCamera().position.set( CAM_METER_WIDTH / 2, CAM_METER_HEIGHT / 2, 0 ); // The Box2D Debug Renderer will handle rendering all physics objects for debugging debugger = new Box2DDebugRenderer( true, true, true, true ); //debugCam = new OrthographicCamera( CAM_METER_WIDTH, CAM_METER_HEIGHT ); } public void render(float delta) { // Update the Physics World, use 1/45 for something around 45 Frames/Second for mobile devices physicsWorld.step( 1/45.0f, 8, 3 ); // 1/45 for devices // Set the Camera matrices and clear the screen Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); battleStage.getCamera().update(); // Draw game objects here battleStage.act(delta); battleStage.draw(); // Again update the Camera matrices and call the debug renderer debugCam.update(); debugger.render( physicsWorld, debugCam.combined); // Vehicle handles its own interaction with the HUD // update all Actors movements in the game Stage hudStage.act( delta ); // Draw each Actor onto the Scene at their new positions hudStage.draw(); } Car: (extends Actor) public Car( Texture texture, float posX, float posY, World world ) { super( "Car" ); mSprite = new Sprite( texture ); mSprite.setSize( WIDTH * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, HEIGHT * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); mSprite.setOrigin( mSprite.getWidth()/2, mSprite.getHeight()/2); // set the origin to be at the center of the body mSprite.setPosition( posX * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, posY * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); // place the car in the center of the game map FixtureDef carFixtureDef = new FixtureDef(); mBody = Physics.createBoxBody( BodyType.DynamicBody, carFixtureDef, mSprite ); } public void draw() { mSprite.setPosition( mBody.getPosition().x * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, mBody.getPosition().y * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); mSprite.setRotation( MathUtils.radiansToDegrees * mBody.getAngle() ); // draw the sprite mSprite.draw( batch ); } Physics: (Create the Body) public static Body createBoxBody( final BodyType pBodyType, final FixtureDef pFixtureDef, Sprite pSprite ) { float pRotation = 0; float pWidth = pSprite.getWidth(); float pHeight = pSprite.getHeight(); final BodyDef boxBodyDef = new BodyDef(); boxBodyDef.type = pBodyType; boxBodyDef.position.x = pSprite.getX() / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; boxBodyDef.position.y = pSprite.getY() / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; // Temporary Box shape of the Body final PolygonShape boxPoly = new PolygonShape(); final float halfWidth = pWidth * 0.5f / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; final float halfHeight = pHeight * 0.5f / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; boxPoly.setAsBox( halfWidth, halfHeight ); // set the anchor point to be the center of the sprite pFixtureDef.shape = boxPoly; final Body boxBody = BattleScreen.getPhysicsWorld().createBody(boxBodyDef); boxBody.createFixture(pFixtureDef); } Sorry for all the code and long description but it's hard to pin down what exactly might be causing the problem.

  Read the article

• about the JOGL 2 problem

  - by Chuchinyi

  Please some help me about the JOGL 2 problem(Sorry for previous error format). I complied JOGL2Template.java ok. but execut it with following error. D:\java\java\jogl>javac JOGL2Template.java <== compile ok D:\java\java\jogl>java JOGL2Template <== execute error Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError at javax.media.opengl.GLProfile.<clinit>(GLProfile.java:1176) at JOGL2Template.<init>(JOGL2Template.java:24) at JOGL2Template.main(JOGL2Template.java:57) Caused by: java.lang.SecurityException: no certificate for gluegen-rt.dll in D:\ java\lib\gluegen-rt-natives-windows-i586.jar at com.jogamp.common.util.JarUtil.validateCertificate(JarUtil.java:350) at com.jogamp.common.util.JarUtil.validateCertificates(JarUtil.java:324) at com.jogamp.common.util.cache.TempJarCache.validateCertificates(TempJa rCache.java:328) at com.jogamp.common.util.cache.TempJarCache.bootstrapNativeLib(TempJarC ache.java:283) at com.jogamp.common.os.Platform$3.run(Platform.java:308) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at com.jogamp.common.os.Platform.loadGlueGenRTImpl(Platform.java:298) at com.jogamp.common.os.Platform.<clinit>(Platform.java:207) ... 3 more there is JOGL2Template.java source code: import java.awt.Dimension; import java.awt.Frame; import java.awt.event.WindowAdapter; import java.awt.event.WindowEvent; import javax.media.opengl.GLAutoDrawable; import javax.media.opengl.GLCapabilities; import javax.media.opengl.GLEventListener; import javax.media.opengl.GLProfile; import javax.media.opengl.awt.GLCanvas; import com.jogamp.opengl.util.FPSAnimator; import javax.swing.JFrame; /* * JOGL 2.0 Program Template For AWT applications */ public class JOGL2Template extends JFrame implements GLEventListener { private static final int CANVAS_WIDTH = 640; // Width of the drawable private static final int CANVAS_HEIGHT = 480; // Height of the drawable private static final int FPS = 60; // Animator's target frames per second // Constructor to create profile, caps, drawable, animator, and initialize Frame public JOGL2Template() { // Get the default OpenGL profile that best reflect your running platform. GLProfile glp = GLProfile.getDefault(); // Specifies a set of OpenGL capabilities, based on your profile. GLCapabilities caps = new GLCapabilities(glp); // Allocate a GLDrawable, based on your OpenGL capabilities. GLCanvas canvas = new GLCanvas(caps); canvas.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(CANVAS_WIDTH, CANVAS_HEIGHT)); canvas.addGLEventListener(this); // Create a animator that drives canvas' display() at 60 fps. final FPSAnimator animator = new FPSAnimator(canvas, FPS); addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() { // For the close button @Override public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) { // Use a dedicate thread to run the stop() to ensure that the // animator stops before program exits. new Thread() { @Override public void run() { animator.stop(); System.exit(0); } }.start(); } }); add(canvas); pack(); setTitle("OpenGL 2 Test"); setVisible(true); animator.start(); // Start the animator } public static void main(String[] args) { new JOGL2Template(); } @Override public void init(GLAutoDrawable drawable) { // Your OpenGL codes to perform one-time initialization tasks // such as setting up of lights and display lists. } @Override public void display(GLAutoDrawable drawable) { // Your OpenGL graphic rendering codes for each refresh. } @Override public void reshape(GLAutoDrawable drawable, int x, int y, int w, int h) { // Your OpenGL codes to set up the view port, projection mode and view volume. } @Override public void dispose(GLAutoDrawable drawable) { // Hardly used. } }

