Is it possible to use QTVR files inside of native iPad apps? - android

I have a client who wants to have a 360 photographic view of their retail shop and allow users to click on particular objects to learn more about them (having pop-ups). I don't want to use the browser and would like all of this within an iPad app and an Android app. Everything I have read on SO is related to displaying on iPad Safari browser so am a little stuck. If anyone knows a good solution it would be appreciated if you could let me know. My client is asking me what file type they need to provide me for the photographic view.
Will I need to use something like OpenGL or Cocos2d to make this all work?

Export the 360 panorma as a single image, depending on the size, split that into several smaller pieces. Align the images side by side and use the user's input to pan the images.
Now you don't have to map 3D points, just use 2d points for clickable points of interest.

Related

Creating an interactive seating map in Android Studio using either a custom layout or webview

So I'm on my first android project and I'm implementing a native app. One of the components is to book a seat on a seating map.
General specifications:
Handle venues that have different seating layouts and amount of seats, over 200
The seats can have different sizes and shapes, i.e. large round VIP seats and standard square seats. Imagine small round stadium with a lot of custom seating and different orientation, with a stage in the middle. (I have an image but can't post because I don't have enough reputation)
What I have tried so far:
Created custom seat class with size, seat number, orientation and seat type
Used a StaggeredGridLayout and a view-adapter to load each of these objects dynamically from a DB onto this layout.
My concerns: No matter how much I was worked on it, it never came out the way I wanted. Basically, I think this is better for grid maps with one sized objects like bus seats placed in the distance between each other and doesn't have a huge irrelevant object in the middle like a stage.
I was thinking about changing directions completely after doing some research: Using webview? Each venue would be a web page, that would be linked from the venue object from the DB. Then in that web page, I could make this sort of venue a lot easier because I could just place out this layout manually and style with different div elements or make an interactive javascript map, attach a button and make a call using Jquery/Javascript to my native android app.
What are your opinions, is this a feasible solution?
To be honest, an interactive seat map development was the most challenging task I have ever had in my development life. But some how I have done it for an asymmetric seat plan.
This type of work can be achieved in following two ways.
1. Using GPU rendering - Much easier process as almost every device has GPU by default. It detects the interaction point and check it's RGB value to detect the right path has been interacted and return this through client interface (with some drawbacks). e.g: Webview interacting Js interface in android and others.
2. Using CPU based drawing - Draw each and every path on the canvas and repeatedly it need to check the touched/interacted point is inside the paths or not. It will use more the CPU if paths are more complex to render/draw on the canvas for every single interaction. (hug CPU usage and some other constraints)
I am tired of searching some library in android which is very useful like Macaw in iOS development. This library handles the interactive path inside a svg file and help to interact with the client side.
Anyways for me, neither of the two options are not feasible though. I will go with importing/downloading .svg file to your android application and make it interaction using JavascriptInterface in your app. Unfortunately, this is less worse solution that I have found out so far.
UPDATE:
Here is my approach to make it workable. See my medium blog post. Hope it will help you.

Which is a better option on mobiles.. sprites or individual image files for an app

This is mainly a question for someone who has adequate experience with mobile development in both android and ios, and knows about mobile application optimizations and performance, so please refrain from answering generic solutions like "choose what you like or what suits your preference etc".
So, I am developing a mobile app for ios and android in phonegap, and it has graphics for almost all possible social medias like facebook, twitter, snapchat. My questions is whether I should maintain the icons/graphics for each media as individual files, or as a combined sprite image.
I understand on web sprites are the best options, but since these graphics are embedded in the app, it should not be a problem for the mobile app. Only thing I am concerned about is how the number of embedded images and icons in the app will affect the performance of the app.
I prefer to keep each social media icon in separate file because it is used at various places in the app with different styles and sizes, so using a sprite in that place would mean taking care of background size, image width all individually, whereas with the individual icons it is very straight forward. Also makes it easy to add/change medias to the app without modifying existing graphics.
So if someone can please tell me what effect will it have on keeping individual icons and graphics within the phonegap app instead of sprites and whether it is the better option or not!
i have worked with a android for over two years and i have realized that pngs are the best format to work with in android application and for JPEGs the best practise is to use a hyphen to name the JPEGs eg image_one.jpeg
Using png's will be the best format as they have never failed.I would gladly help if u need more assistance

Texture/pattern recognition/matching int Unity?

