[DEV(ish)]Minecraft! - Acer Iconia A500

[DEV(ish)]Minecraft! - Acer Iconia A500

Okay, so I got minecraft to work using Backtrack (HERE) in one of the other threads, but it runs poor(<1 FPS).
Basically, what I did was install the dummy video driver for xorg(xserver-xorg-video-dummy, iirc), and use THIS script to launch it. I then attached x11vnc to it.
The default TinyVNC server doesn't support OpenGL, you'll need to use xorg + x11vnc + the dummy
As far as getting minecraft to run, I got the appropriate liblwjgl build from HERE.
I got the appropriate jinput build from HERE
After you run MC for the first time, it'll download everything and crash. Replace the ~/.minecraft/bin/native/ files with the ones in these packages. The packages don't need to be installed, just extracted to get at those files.
You'll also need libmawt, provided by THIS package. That does need to be installed. Mine was broken on install, I didn't care to fix it, but it still worked. It just needs at that one file.
I got the best luck connecting to a network server with the MC process renice'd to -15 or so.
This is what should launch it:
Code:
./Xdummy :2 &
x11vnc -display :2 -noshm &
nice -n -15 java -jar minecraft.jar
Then connect to localhost:5900 for VNC.
As I said, it's unplayable right now. I was hoping someone could help come up with some ideas on getting it to play decently, as it's good for little more than getting on and chatting to people right now.
The only idea I had for boosting it was to find a tegra driver and try to get X to start with that without trying to attach to a VT(Will that dummy file do it?).
Also, the controls for VNC aren't suited for MC, obviously. I was using an external keyboard when I was playing with it.
I'll post a video of it running as soon as I can get a camera. My Iconia is my camera, heh.

Yeah, it runs poor on my HP Touchsmart tm2 with i3, so I doubt this would be any close. It's surprising though, considering the 8-bit graphics in the game itself.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App

well thats 8 bit graphics on top of rendering millions and millions of cubes. from a game design stand point. its really impressive.

gh123man said:
well thats 8 bit graphics on top of rendering millions and millions of cubes. from a game design stand point. its really impressive.
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Click to collapse
I'm assuming that was sarcasm...

It really is impressive. Most 3d games contain static rendered floors and walls. Whereas Minecraft requires that each individual block be rendered as a stand-alone manipulative item. It really does require a lot of number crunching and resources.

Yea, MC's large memory usage isn't just inefficient code.

Haha, well you're right from the standpoint of the fact that it's millions of blocks rendered, but if it's going to be that intensive, why use the 8-bit blocks? I love the game, but honestly, it's a little frustrating that it only works on my quad-core desktop. I'm curious to see how much fog will have to be in place for the Xperia Play version out soon.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App

cybermage1 said:
I'm assuming that was sarcasm...
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Click to collapse
*facepalm*
The amount of power needed to run something isn't just determined by flashy colours.

Maddmatt said:
*facepalm*
The amount of power needed to run something isn't just determined by flashy colours.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right but seriously - a cube at most is three polygons (squares) rendered at any given time. You don't bother to render faces that you can't see due to occlusion. If you store the world in a matrix(s) optimized for calculating what's viewable then OpenGL with hardware acceleration handles all of that very well and very fast.
If you're telling me that the reason Minecraft performance sucks (and yes, I think we all agree it does) is because it's rendering so many cubes, and if that's correct.... then the developer is truly dumb. And rich, but still dumb.
I've done OpenGL and DirectX graphics programming for isometric views before and it's amazing the amount of data that can be rendered very fast on a 486 when done correctly.
The Tegra2 renders somewhere (couldn't find exact specs) near 35 million polygons per second. If Minecraft is generating 35 million polygons for every frame, that would explain the 1 fps and support my opinion.
But I digress from the original topic. It'd be nice if the developer would put out an optimized Android version - just think how many more of us (including me) would buy it yet AGAIN just to be able to play on our tablets and phones. lol.

