With the addition of the Nexus One to my Android family, I really want to use the excellent screen to the fullest of its potential. Games are one thing, but I would love to find some awesome eye-candy apps or trip toys.
A few that I have found so far are:
Andrainbow - Cool shifting color app
Automata - Game f life simulator that's interactive
IamascopeLE - Closest to what I'm looking for, it's like a 3D, interactive kaleidescope
Bubbles - Cooler if it were more realistic
Anybody have any good suggestions for apps that are just pure eye-candy? Not really looking for live wallpapers, just some neat (possibly interactive) shinys.
Try the Wave live wallpaper. Best eyecandy I've seen yet in a live wallpaper (no offense to earth rot! I just prefer the cartoonish, pastel style to the globe)--makes use of the accelerometer, has randomly appearing airplane/parachute/dolphins and all. The art is pretty good, too. I'm also fond of the Substrate live wallpaper package.
Have you tried out iLightr? I haven't given it a whirl yet, but it seems to be well-received.
Someone needs to directly copy the iTunes visualizers for live wallpapers. Those things are INCREDIBLE.
See, as I said - the Live Wallpapers are cool, but I want an app I can fire up and play around with. Like a physics demo engine. I've been browsing the Demo section and have come up with some cools things.
iLightr I had for a few minutes - MEH.
Does anyone else experience on their TF an obvious slow down in overall performance when using a live wallpaper? The only time I don't experience the lag is when I am in an already third-party application BUT when I use the homescreen controls like settings and app switching...that lags. Stock browser performance is worse too.
It seems that the only live wallpapers that don't cause any obvious slow down are the ASUS offered ice cube in water and halo spiral.
Any ideas as to why?
I have downloaded live wallpapers that were specifically made for HC including the GT's for Touchwiz (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1169061) and others on the market and they just slow everything down.
Well, not many are actually optimized for tablets. But beyond that, you have to remember it is rendering something at 1280x800 continuously, besides the launcher. So it will eat away at some performance no matter what.
The only one I've found that doesn't have much performance decrease is Light Grid. That one runs pretty great on my TF without slowing things down much. I have it set to cycle large black, gray, and white squares.
Makes sense, and thanks about light grid, I will try that out!
I tried the androidify live wallpaper, and although it is kind of lame, it works great too.
I use my beach hd no lag for me
don't forget to bring a towel!
zillah1985 said:
Does anyone else experience on their TF an obvious slow down in overall performance when using a live wallpaper? The only time I don't experience the lag is when I am in an already third-party application BUT when I use the homescreen controls like settings and app switching...that lags. Stock browser performance is worse too.
It seems that the only live wallpapers that don't cause any obvious slow down are the ASUS offered ice cube in water and halo spiral.
Any ideas as to why?
I have downloaded live wallpapers that were specifically made for HC including the GT's for Touchwiz (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1169061) and others on the market and they just slow everything down.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The ones that were updated are the featured LWP.. Ive collected 148 in the past 5 months with maybe 10 of those that cause lag.
SwampWater is my favorite. I emailed the developer who just got a tablet and found interest in developing again ...I emailed thanking him and saying its awesome looking. He recently added colors and more bugs.
SwampWater
Text clock Pro
Symphony of colors
Stars pro
Seeds of life (sperm) lol
Rolling Cat ($2.99) Nothing special i just wanted the cat
Prismatic
Rays of light
Pretty wallpapers (uses 2 layers to choose from).2 Animations and 1 color
PolarClock Live wallpaper
Particle storm
Nightfall Live wallpaper (payed)
Photile Pro
Light Grid Pro (one of the best IMO)
Light Grid Holiday Theme
Nexus Revamped Pro
Moon Phase (free or Payed)
Jump gate (payed)
IBM Watson Avatar Pro (the one that has scrolling words in the preview pic)
The ones I listed are 1$ and some are free or have a trial version
Anything from developer XLLUSION, JASON ALLEN and KITTEHFACE SOFTWARE
The only one from Jason Allen that doesnt work is a Panda sitting in a cup (to new he hasn't upgraded the code yet).
The Bamboo and Panda does work perfectly .
There ares to many to list, those are the ones that work perfectly.. Your best bet is explore the developers other LWP apps. if 1 works, he has most likely updated the rest.
Most the LWP on the list have multiple that work on Tablets , for example Rays of Light. If you select the developer other apps, his other LWP appear I did not not add to the list. From Rays of light you could get 5 or 6 more that work.. Im very picky on live wallpapers. I dont buy just anything..