  Read the article

• How the "migrations" approach makes database continuous integration possible

  - by David Atkinson

  Testing a database upgrade script as part of a continuous integration process will only work if there is an easy way to automate the generation of the upgrade scripts. There are two common approaches to managing upgrade scripts. The first is to maintain a set of scripts as-you-go-along. Many SQL developers I've encountered will store these in a folder prefixed numerically to ensure they are ordered as they are intended to be run. Occasionally there is an accompanying document or a batch file that ensures that the scripts are run in the defined order. Writing these scripts during the course of development requires discipline. It's all too easy to load up the table designer and to make a change directly to the development database, rather than to save off the ALTER statement that is required when the same change is made to production. This discipline can add considerable overhead to the development process. However, come the end of the project, everything is ready for final testing and deployment. The second development paradigm is to not do the above. Changes are made to the development database without considering the incremental update scripts required to effect the changes. At the end of the project, the SQL developer or DBA, is tasked to work out what changes have been made, and to hand-craft the upgrade scripts retrospectively. The end of the project is the wrong time to be doing this, as the pressure is mounting to ship the product. And where data deployment is involved, it is prudent not to feel rushed. Schema comparison tools such as SQL Compare have made this latter technique more bearable. These tools work by analyzing the before and after states of a database schema, and calculating the SQL required to transition the database. Problem solved? Not entirely. Schema comparison tools are huge time savers, but they have their limitations. There are certain changes that can be made to a database that can't be determined purely from observing the static schema states. If a column is split, how do we determine the algorithm required to copy the data into the new columns? If a NOT NULL column is added without a default, how do we populate the new field for existing records in the target? If we rename a table, how do we know we've done a rename, as we could equally have dropped a table and created a new one? All the above are examples of situations where developer intent is required to supplement the script generation engine. SQL Source Control 3 and SQL Compare 10 introduced a new feature, migration scripts, allowing developers to add custom scripts to replace the default script generation behavior. These scripts are committed to source control alongside the schema changes, and are associated with one or more changesets. Before this capability was introduced, any schema change that required additional developer intent would break any attempt at auto-generation of the upgrade script, rendering deployment testing as part of continuous integration useless. SQL Compare will now generate upgrade scripts not only using its diffing engine, but also using the knowledge supplied by developers in the guise of migration scripts. In future posts I will describe the necessary command line syntax to leverage this feature as part of an automated build process such as continuous integration.

  Read the article

• How to mix textures in DirectX?

  - by tobsen

  I am new to DirectX development and I am wondering if I am taking the wrong route to achieve the following: I would like to mix three textures which contain transparent areas and some solid areas (Red, Blue, Green). The three textures should blend like shown in this example: How can I achieve that in DirectX (preferably in directx9)? A link or example code would be nice. Update: My rendering method looks like this and I still think I am doing it wrong, because the sprite only shows the last texture (nothing is rendered transparent or blended): void D3DTester::render() { d3ddevice->Clear(0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(0,0,0), 1.0f, 0); d3ddevice->BeginScene(); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE, TRUE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); LPD3DXSPRITE sprite=NULL; HRESULT hres = D3DXCreateSprite(d3ddevice, &sprite); if(hres != S_OK) { throw std::exception(); } sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); std::vector<LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9>::iterator it; for ( it=textures.begin() ; it < textures.end(); it++ ) { sprite->Draw(*it, NULL, NULL, NULL, 0xFFFFFFFF); } sprite->End(); d3ddevice->EndScene(); d3ddevice->Present(NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL); } The resulting image looks like this: But I need it to look like this instead: Update2: I figured out that I have to SetRenderState after I use sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); thanks to the hint by Josh Petrie. However, by using this: sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE, TRUE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); std::vector<LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9>::iterator it; for ( it=textures.begin() ; it < textures.end(); it++ ) { sprite->Draw(*it, NULL, NULL, NULL, 0xFFFFFFFF); } sprite->End(); The sprites colors are becoming transparent towards the background scene e.g.: if I use d3ddevice->Clear(0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(0,100,21), 1.0f, 0); the result looks like: Is there any way to avoid that? I would like the sprites be transparent to each other but to be still solid to the background. Update3: After having sombody explained to me, how to do what @LaurentCouvidou and @JoshPetrie suggested, I have a working solution and therfore accept the answer: d3ddevice->BeginScene(); D3DCOLOR white = D3DCOLOR_RGBA((UINT)255, (UINT)255, (UINT)255, 255); D3DCOLOR black = D3DCOLOR_RGBA((UINT)0, (UINT)0, (UINT)0, 255); sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); sprite->Draw(pTextureRed, NULL, NULL, NULL, black); sprite->Draw(pTextureGreen, NULL, NULL, NULL, black); sprite->Draw(pTextureBlue, NULL, NULL, NULL, black); sprite->End(); sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHATESTENABLE, TRUE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_BLENDOP, D3DBLENDOP_ADD); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); sprite->Draw(pTextureRed, NULL, NULL, NULL, white); sprite->Draw(pTextureGreen, NULL, NULL, NULL, white); sprite->Draw(pTextureBlue, NULL, NULL, NULL, white); sprite->End(); d3ddevice->EndScene(); d3ddevice->Present(NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);

  Read the article

• OpenGL/GLSL: Render to cube map?