Rendering isn't the only slow part, it has to calculate what to render, light, etc... for each block.
Each chunk (16x16x128) has 32768 blocks in it, at any one time you may have upwards 500 chunks loaded (checking right now, I have 441 after playing for maybe 20 minutes), that is 16,384,000 blocks. Granted, you're never rendering all of those at once, but just cycling through all of them and reading all of them is incredibly intensive, on both RAM and CPU.
In the MC code(Check MCP for tools to decompile and deobfuscate it), you'll see that he's only checking if another block is on the face, and using that to determine if that face should render or not. My assumption on this is that it's quicker to render a face than it is to check occlusion for it.
Also, beyond that, you'd have to consider other things, such as the overhead for things like the X server, VNC, and the obvious lack of hardware acceleration on the X server.

Related

running ps2 emulators on g1 or downloading full movies

Hey ppl well ok I was talking to my friend yesterday and was telling me about he's fone that can run a ps2 emulator or the game itself. And then again this files were downloaded as torrents so yeah and this file are rar/zip .... now my idea is if there was a way to convert rar/zip files into apk format cuz this is pretty we can use on the fone and those jar those other ones .... but yeah that's wat I was think ... aslo for full movies I mean I have full dvd on my microsd but its in parts so yeah ... welll if anyone has something like or idea idl hit me up at [email protected] thanx and yes I'm noob I'm new but I had already 2 G1s both modded rc30 and rc33 1gig lol lates

Hate to burst your bubble, there's no phone out there that I know of that can even remotely run PS2 games... The pandora http://www.openpandora.org Might be able to run ps2 games (at a push), but it takes significantly more processing power to emulate a system (and more RAM)
Not to mention, a ps2 is a strange thing, it has a 128bit processor, the G1 has a 32bit proccessor (to the best of my knowledge), which is why it's hard to emulate a ps2 on a system with a 2.3Ghz processor and 1GB RAM (which is the last machine I ran a ps2 emu on) It would be insanely difficult to write a ps2 program in java, which runs dog slow (In my opinion) compared to C or Assembly.
After doing a little research, looking at the current development cycle, your friend would have some difficulty playing PS1 games on his phone, and currently no ps2 emulators run on ARM architecture (assuming he's using a windows mobile/iPhone/G1) although I'd be interested to know what phone he has to research this further.
The fact that the files were torrents does not change anything (Not to mention it's illegal to download games, whether you own them or not, and making backup copies of them is questionable)
rar and zip are just compression formats, which enable large files to be made smaller. An example, instead of writing out 7777777777 you could say 7(10) which is smaller. That's a very basic understanding (If anyone wants to correct me feel free)
apk is also a type of compression format with other things added onto, it's more like a .deb file for debian or ubuntu (look it up for more info). There would be no way to "Convert" rar or zip to apk so it would work... it'd be asking if there was a way to make a banana into an apple, they're both fruit but that's all they really have in common.
It's completely possible, however to have a full DVD on your microsd if you want to. I use a program called SUPER to convert my videos to a usable format... I don't see any reason for your movie to be in parts on your phone unless again, you downloaded it from a questionable source. I freely admit to converting my DVD's to a format I can use on my phone (namely mp4 for me)
If you want any advice at not being a "noob" then hopefully the following points are useful. Keep in mind that I don't wish to patronise you or make you feel like an idiot (I've seen far worse questions/comments before)
Spelling is key, Take a few minutes to type things out properly, such as phone as apposed to fone, thanks/thanx, people/ppl etc. A lot of people on the internet will refuse to help you, as they (and I) know that "words" such as "ppl, thx, gr8, hya, ty" and suchlike, were invented to shorten text messages, which obviously cost people money. On the internet, there are no such limits, and so that language is considered "lazy". This is not me having a go at you, this is just me stating the facts (you seem like a nice enough person to me)
Also, one of my gripes, is lack of research. Please don't just post on a forum for a question, and especially if you're not willing to hang around/periodically check for answers (hence giving me your email), i'll send you an email containing this exact text anyway.
Anyway, if you managed to read through this epic piece of text, i'll take the time out to compliment a fellow Muse fan on his taste in music (I recognise the two song titles in your username and email)
Sorry I can't be of anymore help

omg someone better sticky this post this is classic !
I must say Obsidiandesire you desire a gold medal for that reply bravo my friend bravo

