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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=-
Given the recent hoopla in the blogosphere about how iOS places higher priority on User Interface actions than Android. I was wondering what ideas can be implemented in current Android or Linux kernels to get better UI response.
Overclocking or upgrading to a faster phone is the brute force way, a smarter way would be to give higher priority to user input instead of benchmark/multitasking score numbers. I think it makes sense to give the User input highest priority because in computation timeframes, user input is rare, and considering how important smoothness affects overall perception & enjoyment of a device, it's a good idea to allow other OS background tasks to take a backseat when the User wants to do something.
I'll start the discussion with two ideas I've implemented in a kernel recently that has shown improvements in UI response.
1. Switched to using SIO (Simple IO) scheduler (similar, but slightly lower benchmarks than Noop). Main difference is SIO prevents the system from hogging resources when large amounts of data needs to be read/written. It has a timeout so UI threads has a chance to run also.
2. Switched the touchscreen driver interrupt service request from using the general events workqueue (schedule_work()) to a dedicated workqueue (queue_work()). Touchscreen generated actions get to ride in the fast lane.
Any other ideas people have?
How bout some NSA IN THAT KERNEL
via Dan swagger
Usefull links, that clear things out:
https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/XAZ4CeVP6DC
http://blog.crazybob.org/2011/12/truth-about-android-ios-ui-performance.html
the thing is i may be using a note but when using ICS with apps that are updated for ICS, i feel its smooth enough. the real difference is i think ios uses completely different method for scrolling i.e. the bounce function and slight delay in finger recognition. same with ios touch recognition, it just somehow is better no doubt.
btw when i was miui with bounce it definitely felt smoother but although it wasnt ios smooth.
Sent from my Galaxy Note using XDA App
The main difference between ios and android is the fact they use ram in two totally different ways. Ios handles ram in a manner to make the user interface smooth as possible all the time while android frees ram to make multitasking better. The problem that android has is changing the way android handles ram to make the interface smoother for the user. They wont be able to for a long time because they have to do a total overhaul on the whole dalvik cache type setup that android uses.
Sent from my Incredible 2 using Tapatalk
i recently started using supercharger v6 which messes around with the ram and how it should be allocated for desired operations. I don't know if it's relevant but do you think it makes a difference and which setting would get you a better scrolling experience?
I liked the supercharger when I used the Droid Eris but since I've upgraded I get more redraws than without it. I used the 768hp I think.
Sent from my Incredible 2 using Tapatalk
you could edit the ramdisk to set more of a priority to rosie.apk or whatever launcher you use...just a thought
That would be the same as locking home in memory.
Sent from my Incredible 2 using Tapatalk
shad0wboss said:
i recently started using supercharger v6 which messes around with the ram and how it should be allocated for desired operations. I don't know if it's relevant but do you think it makes a difference and which setting would get you a better scrolling experience?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are a number of issues that contribute to a "sluggish experience". The supercharger v6 script mainly keeps more memory free so that switching to new apps cuts down on the garbage cleanup of older apps. One of the downsides I've noticed with more aggressive lowmemkiller settings is a lot of apps get killed in the background when they need to stay for when users want to multitask.
The hardware acceleration route has downsides too from what I've heard, it requires more RAM per app just to have it enabled.
One of the articles posted earlier has good insight. Mainly because a lot of apps share a general events queue, and developers should not have a lot of blocking code in there, but developers make mistakes. The tools available for Android to develop and tweak UI performance seems lacking at this point.
How about SIGSTOPping everything else when you touch?
Questions or Problems Should Not Be Posted in the Development Forum
Please Post in the Correct Forums
Moving to General
does it work with samsung i9000?
Supercharger?
Sent from my Sabotaged Droid Incredible 2.
I find that either turning off cpufreq (by using the Performance governor) or increasing the lower frequency makes things a bit more snappy. For most governors, there's a delay between CPU load and the frequency being increased. This delay is usually noticeable if the CPU load is due to me working with the interface. By increasing the min frequency to, say 800mhz on a Nexus S, this makes things a lot more snappy than the default setting of 200mhz.
Another thing that helps with the smoothness (at least for me, in ICS) is the setting that forces GPU acceleration for all apps. For example, apps these days (well twitter and Facebook) have that pull down to refresh widget from iOS. Without forcing GPU acceleration, the rotating arrow animation usually hitches quite a bit, but is smoothed out with this setting on. This setting can be found in the developer options in the settings.
Hope these help,
- chris
Turning up the min CPU can cause freezes on some peoples phone though and using the performance governor can drain the battery quick. The reason the CPU scales up the way it does before it gets to max frequency is to save battery.
Sent from my Sabotaged Droid Incredible 2.