  - by BobDole

  I'm trying to figure out how to render my scene to a cube map. I've been stuck on this for a bit and figured I would ask you guys for some help. I'm new to OpenGL and this is the first time I'm using a FBO. I currently have a working example of using a cubemap bmp file, and the samplerCube sample type in the fragment shader is attached to GL_TEXTURE1. I'm not changing the shader code at all. I'm just changing the fact that I wont be calling the function that was loading the cubemap bmp file and trying to use the below code to render to a cubemap. You can see below that I'm also attaching the texture again to GL_TEXTURE1. This is so when I set the uniform: glUniform1i(getUniLoc(myProg, "Cubemap"), 1); it can access it in my fragment shader via uniform samplerCube Cubemap. I'm calling the below function like so: cubeMapTexture = renderToCubeMap(150, GL_RGBA8, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE); Now, I realize in the draw loop below that I'm not changing the view direction to look down the +x, -x, +y, -y, +z, -z axis. I really was just wanting to see something working first before implemented that. I figured I should at least see something on my object the way the code is now. I'm not seeing anything, just straight black. I've made my background white still the object is black. I've removed lighting, and coloring to just sample the cubemap texture and still black. I'm thinking the problem might be the format types when setting my texture which is GL_RGB8, GL_RGBA but I've also tried: GL_RGBA, GL_RGBA GL_RGB, GL_RGB I thought this would be standard since we are rendering to a texture attached to a framebuffer, but I've seen different examples that use different enum values. I've also tried binding the cube map texture in every draw call that I'm wanting to use the cube map: glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, cubeMapTexture); Also, I'm not creating a depth buffer for the FBO which I saw in most examples, because I'm only wanting the color buffer for my cube map. I actually added one to see if that was the problem and still got the same results. I could of fudged that up when I tried. Any help that can point me in the right direction would be appreciated. GLuint renderToCubeMap(int size, GLenum InternalFormat, GLenum Format, GLenum Type) { // color cube map GLuint textureObject; int face; GLenum status; //glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glGenTextures(1, &textureObject); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, textureObject); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_R, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); for (face = 0; face < 6; face++) { glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_X + face, 0, InternalFormat, size, size, 0, Format, Type, NULL); } // framebuffer object glGenFramebuffers(1, &fbo); glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fbo); glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_X, textureObject, 0); status = glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER); printf("%d\"\n", status); printf("%d\n", GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE); glViewport(0,0,size, size); for (face = 1; face < 6; face++) { drawSpheres(); glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0,GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_X + face, textureObject, 0); } //Bind 0, which means render to back buffer, as a result, fb is unbound glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, 0); return textureObject; }

  Read the article

• HTML5 Boilerplate template for ASP.NET with Visual Studio 2010

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  This is the 5th post in the series of HTML5 for ASP.NET Developers  Support for HTML5 in Visual Studio 2010 has been quite good with Visual Studio Service Pack 1 However, HTML5 Boilerplate template has been one of the most popular HTML5 templates out in the internet.  Now, there is one for your favorite ASP.NET Webforms as well as ASP.NET MVC 3 Projects (even for ASP.NET MVC 2).  And its available in the most optimal place, i.e. NuGet. Lets see it in action.  Let us fire up Visual Studio 2010 and create a “File – New Project – ASP.NET Web Application” and leave the default name to create the project.  The default project template creates Site.Master, Default.aspx and the Account (membership) files. When you run the project without any changes, it shows up the default Master Page with the Home and About placeholder pages. Also, just to check the rendering on devices, lets try running the same page in Windows Phone 7 Emulator.  You can download the SDK from here Clearly, it looks bad on the emulator and if we were to publish the application as is, its going to be the same experience when users browse this app. Close the browser and then switch to Visual Studio.   Right click on the project and select “Manage NuGet Packages” The NuGet Package Manager dialog opens up.  Search for HTML5 Boilerplate.  The options for MVC & Web Forms show up.  Click on Install corresponding to the “Add HTML5 Boilerplate to Web Forms” options. It installs the template in a few seconds.   Once installed, you will be able to see a lot of additional Script files and also the all important HTML5Boilerplate.Master file.  This would be the replacement for the default Site.Master.  We need to change the Content Pages (Default.aspx & other pages) to point to this Master Page.  Example <%@ <% Master Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Html5Boilerplate.Master.cs" Inherits="WebApplication14.SiteMaster" %> would be the setting in the Default.aspx Page. You can do a Find & Replace for Site.Master to HTML5Boilerplate.Master for the whole solution so that it is changed in all the locations. With this, we have our Webforms application ready with HTML5 capabilities.  Needless to say, we need to wire up HTML5 mark up level code, canvas, etc., further to use the actual HTML5 features, but even without that, the page is now HTML5’ed.   One of the advantages of HTML5 (here HTML5 is collectively referred for CSS3, Javascript enhancements etc.,)  is the ability to render the pages better on mobile and hand held devices. So, now when we run the page from Visual Studio, the following is what we get.  Notice the site.icon automatically added.  The page otherwise looks similar to what it was earlier. Now, when we also check this page on the Windows Phone Emulator, here below is what, we get. As you can see, we definitely get a better experience now.  Of course, this is not the only HTML5 feature that we can use.  We need to wire up additional code for using Canvas, SVG and other HTML5 features.  But, definitely, this is a good starting point. You can also install the HTML5boilerplate Template for your ASP.NET MVC 3 and ASP.NET MVC 2 from the NuGet packages and get them ready for HTML5. Cheers !!!