Hahaha PS2. Let's work on getting SNES or even NES fully working before trying that, okay?

lol this is brilliant

Obsidiandesire said:
Hate to burst your bubble, there's no phone out there that I know of that can even remotely run PS2 games... The pandora http://www.openpandora.org Might be able to run ps2 games (at a push), but it takes significantly more processing power to emulate a system (and more RAM)
Not to mention, a ps2 is a strange thing, it has a 128bit processor, the G1 has a 32bit proccessor (to the best of my knowledge), which is why it's hard to emulate a ps2 on a system with a 2.3Ghz processor and 1GB RAM (which is the last machine I ran a ps2 emu on) It would be insanely difficult to write a ps2 program in java, which runs dog slow (In my opinion) compared to C or Assembly.
After doing a little research, looking at the current development cycle, your friend would have some difficulty playing PS1 games on his phone, and currently no ps2 emulators run on ARM architecture (assuming he's using a windows mobile/iPhone/G1) although I'd be interested to know what phone he has to research this further.
The fact that the files were torrents does not change anything (Not to mention it's illegal to download games, whether you own them or not, and making backup copies of them is questionable)
rar and zip are just compression formats, which enable large files to be made smaller. An example, instead of writing out 7777777777 you could say 7(10) which is smaller. That's a very basic understanding (If anyone wants to correct me feel free)
apk is also a type of compression format with other things added onto, it's more like a .deb file for debian or ubuntu (look it up for more info). There would be no way to "Convert" rar or zip to apk so it would work... it'd be asking if there was a way to make a banana into an apple, they're both fruit but that's all they really have in common.
It's completely possible, however to have a full DVD on your microsd if you want to. I use a program called SUPER to convert my videos to a usable format... I don't see any reason for your movie to be in parts on your phone unless again, you downloaded it from a questionable source. I freely admit to converting my DVD's to a format I can use on my phone (namely mp4 for me)
If you want any advice at not being a "noob" then hopefully the following points are useful. Keep in mind that I don't wish to patronise you or make you feel like an idiot (I've seen far worse questions/comments before)
Spelling is key, Take a few minutes to type things out properly, such as phone as apposed to fone, thanks/thanx, people/ppl etc. A lot of people on the internet will refuse to help you, as they (and I) know that "words" such as "ppl, thx, gr8, hya, ty" and suchlike, were invented to shorten text messages, which obviously cost people money. On the internet, there are no such limits, and so that language is considered "lazy". This is not me having a go at you, this is just me stating the facts (you seem like a nice enough person to me)
Also, one of my gripes, is lack of research. Please don't just post on a forum for a question, and especially if you're not willing to hang around/periodically check for answers (hence giving me your email), i'll send you an email containing this exact text anyway.
Anyway, if you managed to read through this epic piece of text, i'll take the time out to compliment a fellow Muse fan on his taste in music (I recognise the two song titles in your username and email)
Sorry I can't be of anymore help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*stands up and claps*

There's no way even the Pandora will be able to run a PS2 emulator. PS1/N64 era max, not even Dreamcast. Your friend was lying or mistaken.
Actually, the G1's processor runs about the same speed (clock speed alone) as the PS2's Emotion Engine. You can effectively emulate something when you have efficient code and a speed factor of about 10x.

