October 2008

3-D rotation without a trackball

in
October 21, 2008
Trackball rotation sample

UPDATE 2: Perspective rendering has been added: see below for the details.
UPDATE: 3-D scaling using pinch gestures has been added: see below for the details.

Recently, Bill Dudney posted a sample iPhone application that used Core Animation and a concept called a trackball to rotate an object in 3-D space using a finger as input. I actually use a different method of rotation within Molecules, so I thought I'd modify his sample to use that rotation.

That modified example iPhone application can be downloaded here.

Read on for more detail on this rotation technique

Presenting at iPhoneLive

in
October 8, 2008
iPhoneLive logo

UPDATE: iPhoneLive has been postponed. That's a real shame, because I was looking forward to meeting many people there.

I have been given the opportunity to present at the upcoming O'Reilly iPhoneLive conference on November 18, 2008, in San Jose, CA. My presentation will be on OpenGL ES for the iPhone.

This conference promises to be fascinating, as it is one of the first, if not the first, iPhone meeting after the lifting of the NDA. The list of presenters is very solid.

I've been asked to remind anyone who's interested that early registration closes October 14. If you use the registration code ip08gd20, you can get in for 20% off.

Molecules source code now available

in
October 2, 2008
Molecules icon

With the lifting of the Nondisclosure Agreement on the iPhone SDK, I'm pleased to finally make available the source code to Molecules. If you go to the main page for the application, you should now find a link to download the latest source tarball (for version 1.2) on the right-hand side. You can also download the source code here. I am working on migrating my personal Subversion setup so that you can check out the latest code and so that I can authorize contributors to commit fixes and additions.

Read on for a description of the internal structure of Molecules.