Miscellaneous on Learn OpenGL ES

Happy New Year 2017 Roundup – CHIP-8, Rust, and more

Sat, 07 Jan 2017 19:32:38 +0000

Lately, I’ve been more interested in learning about emulators and interpreters, down to the way that CPUs work at a low level. In university, the furthest down we got was C++ and we didn’t spend that much time there, so everything under that has always felt a little like black magic to me. To overcome …

Learning Java by Building Android Games — a New Android Game Coding Books for Beginners

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 23:30:13 +0000

I recently heard about Learning Java by Building Android Games, a new book by John Horton. John was one of the reviewers for OpenGL ES 2 for Android: A Quick Start Guide and helped me out when I was writing the book, so when I found out that he had a book of his own, …

A performance comparison redux: Java, C, and Renderscript on the Nexus 5

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 15:04:44 +0000

In my previous post on this topic, A performance comparison between Java and C on the Nexus 5, I compared the performance of an audio low-pass filter in Java and C. The results were clear: The C version outperformed, and by a significant amount. This result brought more attention to the post than I was expecting; some of …

OpenGL Roundup, April 29, 2014: Milestones

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 22:14:12 +0000

Two big names in the game development community are celebrating their achievements as they reach important milestones and bring their work to the community: libGDX 1.0 released Zero to 95,688: How I wrote Game Programming Patterns Congrats to you guys, and thanks for sharing your work with the world! In other news, I’d like to thank El androide …

A performance comparison between Java and C on the Nexus 5

Tue, 08 Apr 2014 01:31:32 +0000

Android phones have been growing ever more powerful with time, with the Nexus 5 sporting a quad-core 2.3 GHz Krait 400; this is a very powerful CPU for a mobile phone. With most Android apps being written in Java, does Java allow us to access all of that power? Or, put another way, is Java …

OpenGL Roundup, September 19, 2013

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 15:30:19 +0000

Here’s the beginning of a new series on OpenGL ES 2.0 for iOS, using Apple’s GLKit. GLKit to the max: OpenGL ES 2.0 for iOS – Part 1: GLKit Features OpenGL ES 2: How does it draw? ROBOVM BACKEND IN LIBGDX NIGHTLIES AND FIRST PERFORMANCE FIGURES! – Libgdx is moving to a new backend for iOS …

Android 4.3 Jelly Bean Introduces Support for OpenGL ES 3.0

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 17:52:41 +0000

From the Android Developers Website: OpenGL ES 3.0 for High-Performance Graphics Android 4.3 introduces platform support for Khronos OpenGL ES 3.0, providing games and other apps with highest-performance 2D and 3D graphics capabilities on supported devices. You can take advantage of OpenGL ES 3.0 and related EGL extensions using either framework APIs or native API …

OpenGL ES 2 for Android, Printed in Full Color

Sat, 22 Jun 2013 17:44:17 +0000

OpenGL ES 2 for Android is now in full color print! Have you ever wanted to learn more about OpenGL and graphics programming? With OpenGL ES 2 for Android: A Quick-Start Guide, you’ll learn about modern OpenGL graphics programming from the ground up. You’ll find out all about shaders and the OpenGL pipeline, and discover the power …

Important News for RSS Readers: Your Subscription May End!

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 14:44:33 +0000

Google Reader is shutting down on July 1st. If you use Google Reader and have not yet migrated to another provider, then you will no longer be subscribed to this site and will no longer receive updates. To stay subscribed, you can head over to this page: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LearnOpenglEs. From there, you have a couple of …

Beginning Android Games, to Learn More About Game Development for Android

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:39:19 +0000

I’m happy to announce that my book, OpenGL ES 2 for Android: A Quick-Start Guide, is now being readied to be sent off to the printers! I owe a special thanks to the publishers, to you guys, my readers and reviewers, and I also owe a special thanks to Mario Zechner, the creator of libgdx, …

Site Updates, and Thoughts on Native Development for the Web

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:08:45 +0000

I’ve recently been spending time travelling overseas, taking a bit of a break after reaching an important milestone with the book, and also taking a bit of a rest from working for myself! The trip has been good so far, and I’ve even been keeping up to date with items from the RSS feed. Here …

Introducing GLWallpaperService

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:07:58 +0000

Are you looking to make a live wallpaper for Android? Wondering how to use OpenGL from a wallpaper service? Mark Guerra and some other contributors have kindly made their work available on GitHub, at https://github.com/GLWallpaperService/GLWallpaperService. This repository includes an OpenGL wallpaper service as well as several samples that show you how to use the service. Yours …

Announcing the New Forums, and a Roundup!

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 02:36:32 +0000

Starting from today, Learn OpenGL ES now has a new community section of the site with a new set of forums! [Edit: Due to some technical issues and low usage, I have disabled the forums until further notice. I would still like to have a forums section in the future, so they can come back …

Introducing OpenGL ES for Android: A Quick-Start Guide, Now in Beta

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:12:53 +0000

Hi all, After nearly a year of working with the great team over at The Pragmatic Bookshelf, I am happy to announce that OpenGL ES for Android: A Quick-Start Guide is now in beta! OpenGL ES for Android: A Quick-Start Guide follows in the tradition of this website and goes into more detail, teaching you how …

OpenGL Community Roundup, January 2013 Edition

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 16:23:35 +0000

Welcome to another community round-up! A lot of people have been busy, creating great games, tutorials, and live wallpapers. Check them out below (in alphabetical order): Advancing Usability How to use the new OpenGL features of Qt5 Ino Pizza Snake Free pleyasLab Dolphins Real 3D Gaia 3D HD Free Rene van der Lende Kube — a tutorial …

Check Out These Cool Live Wallpapers, Games, and Tutorials by Fellow Learn OpenGL ESers!

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 08:00:20 +0000

The community has been busy here at Learn OpenGL ES, as many visitors have been developing fantastic games, live wallpapers, and tutorials of their own! I’d like to highlight some of the work that I have come across in recent weeks; if you’re part of the community here and would like to be featured as …

Check out These Cool Apps from an Early Student of Learn OpenGL ES!

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 15:18:18 +0000

An early student of Learn OpenGL ES, Miguel, has been working on some neat apps lately. Miguel was one of the first readers at Learn OpenGL ES, and we’ve exchanged at least a few emails back and forth about different topics, such as working with the camera through matrices. We were both learning a lot …

Android Emulator Now Supports Native OpenGL ES2.0!

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:04:50 +0000

For those of you who may have missed it, the Android team recently released an upgraded emulator image that has support for native OpenGL ES 2.0! That’s right; not only is it now supported, but the calls are translated to desktop OpenGL so they can be accelerated by your native graphics layer. It’s still better …

OpenGL ES Roundup, March 9, 2012

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 08:00:01 +0000

Thank yous and mentions A big thank you goes to the following guys who have recently kindly featured Learn OpenGL ES: The Khronos Group. The Khronos Group is a non-profit, member-funded consortium dedicated to open and royalty-free standards for graphics, parallel computing, and dynamic media. There is a lot of cool stuff going on over …

Google Celebrates 10 Billion Downloads on the Market: Several Great Apps Available for Only 10 Cents Each!

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:00:57 +0000

Android is booming very rapidly, and the market share has gone from nothing to dominating the market, within only a couple of years. I still remember when just a bit more than a year ago, competitors still thought that Android was only going to fill a niche market, and that it was “clunky” and “slow”. …