Obsidiandesire said:
I freely admit to converting my DVD's to a format I can use on my phone (namely mp4 for me)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope you are aware that ripping DVD's from their DVD-Video format into MP4 removes the copy protection on the video, violating the US DMCA 1201.
It is COMPLETELY illegal to rip any newer DVD-Video into any file format (MP4, AVI, et certa). Do not go around shouting about the illegalities of downloading movies when you yourself are in clear violation of US laws.
coolbho3000 said:
Actually, the G1's processor runs about the same speed (clock speed alone) as the PS2's Emotion Engine. You can effectively emulate something when you have efficient code and a speed factor of about 10x.
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Click to collapse
Not true. If you're using the exact same processor, or a very close code base, you can get pretty nice speeds.
As an example, let's take the Playstation Portable. It runs a 333 MHz MIPS CPU. The SNES runs a 3.58 MHz Ricoh 5A22 (16 bit, ewww). The N64 runs a 93.75 MHz NEC VR4300.
Now, it only makes sense that the PSP could emulate the SNES faster than the N64, right? Wrong. The N64's CPU uses an assembly language very close to what the PSP uses, making it much easier and more efficient to write an emulator for it.
According to you, you'd need a 900MHz-1GHz CPU to emulate the N64. The PSP was doing it at 222MHz with 30 FPS.
CPU type matters a ton more than clock speed.

As said earlier by obsidiandesire there is no possible way to play any ps2/3 or xbox/360 games at full speed or with the best graphics so it is impossible and therefore him not knowing what he was talking about. Even if he does have a ps2 game on his phone then it's completely useless as anything other than that.Take the quake proof of concept video for the g1, watch it, and read all about what was really done to actually get it to play. But in lamens terms it was basically the g1 without any software on it or anything else that takes up memory or ram. Have you even seen him supposedly play it. even if you did did you make sure that it wasn't just a video he was watching and had memorized the correct movements to fool you into thinking he was.
You should come back with a clear video of it running and post it for everybody to see and step by step instructions on how he did it in exact details with screen shot.
Since you're a noob i'll give you a small piece of advice. Don't come onto a website for tech people and start talking all that bull without the evidence to back you up.

As said earlier by obsidiandesire there is no possible way to play any ps2/3 or xbox/360 games at full speed or with the best graphics so it is impossible and therefore him not knowing what he was talking about. Even if he does have a ps2 game on his phone then it's completely useless as anything other than that.Take the quake proof of concept video for the g1, watch it, and read all about what was really done to actually get it to play. But in lamens terms it was basically the g1 without any software on it or anything else that takes up memory or ram. Have you even seen him supposedly play it. even if you did did you make sure that it wasn't just a video he was watching and had memorized the correct movements to fool you into thinking he was.
You should come back with a clear video of it running and post it for everybody to see and step by step instructions on how he did it in exact details with screen shot.
Since you're a noob i'll give you a small piece of advice. Don't come onto a website for tech people and start talking all that bull without the evidence to back you up.

I really don't think he will be back y'all ripped him up and down..lolbut movies on my g1...sounds pretty cool time to start my reasearch( I too consider my slef kinda noobish so plz I mean please)

I give a couple of years max, maybe sooner if Nvidia Tegra is released anyime soon =]
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_tegra_apx_us.html
*note that NVIDIA is part of the OHA alliance. And here is a snippit from the above link:
NVIDIA Tegra APX Series
Enabling a compelling user interface and high-definition video playback for the ultimate low-power, visual experience, the NVIDIA® Tegra™ APX 2600 and 2500 applications processors are the key to building next-generation Microsoft Windows Mobile, Windows CE, and Android-based devices, including smartphones, portable navigation devices (PNDs), and portable media players (PMPs).

I got a friend who knows this guy thats dating his sisters ex sister n law who saw some lod over in China playing Gears of War 2 with a PS3 controller on the Google G2 cell phone!! If the G2 can do it, why couldnt the G1 play PS2 roms? /sarcasm end/

reply
Well yeah true thanx for the lesseon its awsome to something new everyday and sorry if in my last post I offened someone but I never do only if I do .. back to the subject umm well I got a message and my friend told me he did on the NOKIA N71 idk if he hacked it but yeah that's what he told me and he a nice guy and I told him if he can get some screens shots or a video of it and and that's what he told me I took he's word that's all ... and **** yeah muse ****ing rocks lol my fav band and I'm a mexican myself in amerika .. and yeah I came to this site to get answer not get e-bullied or whatever .. call me whatver u want it dosent hurt me its just words and yes I admit I'm a NOOB. Idc and yes ill try ASAP in here and I can just email as soon my friends gets at me and. Yes I post my email to see or hear sum fast questions that's all I'm a member so that's why I'm here ?? Right ?? And yup I'm a friendly guy that's all lol but hit me up if u wanna chat or whatever peace tech friends. Thanx for the re