I going to develop a game in which user draws a shape on the screen with his/her finger. Now I have some predefined shapes in form of textures already with me. What i need to do is to Detect what shape user made with his/her finger on the screen. For Example user draws an arrow on the screen, then on comparison with predefined shapes i want to know if he/she drawn an arrow. Now i need advises/suggestions the way i should go with
1) Draw a shape on screen? (Possibly with line renderer, Trail Renderer Or?)
2) Detect which shape he/she drawn? (any solution being in unity or Plugin)
Any Suggestions are greatly appreciated.
If you are willing to pay for it, the FingerGestures package from the Asset Store seems to have what you need, plus additional features that may come in handy. I haven't used it personally, but it seems to have good reviews.
Given that you require to do some digital signal processing, specifically in the field of Computer Vision, I fully recommend you to use OpenCV4Android, wich is a third party library written mainly in C with extensive platform support, including Android. With this you can archieve pattern matching, wich is basically what u need. I haven't used Unity but I'm sure that openCV is a powerful tool for this cases.
Good Luck

Fake iOS UI Tools

I am trying to put together a fake UI for an iOS and Android device without actually creating all that tedious UI work. Is there a way to mockup the UI from the images somehow? We have the Photoshop designs and mockups so far.
Are there any tools? I've checked Titanium and ForgedUI. While its a fairly simple concept I still think its an overkill to create all that. for instance I have to slice my PSD for the buttons. Plus the data feed has to come from a URL etc.
I just want something similar to Balsamiq Mockups linked screens one to another for an actual demo of a bunch of screens. We want to test the navigation, the fonts and the product concept while development is getting the product ready.
Thanks in advance!
The easiest way would be to use HTML. If you already have Photoshop mockups, you can simply export those to (retina quality) PNG images and add some image maps for navigation. If you add this site to your homescreen, you will have a pixel-perfect preview without Safari's navigation bar.
However, iOS apps depend heavily on animations. If you're going for a native UI anyway, you should consider creating a "real" UI prototype, using actual UIControl elements. While this is more work, it allows for much better UI evaluation.
For wireframing, a couple of options:
For high-fidelity mockups, I would do it in Interface Builder and storyboard, like JustSid recommended. Just don't do the tedious work of hooking up the UI elements.
You could look at tools like Adobe Proto. I've never tried it, but it seems like it might be an option.
For my super-quick, low-fidelity mockups (e.g. digital equivalent of the "back of the envelope" mockups), I personally use my iPad, a stylus, and a drawing package like Sketchbook Pro (use whatever drawing package you want, but I like one with layers). I also put blank device images on my iPad, too.
So, I open up my drawing package on my iPad, start a new drawing using a picture of an iPhone device as the starting point, drop on a new layer (so I can draw on a layer and either hide or discard that layer to instantly get back to the image of the blank device image), and just draw what I want my UI to look like on this new layer. This works great for brainstorming sessions. There's no automatic bridge from this conceptual, low-fidelity mockup to an actual Xcode storyboard, but I can draw a user interface mockup in seconds. I do this not only for brainstorming with designers, but also for fleshing out my own conceptual ideas, myself, too.

How to show contents in same way on different Mobile Platform?

I hope to show a dynamic generated HTML page on my mobile application. This HTML file is in fixed structured. Include forms, Images, and buttons. However, when it comes to different mobile platform, like ios and android. And also different cell phone, like android from sumsung or other company. The display result are different. Some of them are very bad. This problem is heavier for android system since there are many different company using this system.
For now I'm using a method that when user using the application, the application will send request with the cell phone model user use. And the server side will choose the correct HTML template for that phone. That means I have to write a HTML template for every phone. Consider the increase phone models these days, I don't think it is a wise idea.
I hope if someone could help me came up a solution to sovle this problem. Either a solution that will dynamic generate HTML templates based on user's cell phone model, or a universal way to create a HTML will fits all mobile display.
Thank you!
If I am understanding correctly your problem I would highly recommend using Twitter Bootstrap to design your html pages. This is very easy to use and with this you can design webpages which resize themselves as per the screen. The responsive css defined in twitter bootstrap handles all screen sizes for you and renders html pages on the fly as per screen size without hampering/distorting the look and feel of your html code.
You can get the source and learn everything about it from here http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/
This is a demo page made using twitter boot strap. You can try and open it in a browser window and then resize the window to see how the page contents re-arrange themselves
http://brocknunn.com/bootstrap-untame/
Also following are some tuts which help you get up to speed with Twitter Bootstrap
http://untame.net/2012/07/twitter-bootstrap-part-1-what-is-bootstrap-anyway/
http://untame.net/2012/07/twitter-bootstrap-part-2-design-a-responsive-homepage/
I just used this for one of my Android apps where I had custom html pages. It saved me a lot of effort and time. I only had to invest a few hours to learn how things need to be arranged in the html page and I was all set. I hope this will help you in greatly reducing your manual effort and save a lot of time.
Hope it helps.
Try to adjust your design to scale things in relative sizes. Android has a technique for sizing applications for different devices, you should do the same and create a generic site template for a range of devices.
For example, work with percentages, and provide a different template for devices that have screen sizes over 5 inches.
I would definitely recommend giving phone gap a look (http://phonegap.com/)
Also, you should definitely be using percentages in your css to be compatible across all resolutions (including desktop and laptop)
Gone are the days of being able to say this is what my site looks like you better make your resolution match it!!
Also consider offering just 2 types of site a mobile (with all images made smaller) and a desktop which has the fuller sized images.

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