  Read the article

• C++ problem with assimp 3D model loader

  - by Brendan Webster

  In my game I have model loading functions for Assimp model loading library. I can load the model and render it, but the model displays incorrectly. The models load in as if they were using a seperate projection matrix. I have looked over my code over and over again, but I probably keep on missing the obvious reason why this is happening. Here is an image of my game: It's simply a 6 sided cube, but it's off big time! Here are my code snippets for rendering the cube to the screen: void C_MediaLoader::display(void) { float tmp; glTranslatef(0,0,0); // rotate it around the y axis glRotatef(angle,0.f,0.f,1.f); glColor4f(1,1,1,1); // scale the whole asset to fit into our view frustum tmp = scene_max.x-scene_min.x; tmp = aisgl_max(scene_max.y - scene_min.y,tmp); tmp = aisgl_max(scene_max.z - scene_min.z,tmp); tmp = (1.f / tmp); glScalef(tmp/5, tmp/5, tmp/5); // center the model //glTranslatef( -scene_center.x, -scene_center.y, -scene_center.z ); // if the display list has not been made yet, create a new one and // fill it with scene contents if(scene_list == 0) { scene_list = glGenLists(1); glNewList(scene_list, GL_COMPILE); // now begin at the root node of the imported data and traverse // the scenegraph by multiplying subsequent local transforms // together on GL's matrix stack. recursive_render(scene, scene->mRootNode); glEndList(); } glCallList(scene_list); } void C_MediaLoader::recursive_render (const struct aiScene *sc, const struct aiNode* nd) { unsigned int i; unsigned int n = 0, t; struct aiMatrix4x4 m = nd->mTransformation; // update transform aiTransposeMatrix4(&m); glPushMatrix(); glMultMatrixf((float*)&m); // draw all meshes assigned to this node for (; n < nd->mNumMeshes; ++n) { const struct aiMesh* mesh = scene->mMeshes[nd->mMeshes[n]]; apply_material(sc->mMaterials[mesh->mMaterialIndex]); if(mesh->mNormals == NULL) { glDisable(GL_LIGHTING); } else { glEnable(GL_LIGHTING); } for (t = 0; t < mesh->mNumFaces; ++t) { const struct aiFace* face = &mesh->mFaces[t]; GLenum face_mode; switch(face->mNumIndices) { case 1: face_mode = GL_POINTS; break; case 2: face_mode = GL_LINES; break; case 3: face_mode = GL_TRIANGLES; break; default: face_mode = GL_POLYGON; break; } glBegin(face_mode); for(i = 0; i < face->mNumIndices; i++) { int index = face->mIndices[i]; if(mesh->mColors[0] != NULL) glColor4fv((GLfloat*)&mesh->mColors[0][index]); if(mesh->mNormals != NULL) glNormal3fv(&mesh->mNormals[index].x); glVertex3fv(&mesh->mVertices[index].x); } glEnd(); } } // draw all children for (n = 0; n < nd->mNumChildren; ++n) { recursive_render(sc, nd->mChildren[n]); } glPopMatrix(); } Sorry there is so much code to look through, but I really cannot find the problem, and I would love to have help.

  Read the article

• How to raycast select a scaled OBB?

  - by user3254944

  I have the OBB picking code to select an OBB with code inspired from Real time Rendering 3 and opengl-tutorial.org. I can successfully select objects that have been moved or rotated. However, I cant correctly select an object that has been scaled. The bounding box scales right, but the I can only select the object in a thin strip on its center. How do I fix the checkForHits() function to allow it to read the scaling that I passed to it in the raycast matrix? void GLWidget::selectObjRaycast() { glm::vec2 mouse = (glm::vec2(mousePos.x(), mousePos.y()) / glm::vec2(this->width(), this->height())) * 2.0f - 1.0f; mouse.y *= -1; glm::mat4 toWorld = glm::inverse(ProjectionM * ViewM); glm::vec4 from = toWorld * glm::vec4(mouse, -1.0f, 1.0f); glm::vec4 to = toWorld * glm::vec4(mouse, 1.0f, 1.0f); from /= from.w; to /= to.w; fromAABB = glm::vec3(from); toAABB = glm::normalize(glm::vec3(to - from)); checkForHits(); } void GLWidget::checkForHits() { for (int i = 0; i < myWin.myEtc->allObj.size(); ++i) //check for hits on each obj's bb { bool miss = 0; float tMin = 0.0f; float tMax = 100000.0f; glm::vec3 bbPos(myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[3].x, myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[3].y, myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[3].z); glm::vec3 delta = bbPos - fromAABB; for (int j = 0; j < 3; ++j) { glm::vec3 axis(myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[j].x, myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[j].y, myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[j].z); float e = glm::dot(axis, delta); float f = glm::dot(toAABB, axis); if (fabs(f) > 0.001f) { float t1 = (e + myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->bbMin[j]) / f; float t2 = (e + myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->bbMax[j]) / f; if (t1 > t2) { float w = t1; t1 = t2; t2 = w; } if (t2 < tMax) tMax = t2; if (t1 > tMin) tMin = t1; if (tMax < tMin) miss = 1; } else { if (-e + myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->bbMin[j] > 0.0f || -e + myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->bbMax[j] < 0.0f) miss = 1; } } if (miss == 0) { intersection_distance = tMin; myWin.myEtc->sel.push_back(myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]); myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->highlight = myWin.myGLHelp->highlight; break; } } } void Object::render(glm::mat4 PV) { scaleM = glm::scale(glm::mat4(), s->val_3); r_quat = glm::quat(glm::radians(r->val_3)); rotationM = glm::toMat4(r_quat); translationM = glm::translate(glm::mat4(), t->val_3); transLocal1M = glm::translate(glm::mat4(), -rsPivot->val_3); transLocal2M = glm::translate(glm::mat4(), rsPivot->val_3); raycastM = translationM * transLocal2M * rotationM * scaleM * transLocal1M; // MVP = PV * translationM * transLocal2M * rotationM * scaleM * transLocal1M; }

  Read the article

• 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.