Gary13579 said:
I hope you are aware that ripping DVD's from their DVD-Video format into MP4 removes the copy protection on the video, violating the US DMCA 1201.
It is COMPLETELY illegal to rip any newer DVD-Video into any file format (MP4, AVI, et certa). Do not go around shouting about the illegalities of downloading movies when you yourself are in clear violation of US laws.
If your making a back up of your own dvd's is ok as long as you dont distribute is ok to do with your dvd as you like but as long as you have the dvd it self. Unlike me that i have seven pounds, bejamin button, valkyrie on my phone now that is illegal cause i dont own the dvds yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

In my personal experience, at least over here in the UK (Where laws are different to begin with) then while it may be illegal to make backups of movies you own, it's never considered much worse than say not indicating at a junction, unless you start giving other people the movies etc.
Thanks for all the great comments though!
As a previous owner of an N71, which runs symbian on a fairly slow processor, then I can tell you for a fact that it's bull. I'm sorry but that's just the truth. I don't mean to bully you in any way although as I said in my previous post, because of the way you say things, make no effort in your next post (even though i gave you very clear advice) you'll probably get it worse now.
Just for a little information, I remember on a PSP forum, somebody asked for a PS2 emulator for the PSP, it was revealed that Sony's emotion CPU runs just a tad slower than the PSP (I think it's 299Mhz on newer models), with the Graphics chip at 140Mhz. The PSP uses a (32bit?) processor at 333Mhz, the G1 has an ARM9 Processor at 520Mhz (Clocked at 300 something for various reasons)
All 3 are different architectures and probably fairly different assembly code.
As a final note, I "Stumbled" accross this whilst writing this post, thought it'd be a fair (serious) thing to point out to our fellow Muse fan.
Clicky Clicky
It's even Microsoft certified (which is Ironic, considering I'm posting this on a Kubuntu box)
Once again, the comments are much appreciated!

sethrd said:
You sir, are my hero. Where do you live, because I want to buy you a beer.
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Click to collapse
Unfortunately my friend, I live across the water in the UK
I may buy myself a beer on your behalf... If I was of legal age (Just 11 more months)
I'll take a swig of coke/coffee for you though XD

OK ps2 emu was funny, dual core PC's cant play ps2 games all that well.
As for "full movies" I was thinking have an andoid appp that contains mplayer (since mplayer seems to work fine in debian/vncserver) it would offer the largest amount of file formats anyway

when will android get some good games?

i mean like EA just paired up with palm.. so theres a whole bunch of apps that were not getting..:\
anyone know of any sweet 3d games, that closely compare to ipod touch/iphone apps?
mostly im talking 3D btw

We'll probably have to wait more devices support multitouch, for now nice loolink games aren't really playable
I guess we'll have a bunch of nice games before the half of the year

Most of the polarbit games are quite nice.Spending a lot of time nowadays on Raging thunder,Wave blazer and armageddon squadron.You should try these.Iron sight is ok.I dont have the patience for the controls of toonwarz but the concept is nice.Wish i could use the trackball for these games.Atleast it would come to some use ,especially in FPS....

yea polarbit is like the only thing i had seen, il give some of the other you mentioned a try

The problem with games and Android is that Android isn't hardware-locked. I would imagine serious game developers would be turned off by this. It's a lot easier to program a mobile game when you know everyone's using the (almost) exact same hardware, like with iPhones. New Android phones keep coming out, changing the available hardware every few months. Programmers just may not be able to find stable footing.
Although I agree that we'll probably start getting more/better games once multitouch is running on the majority of android phones.

the other problems are the fact that android currently doesn't support opengl es 2.0, and the 3d acceleration is not very powerful (iirc, 4Mpoly/sec, compared to the iphone's 28Mpoly/s)

The iPhone has three big advantages over most Android devices when it comes to games:
1) Better 3d hardware
2) The iPhone has hardware floating-point number support
3) iPhone programs are written in compiled Objective-C, as compared to interpreted Java on Android.
That's not to say you couldn't get good games on Android, but the iPhone has quite a big headstart.

