Apple makes its own compiler… illegal!
"3.3.1 … Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)."
This is the very bad (sad) addition (restriction) to the iPhone developers program everyone is talking about right now. And I feel very concerned about this... and now everyone is wondering if software like the Flash-to-iPhone packager, Mono or Unity are definitely banned from the iPhone programming tool-chain.
I never talked about it before, but Aerys is working on a project targeting the iPhone and the iPad (among a lot of other platforms). And this very project is leveraged by some home-made code generation tool. Therefore, we are very scared of what this kind of restrictions might imply for our business.
But as scary as this statement might look at first, it is actually even funnier when you understand it makes any iPhone/iPad application illegal. And it gets even better because even Apple's standard tool-chain finds itself... prohibited!
The reason is very simple: Objective-C, C or C++ never "link" to any library providing the Documented iPhone APIs. Objective-C, C or C++ actually never link to anything. When compiling your code, the compiler creates an intermediary representation of your program in order to make it easier to (eventually cross-)compile it. In the case of GCC, the compiler used to build such applications, those intermediary languages are:
- the historical Register Transfer Language (RTL)
- the tree language GENERIC
- the SSA-based GIMPLE
(Source: Wikipedia - Intermediate language)
This very intermediate representation is built before the symbols resolution and before any linking is done. Thus, linking against the "Documented APIs" has always been done "through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer". And it won't change anytime soon! But, still, I wish good luck to Apple's engineers in their future work to patch GCC and make it "compliant" (sic!).
To me, it is the most obvious sign that Apple doesn't care about its developers (but I was still pretty thrilled to eventually become one of them about a few days ago...). Not because it bannishes any interesting cross-compiling software venture. And not even because any iPhone/iPad developper who knows about other platforms openness and ease of production will feel sick just by reading this kind of restrictions.
No. To me, Apple is losing it all simply because this kind of idiocy can only be written by someone who doesn't have a clue about how a computer/compiler works! Apple started building casual devices and ends up targeting casual developers. Could this be the first sign of how (so called) intuitiveness - when enforced by completely hermeticly closed devices - finally makes people... dumber? So now the real question is "What happens when your developers program EULA is written by a marketing control-freak moron?".
PS : The title of this article was desgined to attract the eye. It is my interpretation of the latest Apple's developers program EULA additions and I might be completely off or wrong. Anyway, the doubt and worry caused by this very fuzzy and unclear addition stands as a major issue for all the companies and developers targeting the iPhone and iPad platforms.
AS3 Monitor released on Google Code
I just released a small but useful piece of software on Google Code: my ActionScript 3.0 Monitor class. This little class makes it possible to watch the properties of any object directly on the stage.
It was inspired by Mr. Doob's Stats class. But my Monitor class is entirely dynamic and you can watch any property of any object.
The following simple (and useless?) code sample show how to track the (x, y) position of the mouse cursor on the stage:
package { import aerys.monitor.Monitor; import flash.display.Sprite; public class MonitorDemo extends Sprite { public function MonitorDemo() { var monitor : Monitor = new Monitor(30); monitor.watch(stage, "mouseX", 0xff0000, 1. / stage.stageWidth); monitor.watch(stage, "mouseY", 0x008800, 1. / stage.stageHeight); addChild(monitor); } } }
And here is the result:
Here is another simple use case: tracking the (x, y, z) rotation of a 3D camera (the actual application is available on the official Aerys website):
The code is open source and available on Google Code. Comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Speaking at the french Flash user group
... or at least that's the plan! The next meeting of the Tonton Flexers - the closest thing to a "french Flash user group" - is taking place the 23rd of this March and I'll be there to present my 3D library.
I would be more than happy to talk about the software, the way I built it and the technical choices that drove its development. I will also try to emphasize what makes this library different through a few demonstrations.
Depending on the agenda of one of my co-worker, we might also present a very cool piece of software I never spoke about!
You can read more about the event here (in french).
AIR 2.0 HTTP Web Server
AIR 2.0 brings a lot of new features. Among them is the new ServerSocket class. The Socket class exists since Flash 9 and enabled a lot of new client/server applications. But it has always been limited to client side sockets as long as AIR (and the Flash Platform as a whole for that matter) is concerned. Therefor, this new server socket feature makes it possible to build actual server software using AIR!
Rich of this new and incredible ability, Christophe Coenraets posted a small but yet very powerful code snippet to build an HTTP web server using AIR 2.0!
Voice Recognition in Flash 10
The following video demonstrates a new "voice gesture" library targeting the Flash Platform. As you might have guessed, those "voice gestures" are pretty much like "mouse gestures" but they are activated by voice only. I guess it uses some kind of voice learning/recognition algorithm. I can't stress enough how trhilled I am to see this kind of new and powerful software coming to Flash. This enables a whole new kind of usages and applications...
Voice Gesture from didier.brun on Vimeo.
Frustum Culling in Flash 10
Update: corrected a few glitches in the bounding sphere creation routine.
Optimization is always important. But when it comes to 3D for the Flash Platform, it's an everyday battle. The first ideas that come to mind are to avoid:
- redrawing the same regions : each pixel value must be set once and only once
- rendering invisible objects : objects that are out of sight still take a lot of CPU horsepower
While Flash takes care of the first one in its very renderer, the second one is not handled. But that is something we can easily address!
The Technic
The method is called "frustum culling". The big picture is that every mesh is approximated using a bounding volume (typically a sphere or a box). If the bounding volume is visible, the corresponding mesh is rendered. The two following pictures show the frustum culling caught in action:
The mesh is visible: TPS counter indicates 18900 triangles per seconds
The mesh is out of sight: frustum culling is acting and TPS counter indicates 0!
Augmented Reality in Flash 10
For those who have never heard of "augmented reality" (AR), here is Wikipedia's definition:
Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery - creating a mixed reality.
Sounds a bit blury? Well... I'll try to make it clearer with a demo...
Demo
First, you will have to print a little black and white "marker". The AR software scans the webcam picture and look for this very marker. When it is found, its 3D position, rotation and scale are computed and used to embed a 3D object. You can found the marker here and it looks like this:
FLARToolkit Marker
Quake 2′s 3D models in Flash 10
Loading and rendering Quake 2's maps is a challenge because Flash 10 doesn't handle complex 3D geometry very well. But what about a smaller count of polygons ? Say a 3D model for example... already done! What about an animated 3D model then?
Details, pictures and a demo application right after the jump...
Load and display Quake 2′s Maps in Flash 10
The Quake-series is really awesome. Not only in terms of gameplay but also technically. Quake 1, 2 and 3 are especially impressive. No wonder why Quake's graphics engine, maps or models file formats have been reused in many many games such as Half Life, Call of Duty or Medal of Honnor! So why not in your own Flash 10 game?
There are so many reasons why loading Quake 2 files inside the Flash player would be considered as just "impossible". Performance would be the first and main one. One would just consider that Flash is not fast enough to display complex 3D graphics, not even those of a game as old as Quake 2 (published in 1996!). But using Flash 10 latests features such as the Vector and GraphicsTrianglePath classes, it is actually quite doable!
Details, pictures and a demo application right after the jump!