System tuner pro has alot of tweaking options that on memory use
those that use launcher pro can find a memory usage setting in launcher pro to.
disconnecktie said:
Turning up the min CPU can cause freezes on some peoples phone though and using the performance governor can drain the battery quick. The reason the CPU scales up the way it does before it gets to max frequency is to save battery.
Sent from my Sabotaged Droid Incredible 2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, but the whole point here was to help improve UI responsiveness. Without rearchitecting the OS, a good way is to allow the CPU (which is busy sharing its resources with non-UI work) to react more quickly is to ensure the CPU is at a higher clock rate before the UI needs it.
As for battery life, it really depends on your usage pattern. If you have a lot of background processing going on, preventing the CPU from going to sleep when idle, you may be better off scaling back the minimum cpufreq frequently. If your CPU actually goes to sleep, give scaling things up a try. A handy tool you can use to see how often the CPU is sleeping is CPU Spy. To see which apps are keeping the CPU awake, there's a program called Better Battery Stats available on XDA and market.
As for stability, I don't mean over clocking the CPU...all I'm suggesting is to increase the frequency the CPU goes to when the screen is on, but nothing much is happening. This should still keep things within safe limits.
Hope this helps,
- chris
I find the interactive governor does a very good job of ramping to max right from idle (instead of waiting even a few ms like ondemand does). It assumes coming out of idle the CPU is starved. Then scales back once demand lowers. No fancy locking to min freq when screen is off (which can stutter some background apps).
There is many thing what can be done in the code of the applications. For example once I had a really sluggish app. It turned out that while I was dragging an item in the UI, the UI needed to be relayouted, and the draw calls were simply postponed: in android (at least that was the case before ICS) the drawing of the UI is delayed while the UI thread is too busy with events and layout requests.
To find these issues it's really useful to use traceview.
Hi !
I just published on the play store my first android app :
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.valxp.particles
(it's my first post so I can't post links :crying
It's a 3D particle engine that uses all the power of your phone.
It runs a thread per CPU core and is developed in C++ using the android NDK.
It's not a really usefull app for now. It just moves depending on the music your phone is currently playing, so you can use it as a audio vizualiser.
At the beginning you can select the amount of particles, on my galaxy SII I can run smoothly 80,000 particles and 150,000 on my nexus 7.
I recommend you to keep the particle size under 2. After that it becomes ugly
Motion blur adds some speed effect, but it may be heavy for low-end phones so you can disable it if needed.
It's really battery consuming, but I limit the framerate of the engine at 60 FPS and android limit the GPU at 60 FPS too. So if you use a lower amount of particles, the battery consumption will be lower.
Tell me if you like it or not. If you have ideas, advices, insults... :cyclops:
It's my first post on XDA despite the fact that I have been here for a few years, I never felt like I could be usefull, so I hope I can now
English is not my native language, so don't hesitate to tell me if I did some grammar fails.
Enjoy ! (And comment )
EDIT : Added screenshot as attachment
screenshot
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.valxp.particles
Replying to make a link.
In order to get the best experience from whichever app you are using, it is necessary to adjust a myriad of settings to cater to your preferred style.
So to help new users (or provide insight to those already familiar with the app), please feel free to share the settings that work for you.
With natural media, my preferred medium is a 0.3mm pacer. This way I can take a sketch all the way to a finished work with a high level of detail. All with just one tool.
So first and foremost I look for the ability to replicate this medium (as close as possible) in whichever art app I am using.
Until yesterday, the app that came closest from my experience was 'Sketchbook Pro for Galaxy'.
That all changed when I installed the new 'LayerPaint HD'
So I'm going to begin by sharing my settings for LayerPaint HD
*Please note that for an optimal sketching experience in all the apps I've tried, it is necessary to disable 'settings/system/s pen/Air View'
Otherwise that little blue donut will obscure a small area around the tip of your pen and will compromise your accuracy.
*For some apps, like this one and Sketchbook, I find that disabling screen rotation makes the ease of use much better as there is no annoying break to your work flow.
LayerPaint HD
My layout:
Settings (All options listed are active):
*Use of Pen Pressure
*Disable Single Touch
*Use of Multithreading
*Brush Interpolate
*Show Brush Size Cursor
*Volume Key Undo-Redo
*Position Toolbar Always on Right or Left
*UI Scale - 75%
*Show Pixel Grid
*Show Brush Opaque Bar
Now for the Brush Settings:
Pen:
Width - 4px
Min Width - 0%
Opaque - 100%
*Size by Pressure
Pencil:
Width - 3px
Min Width - 0%
Opaque - 100%
*Size by Pressure
*Opaque by Pressure
Eraser (Hard):
Width - 16px
Min Width - 0%
Opaque - 15%
*Size by Pressure
*Opaque by Pressure
*Soft Edge
Eraser (Soft):
Width - 15px
Min Width - 0%
Opaque - 3%
*Size by Pressure
*Opaque by Pressure
*Soft Edge
I haven't really played with the other brushes as they aren't that useful for my style of sketching.