PlanetTimmy said:
The iPhone has three big advantages over most Android devices when it comes to games:
1) Better 3d hardware
2) The iPhone has hardware floating-point number support
3) iPhone programs are written in compiled Objective-C, as compared to interpreted Java on Android.
That's not to say you couldn't get good games on Android, but the iPhone has quite a big headstart.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wiki'd "floating-point number" but it was waaaaayyy to difficult could you give me a simple explanation of what it is and why we need it?

PlanetTimmy said:
The iPhone has three big advantages over most Android devices when it comes to games:
1) Better 3d hardware
2) The iPhone has hardware floating-point number support
3) iPhone programs are written in compiled Objective-C, as compared to interpreted Java on Android.
That's not to say you couldn't get good games on Android, but the iPhone has quite a big headstart.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 3rd point is a bit moot, since you can code almost all of the application in any language you want, and then wrap it in Java. From what I've read, you won't get more native than that, but you'll get the speed advantages.

3d games in canada we dont even have paid apps.... so sad

You don't need state-of-the-art hardware to make good games. Look at Wii, people buy it like crazy even if it's only a slightly improved C64.
I can't imagine enjoying playing, e.g., Crysis on my Hero even if it would be possible: tiny screen, no surround sound, no proper controls, reflections from the screen, etc.
But I can imagine enjoying a few minutes of Robo Defense every now and then.

PlanetTimmy said:
3) iPhone programs are written in compiled Objective-C, as compared to interpreted Java on Android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm. But isn't there an API which can interconnect with some compiled code written in C? The purpose of this is to do the UI frontend in Android-native-friendly Java and all the CPU intensive backend in C.
I'm not very familiar with Android SDK though so I am not sure if that's really beneficial and/or applicable.

another draw back is package size with the limited space availible for apps on the phone that would be a draw back. I have a hero and a pre the same day they released the update we had 3d games. The update gave a better path to the gpu and removed the app storage limit. I wouldnt want a kick ass game on my hero if it was the only program I could have. Program encryption and dl to sd card would help with size and so firmware and hardware changes would give a better performance. just my 2 cents

nirmalv said:
Most of the polarbit games are quite nice.Spending a lot of time nowadays on Raging thunder,Wave blazer and armageddon squadron.You should try these.Iron sight is ok.I dont have the patience for the controls of toonwarz but the concept is nice.Wish i could use the trackball for these games.Atleast it would come to some use ,especially in FPS....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can use trackball now, its alot better !!

mrniceguy715 said:
another draw back is package size with the limited space availible for apps on the phone that would be a draw back. I have a hero and a pre the same day they released the update we had 3d games. The update gave a better path to the gpu and removed the app storage limit. I wouldnt want a kick ass game on my hero if it was the only program I could have. Program encryption and dl to sd card would help with size and so firmware and hardware changes would give a better performance. just my 2 cents
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ye but apps 2sd solves that issue

stickyasglue said:
ye but apps 2sd solves that issue
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What are you talking about? Devs are not going to consider apps2sd sh*t of ROOTED phones when developing games. It must be official.
Anyways, only the executable code can be stored in main memory while all the space hungry content of any kind can be automatically downloaded to SD card by the executable itself rather than the market.

pauliusba said:
What are you talking about? Devs are not going to consider apps2sd sh*t of ROOTED phones when developing games. It must be official.
Anyways, only the executable code can be stored in main memory while all the space hungry content of any kind can be automatically downloaded to SD card by the executable itself rather than the market.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know, google is thinking about implementing Apps2SD into future firmwares. The only showstopper at the moment is copy protection.