  Read the article

• The WaitForAll Roadshow

  - by adweigert

  OK, so I took for granted some imaginative uses of WaitForAll but lacking that, here is how I am using. First, I have a nice little class called Parallel that allows me to spin together a list of tasks (actions) and then use WaitForAll, so here it is, WaitForAll's 15 minutes of fame ... First Parallel that allows me to spin together several Action delegates to execute, well in parallel.   public static class Parallel { public static ParallelQuery Task(Action action) { return new Action[] { action }.AsParallel(); } public static ParallelQuery> Task(Action action) { return new Action[] { action }.AsParallel(); } public static ParallelQuery Task(this ParallelQuery actions, Action action) { var list = new List(actions); list.Add(action); return list.AsParallel(); } public static ParallelQuery> Task(this ParallelQuery> actions, Action action) { var list = new List>(actions); list.Add(action); return list.AsParallel(); } }   Next, this is an example usage from an app I'm working on that just is rendering some basic computer information via WMI and performance counters. The WMI calls can be expensive given the distance and link speed of some of the computers it will be trying to communicate with. This is the actual MVC action from my controller to return the data for an individual computer.  public PartialViewResult Detail(string computerName) { var computer = this.Computers.Get(computerName); var perf = Factory.GetInstance(); var detail = new ComputerDetailViewModel() { Computer = computer }; try { var work = Parallel .Task(delegate { // Win32_ComputerSystem var key = computer.Name + "_Win32_ComputerSystem"; var system = this.Cache.Get(key); if (system == null) { using (var impersonation = computer.ImpersonateElevatedIdentity()) { system = computer.GetWmiContext().GetInstances().Single(); } this.Cache.Set(key, system); } detail.TotalMemory = system.TotalPhysicalMemory; detail.Manufacturer = system.Manufacturer; detail.Model = system.Model; detail.NumberOfProcessors = system.NumberOfProcessors; }) .Task(delegate { // Win32_OperatingSystem var key = computer.Name + "_Win32_OperatingSystem"; var os = this.Cache.Get(key); if (os == null) { using (var impersonation = computer.ImpersonateElevatedIdentity()) { os = computer.GetWmiContext().GetInstances().Single(); } this.Cache.Set(key, os); } detail.OperatingSystem = os.Caption; detail.OSVersion = os.Version; }) // Performance Counters .Task(delegate { using (var impersonation = computer.ImpersonateElevatedIdentity()) { detail.AvailableBytes = perf.GetSample(computer, "Memory", "Available Bytes"); } }) .Task(delegate { using (var impersonation = computer.ImpersonateElevatedIdentity()) { detail.TotalProcessorUtilization = perf.GetValue(computer, "Processor", "% Processor Time", "_Total"); } }).WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism); if (!work.WaitForAll(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(15), task => task())) { return PartialView("Timeout"); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.LogException(ex); return PartialView("Error.ascx"); } return PartialView(detail); }

  Read the article

• Computing a normal matrix in conjunction with gluLookAt

  - by Chris Smith

  I have a hand-rolled camera class that converts yaw, pitch, and roll angles into a forward, side, and up vector suitable for calling gluLookAt. Using this camera class I can modify the model-view matrix to move about the 3D world just fine. However, I am having trouble when using this camera class (and associated model-view matrix) when trying to perform directional lighting in my vertex shader. The problem is that the light direction, (0, 1, 0) for example, is relative to where the 'camera is looking' and not the actual world coordinates. (Or is this eye coordinates vs. model coordinates?) I would like the light direction to be unaffected by the camera's viewing direction. For example, when the camera is looking down the Z axis the ground is lit correctly. However, if I point the camera straight at the ground, then it goes dark. This is (I think) because the light direction is parallel with the camera's 'up' vector which is perpendicular with the ground's normal vector. I tried computing the normal matrix without taking the camera's model view into account, but then none of my objects were rotated correctly. Sorry if this sounds vague. I suspect there is a straight forward answer, but I'm not 100% clear on how the normal matrix should be used for transforming vertex normals in my vertex shader. For reference, here is pseudo code for my rendering loop: pMatrix = new Matrix(); pMatrix = makePerspective(...) mvMatrix = new Matrix() camera.apply(mvMatrix); // Calls gluLookAt // Move the object into position. mvMatrix.translatev(position); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.x, 1, 0, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.y, 0, 1, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.z, 0, 0, 1); var nMatrix = new Matrix(); nMatrix.set(mvMatrix.get().getInverse().getTranspose()); // Set vertex shader uniforms. gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.pMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(pMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.mvMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(mvMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.nMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(nMatrix.getFlattened())); // ... gl.drawElements(gl.TRIANGLES, this.vertexIndexBuffer.numItems, gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); And the corresponding vertex shader: // Attributes attribute vec3 aVertexPosition; attribute vec4 aVertexColor; attribute vec3 aVertexNormal; // Uniforms uniform mat4 uMVMatrix; uniform mat4 uNMatrix; uniform mat4 uPMatrix; // Varyings varying vec4 vColor; // Constants const vec3 LIGHT_DIRECTION = vec3(0, 1, 0); // Opposite direction of photons. const vec4 AMBIENT_COLOR = vec4 (0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 1.0); float ComputeLighting() { vec4 transformedNormal = vec4(aVertexNormal.xyz, 1.0); transformedNormal = uNMatrix * transformedNormal; float base = dot(normalize(transformedNormal.xyz), normalize(LIGHT_DIRECTION)); return max(base, 0.0); } void main(void) { gl_Position = uPMatrix * uMVMatrix * vec4(aVertexPosition, 1.0); float lightWeight = ComputeLighting(); vColor = vec4(aVertexColor.xyz * lightWeight, 1.0) + AMBIENT_COLOR; } Note that I am using WebGL, so if the anser is use glFixThisProblem(...) any pointers on how to re-implement that on WebGL if missing would be appreciated.

  Read the article

• Modernizr Rocks HTML5

  - by Laila

  HTML5 is a moving target.  At the moment, we don't know what will be in future versions.  In most circumstances, this really matters to the developer. When you're using Adobe Air, you can be reasonably sure what works, what is there, and what isn't, since you have a version of the browser built-in. With Metro, you can assume that you're going to be using at least IE 10.   If, however,  you are using HTML5 in a web application, then you are going to rely heavily on Feature Detection.  Feature-Detection is a collection of techniques that tell you, via JavaScript, whether the current browser has this feature natively implemented or not Feature Detection isn't just there for the esoteric stuff such as  Geo-location,  progress bars,  <canvas> support,  the new <input> types, Audio, Video, web workers or storage, but is required even for semantic markup, since old browsers make a pigs ear out of rendering this.  Feature detection can't rely just on reading the browser version and inferring from that what works. Instead, you must use JavaScript to check that an HTML5 feature is there before using it.  The problem with relying on the user-agent is that it takes a lot of historical data  to work out what version does what, and, anyway, the user-agent can be, and sometimes is, spoofed. The open-source library Modernizr  is just about the most essential  JavaScript library for anyone using HTML5, because it provides APIs to test for most of the CSS3 and HTML5 features before you use them, and is intelligent enough to alter semantic markup into 'legacy' 'markup  using shims  on page-load  for old browsers. It also allows you to check what video Codecs are installed for playing video. It also provides media queries  and conditional resource-loading (formerly YepNope.js.).  Generally, Modernizr gives you the choice of what you do about browsers that don't support the feature that you want. Often, the best choice is graceful degradation, but the resource-loading feature allows you to dynamically load JavaScript Shims to replace the standard API for missing or defective HTML5 functionality, called 'PolyFills'.  As the Modernizr site says 'Yes, not only can you use HTML5 today, but you can use it in the past, too!' The evolutionary progress of HTML5  requires a more defensive style of JavaScript programming where the programmer adopts a mindset of fearing the worst ( IE 6)  rather than assuming the best, whilst exploiting as many of the new HTML features as possible for the requirements of the site or HTML application.  Why would anyone want the distraction of developing their own techniques to do this when  Modernizr exists to do this for you? Laila

