Solar Explorer: The next update

March 04, 2012   admin   7 Comments

According to FedEx tracking, my Playbook will arrive tomorrow, so I’ll finally be able to see how Solar Explorer looks on it.

I can’t wait :)

I’ve had two visual bugs reported in the Playbook version of Solar Explorer, which will be fixed in the next update. The first occurs when the app is started while the Playbook is held in portrait orientation that I’m guessing causes the UI to be squashed horizontally across the screen. The other is that the Sun is flickering or vanishing when the camera is a certain distance from it while viewing Solar System orbits.

I think I already know how to fix both.

I’m not going to rush out an update immediately though as neither of these are critical issues and I want to add a few requested extras such as a mode for displaying the real-time position of the planets, and a method for controlling the speed at which the simulation runs.

I’d also like to add support for language translations, starting with French.

The reason there’s no language options in Solar Explorer is that there’s a lot of text and it was constantly changing while I was working on it, up until December last year. A professional translation service costs at least 10c per word for someone who will do a decent job, and with about 7,000 words in the app, it was just too expensive.

The alternative, Google Translate does a good job, but it doesn’t understand what it’s translating, so it will mess up reference material, like Solar Explorer.

Eric Desgroseilliers has kindly offered to take the French Google Translation, read through it and correct any obvious mistakes that the bot makes. In the meantime I’ll be modifying the app to accept translations and adding a screen to let the user choose a language.

Once these changes are done, I’ll be rolling them out in Android Market first, followed by App World a few days later.

The reason that my most favourite people in the world, Playbook owners, won’t be getting it first is that it’s quicker and easier to upload a patch to Android Market if there’s any problems that don’t show up during testing.

Posted in: Development, Solar Explorer   Tags: , ,
  • jess

    I did find a spelling error on the info about Umbriel. Says ‘though’ when it should say ‘thought’. nothing major, just thought id point that out. Also, any chance we could get more info on some of the other smaller moons? Even if they really are just big rocks in space it would still be nice to have them all :)

    • http://apps.burlock.org Neil B

      Thanks, I’ll fix the typo.

      One reason that the app doesn’t show moonlets is that the 3D engine can’t handle showing a massive object like Saturn in close proximity to a tiny object. It’s because the 3D engine uses 32bit math for performance reasons and the scale difference would require 64bit math.

      Some are large enough to be shown, but there just isn’t much information on them. We have a few photos, but most are just blurry dots at best.

      Also, there’s hundreds of them!

      I’ve included most objects over 200KM in size, but below that, there’s just not much information.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size

      • jess

        Oh yeah that would be a lot of work haha

  • jess

    Also, you may want to have it auto set to HD texture for the PB version since it runs flawlessly.. i didnt even find out about that option till a week later.

    • http://apps.burlock.org Neil B

      Yes, I left it off by default because I didn’t know if it would work. I’ll make it on by default in the next update for Playbook.

  • zektor

    I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the Playbook. I was! I have been an Android guy for years, and while waiting for the Asus Prime to become available I ended up buying a Playbook out of sheer boredom. I thought it would be something to pass the time..something different, and something to add to my collection of devices. Never did I think that it would be the sole device I enjoy and love the most, but it is. It was and is a refreshing change from the Android OS, and if an app is available for the Playbook I purchase it instead of the Android version in all cases now. Enjoy it, AND keep on making great apps for it! ;)

  • Ddd

    Keep up the good work man! My 8 year old loves the app on the playbook. He even ask me questions about the things he learned from solar explorer. Embarrassing i don’t have all the correct answers.