[BuzzStarField]

So I was looking at Venus, Jupiter and the crescent moon in a nice little triangle and saying to myself: "How lovely." Unfortunately, What's up disagrees with reality and the moon (as the app sees it) is in the wrong place - it appears to be off by a full day for some reason. I am happy to note that planets and stars appear to be in their correct places.

There is obviously a bug in the calculation which I am trying to locate and rectify. I hope it doesn't take too long to track down. Your patience is most appreciated.

It would be helpful if I knew when this problem started to display incorrect results. It may be related to leap year although I am a loss to explain that only the moon is affected. If any of you have noticed the problem, please let me know.

[BuzzStarField]

A bug-fix is on the way.

I will be uploading a bug fix to app world today and I hope that it won't take too long to get it approved. The problem has to do with the crazy way AS3 handles integer arithmetic - at least it's crazy from a java programmer's perspective. The moon has been in the wrong place for a couple of days when the rounding error became large enough to throw the calculation out by a day. I didn't notice until the clouds disappeared and Venus, Jupiter and the moon put on their show tonight. I was mortified when I checked the app. I hate leap year.

Until you get the update, advancing the date by one day will show everything in the right place.

I would really appreciate it if someone could leave a review in app world because I have no way of notifying others about the bug and how to work around it.

[DD1968]

Did that for you mate... Although my review isn't showing yet (for me). Pretty much just copy/pasted your post...


Edit... Ok, it's showing now.

[SCrid2000]

That's very cool of you to notify everyone that a bug exists and a fix is in the works well played sir.

[BuzzStarField]

That's very cool of you to notify everyone that a bug exists and a fix is in the works well played sir.

This is a great thing about having a presence in this forum. Wouldn't it be even greater if RIM would allow developers to send out a broadcast message when we have a problem like this? This forum is the next best thing though.

@ DD1968 - Thanks for the review and the rating. You're the best -- thanks.

[DD1968]

@ DD1968 - Thanks for the review and the rating. You're the best -- thanks.

No problem, anything to help out. Love the app and appreciate the hard work making and constantly improving it

[OttawaGabe]

Speaking of making the moon disappear, do you have lunar eclipses in the app? Kinda hard to wait for one to figure it it, but it would be a cool feature.

[BuzzStarField]

Speaking of making the moon disappear, do you have lunar eclipses in the app? Kinda hard to wait for one to figure it it, but it would be a cool feature.

I am certainly thinking of including eclipse predictions, both solar and lunar, in the app. It will be a bit in the future though because the app is still an infant, just starting to crawl, and I will be working on some more basic things first.

One problem that I need to overcome is my decision to use some higher performance algorithms to increase the efficiency of the vast amounts of number-crunching that the app has to perform. The performance increase is at the expense of accuracy. This means that I am not taking minor perturbations of the moon into account - which makes little difference in the current version but would make predictions impractical. This is less so for lunar eclipses. However positions must be absolutely accurate in the case of solar eclipses.

EDIT: The emergency bug-fix version 1.5.1 has been uploaded to App World and will be available as soon as the powers-that-be deign to approve it. The previous version was approved in a couple of hours so maybe I'll get lucky again this time.

[DMHinCO]

Thanks for the notification. I'll be in Breckenridge this week, planning to use Whats Up in the clear skies with the kids.

Of course the truth is I'd rather have cloudy, snowy skies every night, but that won't happen during this spring break. Slush during the day and stars at night. Whats Up will improve the experience.

[H2OLOO]

Thanks for the update Buzz. I was showing my 4 y.o. daughter Venus and Jupiter last night and noticed the moon appeared out of position in What's Up. Seemed to be OK last week, but can't be sure now. Great to know that you're on top of it!

Another issue I had last night, which might totally be user error, was that when i tapped the arrow to use the magnetometer to find the correct orientation, everything zoomed way out and the zoom/pan functions no longer seemed to work. Everything went back to normal after I pressed W, but automatic direction finding doesn't seem to be working on my PB right now. Issue persisted after a reboot.

Totally enjoying this app right now, and the kids love hearing about the planets and stars. Keep up the good work!