  Read the article

• Pages in IE render differently when served through the ASP.NET Development server and Production Ser

  - by rajbk

  You see differences in the way IE renders your web application locally on the ASP.NET Development server compared to your production server. Comparing the response from both servers including response headers and CSS show no difference. The issue may occur because of a setting in IE. In IE, go to Tools –> Compatibility ViewSettings. The checkbox “Display intranet sites in Compatibility View” turned on forces IE8 to display the web application content in a way similar to how Internet Explorer 7 handles standards mode web pages. Since your local web server is considered to be in the intranet zone, IE uses “Compatibility View” to render your pages. While you could uncheck this setting in or propagate the change to all developers through group policy settings, a different way is described below. To force IE to mimic the behavior of a certain version of IE when rendering the pages, you use the meta element  to include a “X-UA-Compatible” http-equiv header in  your web page or have it sent as part of the header by adding it to your web.config file. The values are listed below: <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=4"> <!-- IE5 mode --> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7.5"> <!-- IE7 mode --> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=100"> <!-- IE8 mode --> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=a"> <!-- IE5 mode --> This value can also be set in web.config like so: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> <system.webServer> <httpProtocol> <customHeaders> <clear /> <add name="X-UA-Compatible" value="IE=EmulateIE7" /> </customHeaders> </httpProtocol> </system.webServer> </configuration> The setting can added in the IIS metabase as described here. Similarly, you can do the same in Apache by adding the directive in httpd.conf <Location /store> Header set X-UA-Compatible “IE=EmulateIE7” </Location> Even though it can be done on a site level, I recommend you do it on a per application level to avoid confusing the developer. References Defining Document Compatibility Implementing the META Switch on IIS Implementing the META Switch on Apache

  Read the article

• Problem with Assimp 3D model loader

  - by Brendan Webster

  In my game I have model loading functions for Assimp model loading library. I can load the model and render it, but the model displays incorrectly. The models load in as if they were using a seperate projection matrix. I have looked over my code over and over again, but I probably keep on missing the obvious reason why this is happening. Here is an image of my game: It's simply a 6 sided cube, but it's off big time! Here are my code snippets for rendering the cube to the screen: void C_MediaLoader::display(void) { float tmp; glTranslatef(0,0,0); // rotate it around the y axis glRotatef(angle,0.f,0.f,1.f); glColor4f(1,1,1,1); // scale the whole asset to fit into our view frustum tmp = scene_max.x-scene_min.x; tmp = aisgl_max(scene_max.y - scene_min.y,tmp); tmp = aisgl_max(scene_max.z - scene_min.z,tmp); tmp = (1.f / tmp); glScalef(tmp/5, tmp/5, tmp/5); // center the model //glTranslatef( -scene_center.x, -scene_center.y, -scene_center.z ); // if the display list has not been made yet, create a new one and // fill it with scene contents if(scene_list == 0) { scene_list = glGenLists(1); glNewList(scene_list, GL_COMPILE); // now begin at the root node of the imported data and traverse // the scenegraph by multiplying subsequent local transforms // together on GL's matrix stack. recursive_render(scene, scene->mRootNode); glEndList(); } glCallList(scene_list); } void C_MediaLoader::recursive_render (const struct aiScene *sc, const struct aiNode* nd) { unsigned int i; unsigned int n = 0, t; struct aiMatrix4x4 m = nd->mTransformation; // update transform aiTransposeMatrix4(&m); glPushMatrix(); glMultMatrixf((float*)&m); // draw all meshes assigned to this node for (; n < nd->mNumMeshes; ++n) { const struct aiMesh* mesh = scene->mMeshes[nd->mMeshes[n]]; apply_material(sc->mMaterials[mesh->mMaterialIndex]); if(mesh->mNormals == NULL) { glDisable(GL_LIGHTING); } else { glEnable(GL_LIGHTING); } for (t = 0; t < mesh->mNumFaces; ++t) { const struct aiFace* face = &mesh->mFaces[t]; GLenum face_mode; switch(face->mNumIndices) { case 1: face_mode = GL_POINTS; break; case 2: face_mode = GL_LINES; break; case 3: face_mode = GL_TRIANGLES; break; default: face_mode = GL_POLYGON; break; } glBegin(face_mode); for(i = 0; i < face->mNumIndices; i++) { int index = face->mIndices[i]; if(mesh->mColors[0] != NULL) glColor4fv((GLfloat*)&mesh->mColors[0][index]); if(mesh->mNormals != NULL) glNormal3fv(&mesh->mNormals[index].x); glVertex3fv(&mesh->mVertices[index].x); } glEnd(); } } // draw all children for (n = 0; n < nd->mNumChildren; ++n) { recursive_render(sc, nd->mChildren[n]); } glPopMatrix(); } Sorry there is so much code to look through, but I really cannot find the problem, and I would love to have help.