[BOUNTY] Injecting PSX Images into Native PSX Emulator - $280+

** I haven't been around to keep this thread updated. Thankfully, AriStar has done a great job maintaining an extension of this thread over on the developers board. For the most updated status, please follow this link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1097428 **
I'm looking start up a bounty to get a development effort going around the Native PSX Emulator that comes on the Xperia PLAY.
The preloaded Crash Bandicoot as well as the selection of PSX games available from Sony use this native emulator, the performance in which is PERFECT, compared to FPse and PSX4Droid which have sound and choppiness issues at times.
Some discussion on this topic is in another thread, here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1044755 . We can see the psx image on the SD card with little effort, however the formatting of this image and the steps required to inject our own images is still unknown.
My ultimate goal here is to be able to run FF7 in the Native PSX emulator and support the disc changes needed. (From the PSX Emulator menus, disc swapping looks to be included, but as no multi-disc games are released, this may be tricky).
I'd like to throw in $20 to start this bounty and get discussion going.
Please post under this thread if you can contribute either to the bounty or to the development effort. If you have any requirements attached to your bounty contribution (ie: "Must be able to play FF7") then please include those as well.
Bounty now up to (or over): $280 + Xperia X1

Levistras said:
My ultimate goal here is to be able to run FF7 in the Native PSX emulator and support the disc changes needed. (From the PSX Emulator menus, disc swapping looks to be included, but as no multi-disc games are released, this may be tricky).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Disc swapping is probably less of an issue than it sounds - you only have to swap discs once every 10-12 hours for most games, and almost every single game that has a disc swap also lets you save after completing the disc and before the swap, so in theory if the PSX Emulator only allows for once disc at a time, you just make a wrapped image of each disc, save when you hit the end of one disc, and boot the image for the second/third/etc disc and voila.
While ultimately it would be a great feature, it's probably not strictly necessary and will amount to a minor nuisance in the short term.
Also, put me down for $10CDN towards the bounty as well.

10 Euro more. As long as it works, I'm cool with it.

Nice idea.
But my games run perfect in fpse.
Tell me what games you find choppy and i'll test them for you. So far i've played -
Time Crisis (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Demolition Derby
Rampage Universal Tour
Point Blank (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Strider 2
Die Hard Trilogy
and they all run flawlessly.
Would of tried more but i've been hooked on the nes/snes/master system/genesis and native xperia play games (backstab/nova2 etc) for the last month.

dsswoosh said:
Nice idea.
But my games run perfect in fpse.
Tell me what games you find choppy and i'll test them for you. So far i've played -
Time Crisis (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Demolition Derby
Rampage Universal Tour
Point Blank (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Strider 2
Die Hard Trilogy
and they all run flawlessly.
Would of tried more but i've been hooked on the nes/snes/master system/genesis and native xperia play games (backstab/nova2 etc) for the last month.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The one I care most about is Final Fantasy 7. Battle sequences tend to be choppy, the sound slows to a crawl when coming into and out of battle. The music sound sync in general also just isn't perfect. It's "good enough" for the most part, but stammers a bit, feels like a beginner drummer that can't really keep time.

Levistras said:
The one I care most about is Final Fantasy 7. Battle sequences tend to be choppy, the sound slows to a crawl when coming into and out of battle. The music sound sync in general also just isn't perfect. It's "good enough" for the most part, but stammers a bit, feels like a beginner drummer that can't really keep time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah sound emulation is more difficult to do than it seems. A ton of emulators (even today's Gamecube/Wii emulator, or the PS2 one) have sound issues more than anything else.
Also, I'll throw in $20 CAD for this. Hopefully it's actually possible and Sony's emulator is actually already complete. It'd be a shame to crack it but only find out it needs to be patched by Sony anyway.

Levistras said:
The one I care most about is Final Fantasy 7. Battle sequences tend to be choppy, the sound slows to a crawl when coming into and out of battle. The music sound sync in general also just isn't perfect. It's "good enough" for the most part, but stammers a bit, feels like a beginner drummer that can't really keep time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
final fantasy VII runs pefect to me on fpse, did you turn the sound sync and boost mode on?