Why I prefer LayerPaint HD over Sketchbook, is that with these settings I can achieve a very light thin line with my pencil and with a bit more pressure achieve a nice solid line. Very much like I would with a 0.3mm pacer. The sensitivity and range of opacity is greater than what I can achieve in Sketchbook Pro, so shading is a lot easier and my lines are more precise and detailed.
Nevertheless, my next post will detail my custom settings for 'Sketchbook Pro for Galaxy'.
Wow. I might need to pick up LayerPaint HD. I'll wait for your post on Sketchbook for Galaxy first, though.
While not app specific, I've been running my drawing apps through IOBIT Advance Mobile Care's Gaming Booster. It forces background apps to close and prevents them from opening up again so in theory is freeing up as much processor and RAM resource for the app in question.
I couldn't say if it makes a significant improvement or not as its become habbit to open them this way. I cant remember what it was like running them directly.
Interesting. I'll check out that app... haven't noticed any lag when sketching... so ill resist using it until I experience a slow down, then I'll test to see if the app helps at all.
Cannot find game booster anywhere if i search iobit on playstore all i get is 1 app AMC Security Thanks for settings ,btw what happened to settings fo r sketchbook?
Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk 2
Sorry, I got caught up in real life... haven't sketched in weeks. I'm desperately making up stock for the mid year festivals. I literally don't have a moment to spare. I may have some time to make that post about Sketchbook in 2 - 3 weeks time.
Sorry everyone.
=~. O =
FaeMinx said:
Sorry, I got caught up in real life... haven't sketched in weeks. I'm desperately making up stock for the mid year festivals. I literally don't have a moment to spare. I may have some time to make that post about Sketchbook in 2 - 3 weeks time.
Sorry everyone.
=~. O =
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After seeing a few questions here on this thread... I downloaded this app, and am impressed with such ease of use. Your settings are a bit better than defaults. Though I am a novice sketcher... more of a doodler. This app makes the stylus seem more fluid than I expected, and being pretty bad with pens and pencils, being a lefty. I was able to do some nice starters on hair patterns, that always drove me up the wall.
Thanks for not only giving out some good settings, but introducing an app that is not only good but fun to use.
I did not make this app, I'm just helping a China Developer to post on XDA.
Super smooth on Android touch screen, avoid content not-follow-up problems.
1. Magnificent screen sliding respond, easy sliding on screen and no longer delay.
2. Incredibly smooth on zooming web pages or images as well as any operations needing to zoom.
3. Sliding to all directions is unbelievably quick and smooth.
4. Unbelievably quick and smooth lists rolling.
5. Much faster launching and loading Apps.
6. Speedy and accurate typing experience.
7. Much rapid on playing all sorts of games.
8. The first power-saving optimization app that does not affecting phones’ performance.
Super Touch allows you to experience unprecedented smooth smart phones.
Main functions：
One of this App’s main functions is to allow Android devices sliding much quicker and smoother, which will solve the problem of slow drag.
Sliding, dragging and zooming are far smoother; content follows up your fingertip; switching columns is also a lot quicker.
Lists rolling is extraordinarily speedier and smoother, typing is incredibly easier.
There is also a very practical power-saving optimization function, which doesn’t sacrifice the performance of the phone.
Important Instruction：
720P resolution is recommended a level of 600-1314
1080P resolution is recommended a level of 1520-3998
2K resolution with Qualcomm’s GPU is recommend a level of 5186-6998
2K resolution, non- Qualcomm GPU is recommended a level of 600-1520 ( For example, Samsung S6 and Series Edge )
2K or 4K resolution with Qualcomm GPU both can use level 9998.
The above information is only reference; please adjust to the most appropriate level for specific phones.
1. Higher the GPU ability is, the smoother it will be within a higher level, relatively, a high level with a poor GPU is less effective.
2. After launching touch optimization and being enabled, it can work without running in background (about 1 minute to take effect, depend on CPU’s performance)
3. Do not switch off auto start-up, every time rebooting system requires a auto optimization permission.
There will be a small portion of extra power consumption while enabling the optimization system, and after power consumption will go back to normal.
Advanced function is a smooth level of 300 – 9998, it can be open to use when a phone reaches the standard.
No Root permission needed for all functions.
Sliding optimization will be disabled for some devices while charging, (system controls the effect when it disables) It will be notified of the optimization system disabled while charging.
YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEGYF_SE7SU
Download link : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lucky.one
Screenshots
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5. Create a thread or post a message only once.
As a large forum, we don't need unnecessary clutter. You're free to edit your message as you like, so if you do not receive an answer, revisit your message and see if you can describe your problem better. Not everyone is online at the same time so it might take a while before you receive an answer. (Also refer to Rule 16)
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