  Read the article

• LibGdx drawing weird behaviour

  - by Ryckes

  I am finding strange behaviour while rendering TextureRegions in my game, only when pausing it. I am making a game for Android, in Java with LibGdx. When I comment out the line "drawLevelPaused()" everything seems to work fine, both running and paused. When it's not commented, everything works fine until I pause the screen, then it draws those two rectangles, but maybe ships are not shown, and if I comment out drawShips() and drawTarget() (just trying) maybe one of the planets disappears, or if I change the order, other things disappear and those that disappeared before now are rendered again. I can't find the way to fix this behaviour I beg your help, and I hope it's my mistake and not a LibGdx issue. I use OpenGL ES 2.0, stated in AndroidManifest.xml, if it is of any help. Thank you in advance. My Screen render method(game loop) is as follows: @Override public void render(float delta) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); controller.update(delta); renderer.render(); } When world state is PAUSED controller.update does nothing at all, there is a switch in it. And renderer.render() is as follows: public void render() { int worldState=this.world.getWorldState(); updateCamera(); spriteBatch.begin(); drawPlanets(); drawTarget(); drawShips(); if(worldState==World.PAUSED) { drawLevelPaused(); } else if(worldState==World.LEVEL_WON) { drawLevelWin(); } spriteBatch.end(); } And those methods are: private void updateCamera() { this.offset=world.getCameraOffset(); } private void drawPlanets() { for(Planet planet : this.world.getPlanets()) { this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(planet.getTexture()), (planet.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (planet.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY); } } private void drawTarget() { Target target=this.world.getTarget(); this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(target.getTexture()), (target.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (target.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY); } private void drawShips() { for(Ship ship : this.world.getShips()) { this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(ship.getTexture()), (ship.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (ship.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX/2, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY/2, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY, 1.0f, 1.0f, ship.getAngle()-90.0f); } if(this.world.getStillShipVisibility()) { Ship ship=this.world.getStillShip(); Arrow arrow=this.world.getArrow(); this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(ship.getTexture()), (ship.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (ship.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX/2, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY/2, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY, 1f, 1f, ship.getAngle() - 90f); this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(arrow.getTexture()), (ship.getCenter().x - this.offset[0] - arrow.getBounds().width/2) * ppuX, (ship.getCenter().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY, arrow.getBounds().width*ppuX/2, 0, arrow.getBounds().width*ppuX, arrow.getBounds().height*ppuY, 1f, arrow.getRate(), ship.getAngle() - 90f); } } private void drawLevelPaused() { this.shapeRenderer.begin(ShapeType.FilledRectangle); this.shapeRenderer.setColor(0f, 0f, 0f, 0.8f); this.shapeRenderer.filledRect(0, 0, this.width/this.ppuX, PAUSE_MARGIN_HEIGHT/this.ppuY); this.shapeRenderer.filledRect(0, (this.height-PAUSE_MARGIN_HEIGHT)/this.ppuY, this.width/this.ppuX, PAUSE_MARGIN_HEIGHT/this.ppuY); this.shapeRenderer.end(); for(Button button : this.world.getPauseButtons()) { this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(button.getTexture()), (button.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * this.ppuX, (button.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * this.ppuY); } }

  Read the article

• Planning development when academic research is involved

  - by Another Anonymous User

  Dear fellow programmers, how do you do "software planning" when academic research is involved? And, on a side note, how do you convince your boss that writing software is not like building a house and it's more like writing a novel? The gory details are below. I am in charge of a small dev team working in a research lab. We started developing a software with the purpose of going public one day (i.e. sell and make money off that). Such software depends on, amongst other things, at least two independent research lines: that is, there are at least two Ph.D. candidates that will, hopefully, one day come out with a working implementation of what we need. The main software depends also on other, more concrete resources that we as developers can take care of: graphics rendering, soft bodies deformation, etc. My boss asked me to write the specifications, requirements AND a bloody GANTT chart of the entire project. Faced with the fact that I don't have a clue about the research part, and that such research is fundamental for the software, he said "make assumptions." For the clarity of the argument, he is a professor whose Ph.D. students should come up with the research we need. And he comes from a strictly engineering background: plan everything first, write down specifications and only then write down code that "it's the last part". What I am doing now: I broke down the product in features; each 'feature' is, de facto, a separate product; Each feature is built on top of the previous one; Once a feature (A) has a working prototype the team can start working on the next feature (B), while QA for is being done for A (if money allows, more people can be brought in, etc.); Features that depend on research will come last: by then, hopefully, the research part will be completed (when is still a big question) ; Also, I set the team to use SCRUM for the development of 'version 1.0', due in a few months. This deadline could be set based on reasonable assumptions: we listed all required features, we counted our availability, and we gave a reasonable estimate. So my questions, again, are: How do I make my boss happy while at the same time get something out the door? How do I write specifications for something we -the developers- have no clue whether it's possible to do or not? (We still haven't decided which libraries to use for some tasks; we'll do so when we'll need to) How do I get the requirements for that, given that there are yet no clients nor investors, just lots of interests and promises? How do I get peace in the world? I am sure at least one of my questions will be answered :) ps: I am writing this anonymously since a potential investor might backfire if this is discovered. Hope you'll understand. However I must say I do not like this mentality of 'hiding the truth': this program will likely benefit many, and not being able to talk openly about this (with my name and my reputation attached) feels like censorship. But alas, I care more about your suggestions now.

