[BuzzStarField]

hi,
i'm one of mappau's developers and thought it would be better to answer your mail/question here in the forum.
there is no "secret" behind our compass. it is a question of calibration and frames per seconds. It is written in pure c and open gl and runs with 60 fps. therefore we can guarantee a smooth rotation.
for those who have problems with our app please get into contact with us...

Thanks for this, it explains a lot. My own app has to run at a much lower frame rate because there is so much number-crunching required between each frame. I have been going about solving my problem using the wrong paradigm. My mistake was assuming that the driver was returning erratic output that needed to be smoothed. You have given me some ideas that will help me find the real source of inefficiencies in my code. Thanks again.

[mappau-dev]

you are welcome.
have you thought about porting your great application to native?

[BuzzStarField]

you are welcome.
have you thought about porting your great application to native?

You bet and I have a transition plan! It involves a complete re-write, of course, so I will be gradually offloading stuff like number-crunching and I/O to ANEs. At some point my app will consist of an Air shell with a native sky map engine purring in the background. Then i can implement native ui and open gl stuff. Hopefully, my customers will not notice even a slight hiccup during the transition (unless vastly improved performance can be considered to be a hiccup).

In my mind, my only challenge will be converting my mindset from Java development (my forte) to native c. To that end, can you recommend some reading material about native i/o, threads, open gl etc? Understand that i am new to c and have grown complacent over the years by using Java's garbage collector, thread model and extensive standard libraries for i/O and networking.

[taylor96]

hi,
i'm one of mappau's developers and thought it would be better to answer your mail/question here in the forum.
there is no "secret" behind our compass. it is a question of calibration and frames per seconds. It is written in pure c and open gl and runs with 60 fps. therefore we can guarantee a smooth rotation.
for those who have problems with our app please get into contact with us...

Just downloaded your app and it works like a top..calibrated accurately in second
Thanks for a great app

[Boight]

I'm REAL happy to see devs cooperating.
Nice going guys!!!!

[mappau-dev]

You bet and I have a transition plan! It involves a complete re-write, of course, so I will be gradually offloading stuff like number-crunching and I/O to ANEs. At some point my app will consist of an Air shell with a native sky map engine purring in the background. Then i can implement native ui and open gl stuff. Hopefully, my customers will not notice even a slight hiccup during the transition (unless vastly improved performance can be considered to be a hiccup).

In my mind, my only challenge will be converting my mindset from Java development (my forte) to native c. To that end, can you recommend some reading material about native i/o, threads, open gl etc? Understand that i am new to c and have grown complacent over the years by using Java's garbage collector, thread model and extensive standard libraries for i/O and networking.

well, finding a starting point is hard .
i recommend the bb example, included in te momentics ide. have a look at the hello world example and think about memory management.
in the next step, you have to rethink your graphics. open gl is stack based, which differs from c++/c
if you have never programmed in c/c++ before, you would start with c and go to c++ (which is object oriented, like java)
a start could be: A Crash Course in C

another good ressource is the blackberry native forum: http://supportforums.blackberry.com/...d-p/native_sdk (e.g. for threading: pthread)

[mhinc]

Hi Everyone. Is there a compass that is worth buying that actually works? The ones I have tried so far are very inconsistant and I am looking for one that i can use indoors or outside and can trust it to work.

I have NativeCompass 3D, What's Up and neither actually is consistant.

I downloaded Spark Compass and this seems to be the closest thing to finding a working compass.

Magellan Compass... surprise surprise... does not actually have a compas although it is a good map program which is long overdue for an update.

Brian

GPS TEST PLUS is an amazing tool! Has a compass, ACCURATE and tonnes more!