[BuzzStarField]

By design, if you are zoomed in to a narrower field of view than about 60 degrees, the app will zoom out to a wider view before auto-panning is initiated. This is because at the narrower FOV values, the chart bounces around so much (due to minor magnetometer fluctuations) that the auto-panning is disorienting to say the least. This defeats the purpose of the P&V feature - which is to get yourself oriented to the big sky. You can then touch the screen to stop panning and you can zoom into the object of interest.

To get best results, ensure these three things before tapping either of the P&V (arrow) buttons on the navigation bar:
-- that the screen is locked in landscape mode
-- that the media buttons are pointing away from you before pointing
-- that you perform a quick calibration routine as soon as the app starts (or by visiting the Magnetometer page and resetting the calibration, should this become necessary)

[H2OLOO]

Needed to run the calibration routine, now everything works as it should, thanks.

[stuka85]

hey buzz, thanks for the update!

i want to know if you have worked with the new SDK 2.0 and how the magnetometer works with the new sdk?

you have any plans to improve the use of the magnetometer to make the app more smooth using it?


thanks alot for your hard work!

[BuzzStarField]

hey buzz, thanks for the update!

i want to know if you have worked with the new SDK 2.0 and how the magnetometer works with the new sdk?

you have any plans to improve the use of the magnetometer to make the app more smooth using it?


thanks alot for your hard work!

You are welcome!

I am indeed working with the official API IN 2.0. I am having some unexpected difficulty in improving the smoothness while the chart pans in tune with events from the magnetometer.

It's better than with the 'home-grown API but not nearly what I had expected. So I'm working on some damping algorithms to make it as good as possible before I consider it ready for prime-time. I might add that AIR is not the best platform for this kind of application - unlike my first choice (Java) there are no threads - so at some point I fear that I'll run into a proverbial brick wall and have to rewrite the whole thing using the NDK.

But I'm stubborn and persistent so I'm still optimistic that I can make AIR work in spite of its weaknesses. You can follow my progress on Facebook. I invite you to join in the conversation.

[BuzzStarField]

Bug-fix version 1.5.1 has been approved and is now available in App World. A strange message about a license key popped up after the installation but otherwise things seem to be okay.

@DD1968 - With your permission, I have asked RIM to remove your 5-star bug info alert because it no longer applies. Thanks again.

[Saul89]

I'm getting the notification for an update but when I actually go into app world there's no update there. Not sure what's going on but I'll bet it fixes itself soon enough.

[BuzzStarField]

I'm getting the notification for an update but when I actually go into app world there's no update there. Not sure what's going on but I'll bet it fixes itself soon enough.

I wish RIM would fix their cache-synchronization problems in App World - it's most annoying at times. But tapping the "Reset" button in My World will usually set things right.

[Saul89]

I just played a game of monopoly and checked back, working now. Thanks for your dedication to your app and letting us know about the situation.

[FF22]

I got the license key message. But I was not watching the download. Do I have the most recent version: 1.5.1

[Norman_C]

My World reports ver 1.5.1
App reports ver 1.5.0
This morning's upgrade gave an error message regarding "unable to find... credentials (?)"

[BuzzStarField]

I got the license key message. But I was not watching the download. Do I have the most recent version: 1.5.1

1.5.1 is the right version. The message is a just another annoying bug in App World and doesn't seem to affect the installation. Please let me know if you discover otherwise.

[BuzzStarField]

My World reports ver 1.5.1
App reports ver 1.5.0
This morning's upgrade gave an error message regarding "unable to find... credentials (?)"

Did the app install properly? Does it run okay?

In my rush, I forgot to change the splash screen to reflect the correct version. I did update the version number on the about screen though.

[OttawaGabe]

My update worked just fine, and about is correct. Now I only need to wait for evening.

[jafobabe]

Just got home... download went fine... now have to wait till dark and I get outside for a good GPS fix...
Thanks Buzz for all your hard work!

[app_Developer]

Awesome proactive support!

For those of us who don't know actionscript, what exactly does it do with integer math (or conversion to ints)?