  Read the article

• Open source adventures with... wait for it... Microsoft

  - by Jeff

  Last week, Microsoft announced that it was going to open source the rest of the ASP.NET MVC Web stack. The core MVC framework has been open source for a long time now, but the other pieces around it are also now out in the wild. Not only that, but it's not what I call "big bang" open source, where you release the source with each version. No, they're actually committing in real time to a public repository. They're also taking contributions where it makes sense. If that weren't exciting enough, CodePlex, which used to be a part of the team I was on, has been re-org'd to a different part of the company where it is getting the love and attention (and apparently money) that it deserves. For a period of several months, I lobbied to get a PM gig with that product, but got nowhere. A year and a half later, I'm happy to see it finally treated right. In any case, I found a bug in Razor, the rendering engine, before the beta came out. I informally sent the bug info to some people, but it wasn't fixed for the beta. Now, with the project being developed in the open, I was able to submit the issue, and went back and forth with the developer who wrote the code (I met him once at a meet up in Bellevue, I think), and he committed a fix. I tried it a day later, and the bug was gone. There's a lot to learn from all of this. That open source software is surprisingly efficient and often of high quality is one part of it. For me the win is that it demonstrates how open and collaborative processes, as light as possible, lead to better software. In other words, even if this were a project being developed internally, at a bank or something, getting stakeholders involved early and giving people the ability to respond leads to awesomeness. While there is always a place for big thinking, experience has shown time and time again that trying to figure everything out up front takes too long, and rarely meets expectations. This is a lesson that probably half of Microsoft has yet to learn, including the team I was on before I split. It's the reason that team still hasn't shipped anything to general availability. But I've seen what an open and iterative development style can do for teams, at Microsoft and other places that I've worked. When you can have a conversation with people, and take ideas and turn them into code quickly, you're winning. So why don't people like winning? I think there are a lot of reasons, and they can generally be categorized into fear, skepticism and bad experiences. I can't give the Web stack teams enough credit. Not only did they dream big, but they changed a culture that often seems immovable and hopelessly stuck. This is a very public example of this culture change, but it's starting to happen at every scale in Microsoft. It's really interesting to see in a company that has been written off as dead the last decade.

  Read the article

• Problems with 3D Array for Voxel Data

  - by Sean M.

  I'm trying to implement a voxel engine in C++ using OpenGL, and I've been working on the rendering of the world. In order to render, I have a 3D array of uint16's that hold that id of the block at the point. I also have a 3D array of uint8's that I am using to store the visibility data for that point, where each bit represents if a face is visible. I have it so the blocks render and all of the proper faces are hidden if needed, but all of the blocks are offset by a power of 2 from where they are stored in the array. So the block at [0][0][0] is rendered at (0, 0, 0), and the block at 11 is rendered at (1, 1, 1), but the block at [2][2][2] is rendered at (4, 4, 4) and the block at [3][3][3] is rendered at (8, 8, 8), and so on and so forth. This is the result of drawing the above situation: I'm still a little new to the more advanced concepts of C++, like triple pointers, which I'm using for the 3D array, so I think the error is somewhere in there. This is the code for creating the arrays: uint16*** _blockData; //Contains a 3D array of uint16s that are the ids of the blocks in the region uint8*** _visibilityData; //Contains a 3D array of bytes that hold the visibility data for the faces //Allocate memory for the world data _blockData = new uint16**[REGION_DIM]; for (int i = 0; i < REGION_DIM; i++) { _blockData[i] = new uint16*[REGION_DIM]; for (int j = 0; j < REGION_DIM; j++) _blockData[i][j] = new uint16[REGION_DIM]; } //Allocate memory for the visibility _visibilityData = new uint8**[REGION_DIM]; for (int i = 0; i < REGION_DIM; i++) { _visibilityData[i] = new uint8*[REGION_DIM]; for (int j = 0; j < REGION_DIM; j++) _visibilityData[i][j] = new uint8[REGION_DIM]; } Here is the code used to create the block mesh for the region: //Check if the positive x face is visible, this happens for every face //Block::VERT_X_POS is just an array of non-transformed cube verts for one face //These checks are in a triple loop, which goes over every place in the array if (_visibilityData[x][y][z] & 0x01 > 0) { _vertexData->AddData(&(translateVertices(Block::VERT_X_POS, x, y, z)[0]), sizeof(Block::VERT_X_POS)); } //This is a seperate method, not in the loop glm::vec3* translateVertices(const glm::vec3 data[], uint16 x, uint16 y, uint16 z) { glm::vec3* copy = new glm::vec3[6]; memcpy(&copy, &data, sizeof(data)); for(int i = 0; i < 6; i++) copy[i] += glm::vec3(x, -y, z); //Make +y go down instead return copy; } I cannot see where the blocks may be getting offset by more than they should be, and certainly not why the offsets are a power of 2. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

  Read the article

• How to Speed Up Any Android Phone By Disabling Animations

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Android phones — and tablets, too — display animations when moving between apps and screens. These animations look very slick, but they waste time — especially on fast phones, which could switch between apps instantly if not for the animations. Disabling these animations will speed up navigating between different apps and interface screens on your phone, saving you time. You can also speed up the animations if you’d rather see them. Access the Developer Options Menu First, we’ll need to access the Developer Options menu. It’s hidden by default so Android users won’t stumble across it unless they’re actually looking for it. To access the Developer Options menu, open the Settings screen, scroll down to the bottom of the list, and tap the About phone or About tablet option. Scroll down to the Build number field and tap it repeatedly. Eventually, you’ll see a message appear saying “You are now a developer!”. The Developer options submenu now appears on the Settings screen. You’ll find it near the bottom of the list, just above the About phone or About tablet option. Disable Interface Animations Open the Developer Options screen and slide the switch at the top of the screen to On. This allows you to change the hidden options on this screen. If you ever want to re-enable the animations and revert your changes, all you have to do is slide the Developer Options switch back to Off. Scroll down to the Drawing section. You’ll find the three options we want here — Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale. Tap each option and set it to Animation off to disable the associated animations. If you’d like to speed up the animations without disabling them entirely, select the Animation .5x option instead. If you’re feeling really crazy, you can even select longer animation durations. You can make the animations take as much as ten times longer with the Animation 10x setting. The Animator duration scale option applies to the transition animation that appears when you tap the app drawer button on your home screen.  Your change here won’t take effect immediately — you’ll have to restart Android’s launcher after changing the Animator duration scale setting. To restart Android’s launcher, open the Settings screen, tap Apps, swipe over to the All category, scroll down, and tap the Launcher app. Tap the Force stop button to forcibly close the launcher, then tap your device’s home button to re-launch the launcher. Your app drawer will now open immediately, too. Now whenever you open an app or transition to a new screen, it will pop up as quickly as possible — no waiting for animations and wasting processing power rendering them. How much of a speed improvement you’ll see here depends on your Android device and how fast it is. On our Nexus 4, this change makes many apps appear and become usable instantly if they’re running in the background. If you have a slower device, you may have to wait a moment for apps to be usable. That’s one of the big reasons why Android and other operating systems use animations. Animations help paper over delays that can occur while the operating system loads the app.     

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103  | Next Page >