Today has been unusually productive, with over 500 lines of code written and tested, allowing the app to reach a point where I have been able to test it on an actual device.

I can happily report that it ran really well… in fact, it ran much faster than I was expecting it would on my old &” Galaxy Tab, because it’s pretty slow. Despite the mediocre hardware, and models composed of over 3,200 polygons, the app was pretty much locked at 60 frames per second, which is the upper limit that Android devices run at.

Thinking about it after the fact, it’s probably not really that surprising that it worked so well.

The reason is that my app is drawing 3D objects that are generally long and thin. This means that the user will only  see all the parts of a rocket when it’s fully zoomed out, at which time it will occupy a small percentage of the pixels on the screen, which speeds up the drawing process because the graphics chip works faster when drawing detail on a smaller part of the screen. When zoomed in, the user can only see a small portion of the rocket, which also speeds up the drawing process because most of the rocket isn’t visible.

It’s a win-win situation.

The best part of this revelation is that I won’t have to skimp on the detail when it comes time to work on the Saturn V and the N1.

Nice.

Anyway, I have to say, the models are looking really good on the Galaxy Tab, and it’s nice to see the metallic shading working well on an actual device, without any tweaking which is a bonus.

I’ve attached a “before and after” shot of the Vanguard to give you an idea of how the metallic effect looks on something besides the Atlas. I’ve set it up so that the painted parts will retain a matte finish so the whole thing won’t just be shiny.

The Vanguard TV-3 is an ugly beast, but it’s a good demonstration of the technique.