Hi all,
My second app is up on the marketplace:
https://market.android.com/details?id=ph.android.smokeLWP
It's a fluid solver driven live wallpaper and stand-alone app.
The effect is a simple but satisfying dynamic smoke.
Youtube video to follow tomorrow.
I would really appreciate your feedback and feature requests!
Cheers,
-=JK=-
My sgs2 is smoking!
Impressions are good, although with a blank initial screen, thought something was wrong until I touched it...(Duh I know).
A wee bit pixilated but understand the universal performance issue, which would slow most devices dramatically If at a higher resolution.
It reminds me of a app called Fleya, which is on the market, if you are not familiar with it, check it out.
But this is a great start, and being a fan of fluid / smoke dynamic simulations, this is a keeper
Will be following this.
Well done and thanks.
Regards
With reference to the "Fleya" app for reference.
www.appbrain.com/app/fleya/fixedpointcode.fleya
Cheers
Thanks buzzboy.
Yeah, I am also a fan of fleya!
I've got quite a lot to add to Smoke Play to get it to where I want it. I've been messing around with some settings and superficial stuff for about a week so I thought it just needs to get out there.
My ideas for features are:
a settings activity where you can up the detail and iterations on the fluid solver for more powerful phones
expose all the smoke (or fluid) properties to be customisable
define some cool pre-sets
coloured smoke that mixes (have this working on my laptop)
continuous auto-sources of smoke
objects (draw shapes) in the path of the smoke
calculated objects field from the homescreen icons (smoke collides with your icons)
an auto-config activity which scales the detail up or down to optimise quality on all phones
maybe put an ad in the settings activity
I'm not sure what order I'll do things in. I think some sort of settings screen will be up next.
I'm keen to hear other ideas too!
Cheers,
-=JK=-
Just made an update, check it out!
Added features:
- smoothed the input
- added multitouch
- added a settings screen to make the level of detail user configurable
The "medium" level of detail is about right for my SGS ... so you can judge the right setting for your phone.
Cheers,
-=JK=-
Another update:
- tweaked the settings for the different levels of detail smoke
- fixed a memory usage bug (will keep an eye on this, difficult to reproduce)
Cheers,
-=JK=-
Nice, runs at very high on my DHD, nice work.
Sent from HydrOG3N MOD DHD.
Technology Evolves, Android Evolves.
HydrOG3N is THE Revolution.
Real smooth on my echo, nice work
This is very entertaining. I am looking forward to the features you want to implement.
How about accelerometer detection so the smoke rises accordingly, depending on how the phone is being held.
I wallpaper works in the preview mode but will not apply to homescreen. One suggestion I can think of is being able to change the background image. It would be awesome to be able to have a weed background with dynamic smoke
Sent from my Hero CDMA using XDA App
This wallpaper is amazing. The only thing it really needs is a certain amount of smoke as a sort of baseline so that I don't have a blank phone every time I wake it up. It is pretty nifty that the screen comes alive the first time you touch it though..
Nice!
Working great on my SGS running on High detail. Very nice work!
Hope to see implementation of accelerometer and colors.
Thanks for the feedback everyone, great to hear!
I wanted to make more updates, but I've been a bit tight for time recently. Some of the feedback I've had is that it looks pixelated so I've been unsuccessfully trying to work on a simple shader to smooth the rendering. I may not be able to make this work, but I'd like to. For those interested, the fluid sim uses C code via the NDK so this may be complicating things for me ... also shaders will not work below Android 2.2 which adds complication.
Colour is definitely coming, I have this working with a simple RGB colours in my test code. I want a nice way to choose colours in the settings screen. Any suggestions around this would be cool.
Accelerometer detection will come, but this will be slightly more tricky than colour and may take me a little time.
A constant source of some smoke (so there is something always on the screen) will be a later addition.
I haven't looked at transparency over a background image yet.
Cheers,
-=JK=-
i love this man its very nice. the updates you want to do are sounding great too! one thing i do want to add is an idea for it. maybe when you get the constant smoke source try having so your touches dont always produce smoke but can just twirl it and influence it. like have a setting where you can turn on constant smoke and then play with it. But its great so far keep up the work!
Hi Guys,
Got an update out! (finally)
This one includes:
- a bug fix of a known issue in OpenGL which was causing a crash when switching between the app and the wallpaper every now and then
- a smoothing renderer. This takes the edges off the pixelated look which was the main feedback I was getting.
I went down and back several paths to try and smooth the rendering. I'm fairly happy with it. The levels of detail for the fluid simulation are the same as before, but it divides each cell into 4 and does a sort of subtle bloom effect prior to the gl rendering calls.
