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Is there really a way to make OpenGL development simple and consistent across a wide range of GPUs and screens? It sounds to me like he's complaining more about

Is there really a way to make OpenGL development simple and consistent across a wide range of GPUs and screens? It sounds to me like he's complaining more about how hard low-level cross-platform graphics programming is, not Android itself.

m_eiman 16y ago
It would be useful to have an API that'll provide device optimal settings given a set of minimum requirements. It wouldn't help with the bug based problems, of course, but it's a start.
swannodette 16y ago
Provide one screen resolution. Change that resolution infrequently. Provide only high level access to the graphics capabilities of your platform regardless of how much the underlying hardware changes. Do not permit developer access to private APIs. Hmm, sounds familiar...
- DrSprout 16y ago
  >Provide only high level access to the graphics capabilities of your platform In other words, no.
- cubicle67 16y ago
  obviously this is a reference to the iPhone, but I'm not sure your second two points relate well to the OpenGL side of things; Apple allow you to write direct (C, using the OpenGL libraries) OpenGL code.
dabeeeenster 16y ago
It would be interesting to hear the comments other developers who had written an app that used stock UI components and didn't do anything too crazy. Games aside, a large percentage of the other apps on the marketplace do relatively sane things with common components. I developed a very simple app (BenPaper); it runs fine on 1.5, all the way up to 2.2. It handles things like device rotation without me writing any code to deal with that because all the layouts are liquid etc. etc. Admittedly it's a very simple app, but on the whole I was impressed with the defragmentedness of the platform. Compare that to writing a J2ME app, where you have to use a build tool like Polish to build 18 different binaries, run 6 different emulators on your development machine, keep an up to date list of devices and their hardware characteristics...
SamAtt 16y ago
There is a way to make development simple and consistent across a wide range of devices and it's called Flash. A platform that, last I checked, Google was going out of their way to integrate. (Which is why it's funny that the author of the post points to .NET without mentioning Flash in his article) The problem with this approach is that performance goes down the toilet (which is exactly what you see with Flash on mobile devices now). So what Google's doing is offering developers and device manufacturers a chance to write to the device itself through OpenGL. Everything has disadvantages, openness included. The author seems to want it both ways (open platform with Apple like hardware consistency)
- buster 16y ago
  Just as a sidenote: I've tried some flashgames on my Nexus One and had no performance problems, at least for the 2 or 3 games i've tried.

m_eiman 16y ago

It would be useful to have an API that'll provide device optimal settings given a set of minimum requirements. It wouldn't help with the bug based problems, of course, but it's a start.

swannodette 16y ago

Provide one screen resolution. Change that resolution infrequently. Provide only high level access to the graphics capabilities of your platform regardless of how much the underlying hardware changes. Do not permit developer access to private APIs. Hmm, sounds familiar...

DrSprout 16y ago
>Provide only high level access to the graphics capabilities of your platform In other words, no.
cubicle67 16y ago
obviously this is a reference to the iPhone, but I'm not sure your second two points relate well to the OpenGL side of things; Apple allow you to write direct (C, using the OpenGL libraries) OpenGL code.

dabeeeenster 16y ago

It would be interesting to hear the comments other developers who had written an app that used stock UI components and didn't do anything too crazy. Games aside, a large percentage of the other apps on the marketplace do relatively sane things with common components. I developed a very simple app (BenPaper); it runs fine on 1.5, all the way up to 2.2. It handles things like device rotation without me writing any code to deal with that because all the layouts are liquid etc. etc. Admittedly it's a very simple app, but on the whole I was impressed with the defragmentedness of the platform. Compare that to writing a J2ME app, where you have to use a build tool like Polish to build 18 different binaries, run 6 different emulators on your development machine, keep an up to date list of devices and their hardware characteristics...

SamAtt 16y ago

There is a way to make development simple and consistent across a wide range of devices and it's called Flash. A platform that, last I checked, Google was going out of their way to integrate. (Which is why it's funny that the author of the post points to .NET without mentioning Flash in his article) The problem with this approach is that performance goes down the toilet (which is exactly what you see with Flash on mobile devices now). So what Google's doing is offering developers and device manufacturers a chance to write to the device itself through OpenGL. Everything has disadvantages, openness included. The author seems to want it both ways (open platform with Apple like hardware consistency)

buster 16y ago
Just as a sidenote: I've tried some flashgames on my Nexus One and had no performance problems, at least for the 2 or 3 games i've tried.