Hope this improves the look and feel for people.
I looked at porting to OpenGL ES 2.0 (from 1.0), but it was just too difficult for what I was doing. If anyone knows a good tutorial to do this I may look into it in the future. I think the shader effects available in 2.0 would further improve / customise the visuals.
Cheers,
-=JK=-
PS - next up: accelerometer (then coloured smoke / constant sources)
New version out today!
Accelerometer detection for the smoke rising added.
Also slightly improved the rendering performance.
Finally got around to filming it too, here's a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xdLceg474k
Cheers,
-=JK=-
Version 1.8 up on the market.
Added continuous source mode: smoke is continuously added to the middle of the screen, swipe to push it around with forces.
Added simple colour: cycles through RGB when you touch the screen.
Next up: background image, colour picker.
Cheers,
-=JK=-
Thanks for sharing.
As an FYI, the smoke is pixelated on my Archos 70 :
I'm using the latest market version with "smooth rendering" enabled.
Hi jknut,
I'm sorry it's pixelated on your device.
You can try upping the smoke level of detail in the options.
Unfortunately, this will increase the number of calculations per frame and may slow it down to a crawl.
There's not a lot I can do about this ... the algorithm is implemented in C via the NDK so it's not going to get much faster. I have implemented a fixed point version which gave a slight speed increase but unacceptable precision for the effect.
Even on my Core i5 laptop I can easily make it grind to a halt on a detail setting not much more than the "are you feeling lucky" one.
Cheers,
-=JK=-
PS - more features to follow, just swamped with work right now
Version 1.9!
Hi all,
New version just released.
Features added:
- colour picker, so you can choose your own colours
- background images you can pick
Check out the new youtube video demonstrating here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip5wahetEEA&feature=youtu.be
Android Market link:
https://market.android.com/details?id=ph.android.smokeLWP
Facebook link for the app:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Smoke-Play/181185655317341
As ever, comments welcome.
I have a next feature in mind, but not sure it is possible yet
Cheers,
-=JK=-
Please help us test 2 new live wallpapers.
1. Bleed - Screen will bleed. When you touch empty area a new bleed will start. (latest version) - release on Play - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.creativehandzsolutions.bleed
2. Balloon - simple floating balloon.
Respond on following events
1. Touch balloon body will make push it back
2. Touch balloon's bottom to blow it.
3. Touch string to pause it for a moment.
Question -
In balloon should we give background image choose option?
We have not tried these apps on tablets. I would appreciate if someone could test our wallpaper on droid tablet.
Any other suggestion regarding.
Great! Tried both and i like the balloons one. No bugs what i can find.
Sent from my GT-S5660
Realistic "bleeding"
I have tried both. I liked balloon the best but you could maybe make the bleeding wallpaper more realistic? It would look a lot better but don't do it if its going to cause a stir ( some people may think dripping red liquid is blood).
thanks for trying out guys
nice interaction.
Good job
Changed the bleed wallpaper according to feedback
Hi All,
Thanks for the feedback. I have uploading the new apk file with some modification. This should look better.
Let me know if this version looks better than the previous one.
I think if we want to make bleed more realistic we have to show some body part. But would not that much reality be bad for a wallpaper . Just a thought.
Uploaded Bleed to Google Play.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.creativehandzsolutions.bleed
It's a free app. Enjoy. And please let us know your reviews on Google Play.
Forgot to add, there are some improvements in the released version of this wallpaper.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.creativehandzsolutions.bleed
Uploaded Balloons to Google Play after a lot of modification and with nice interactions
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.creativehandzsolutions.balloons
Enjoy the apps
Gents, I've been working on this for a bit now, and I think I'll share it here. I'll try to keep this post short.
The line below with the icons is the link to the store page. I'll make it super corny so you can't miss it.
Minecraft Nether Portal Live Wallpaper
It ain't much, but if you love Minecraft, you may like this.
Make your device look like a Nether Portal! (A normal one is 2 wide by 3 tall. If you're in landscape, it reverses them.)
Unlike (stock) Minecraft, you can set a denser grid, with more portals.
Particles & sound are optional. Frame rate is both unlimited (As fast as your device can handle) or, limit from 1FPS to 60FPS (assuming you can handle it).
Unless you have a Galaxy Nexus like I, you may need to fiddle with settings to get it looking right, in terms of particles. I'm working on this. :silly:
To be honest, the sound drives me insane.
tl;dr for the lazy people: I made a Nether Portal for your device. [LINK TO PLAY STORE]