AndroHero said:
final fantasy VII runs pefect to me on fpse, did you turn the sound sync and boost mode on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah ive turned on sound sync. It helps but the sound is not accurate. It eliminates the stutter but the actual sounds are inaccurate, plus the graphics arent smoothed and are overly sharp and a bit ugly. Compared to the smoothed graphics of the official Sony emu they look poor. PSX games run at 1/2 the res of the Xperia screen so smoothing is essential. Fpse slows to a crawl when smoothed
Fpse is good, but still has a way to go before its good enough for me to use for everything.
Sent from my R800a using XDA App

I'll throw in £5 UK into the bounty.
Thats about $5000 US isn't it?!

illuminerdi said:
Yeah ive turned on sound sync. It helps but the sound is not accurate. It eliminates the stutter but the actual sounds are inaccurate, plus the graphics arent smoothed and are overly sharp and a bit ugly. Compared to the smoothed graphics of the official Sony emu they look poor. PSX games run at 1/2 the res of the Xperia screen so smoothing is essential. Fpse slows to a crawl when smoothed
Fpse is good, but still has a way to go before its good enough for me to use for everything.
Sent from my R800a using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does the XPlays native emulator really have smoothing? I did think that Crash looked better than I remembered but put that down to the small screen and the fact that last time I played crash 1 was on a large HDTV.

I dont think it does, sony erricson has already done alot of things in an attempt to save the phones battery life (like the whole no autobrightness off thing)
I doubt they would add smoothing as it would get use up more of the CPU thus draining more battery life.
The only advantage I see with the official ps1 emulator is that fram rates are excellent and there are no graphical glitches.

Correct me if Im wrong, wouldn't one advantage be that Fpse doesn't really support the dual touch pads, but the native app should support them for any game launched through it.
Also for an update,
bounty is at 20CAD+10CAD+10Euro+20CAD+5GBP
50 CAD+10 EUR +5GBP
or about
75 US Dollars if u think in those terms .

bubblegumballon said:
I dont think it does, sony erricson has already done alot of things in an attempt to save the phones battery life (like the whole no autobrightness off thing)
I doubt they would add smoothing as it would get use up more of the CPU thus draining more battery life.
The only advantage I see with the official ps1 emulator is that fram rates are excellent and there are no graphical glitches.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does smooth, trust me - playing Wild Arms is proof enough for me - the graphics are softer and less pixellated than in FF7 via FPSE.
I'll see if I can take some comparative screenshots of Wild Arms in the Sony Emu vs FPSE (as I do have WA on CD as well) just to be 100% sure, but I'm already 99% sure it smooths (is that a word?).
Besides, smoothing wouldn't add that much hit to the battery - you're basically just talking about the bilinear interpolation function of the graphics chip, which is a pretty minor hit overall.
The reason FPSE chugs when smoothing is because FPSE is a generic Android app, written to work on ANY Android phone - so it probably has NO hardware GPU access at all - which in my opinion is pretty lame and shoddy programming. There are, what, like 30 different graphics chips currently used by Android devices? If I'm correct, they'd basically have to write in detection and calls for every chip into FPSE.
Whereas the Sony emulator was written explicitly for the Xperia Play and its hardware (the Adreno GPU). That's why it's 10x more efficient and faster than FPSE, and why it can turn on smoothing and still run better than FPSE does.

I know, my first post but trust me Im good for $10CAD

count me in for $10 CAD

put me in for $20USD

put me in for 10 AUD

illuminerdi said:
It does smooth, trust me - playing Wild Arms is proof enough for me - the graphics are softer and less pixellated than in FF7 via FPSE.
I'll see if I can take some comparative screenshots of Wild Arms in the Sony Emu vs FPSE (as I do have WA on CD as well) just to be 100% sure, but I'm already 99% sure it smooths (is that a word?).
Besides, smoothing wouldn't add that much hit to the battery - you're basically just talking about the bilinear interpolation function of the graphics chip, which is a pretty minor hit overall.
The reason FPSE chugs when smoothing is because FPSE is a generic Android app, written to work on ANY Android phone - so it probably has NO hardware GPU access at all - which in my opinion is pretty lame and shoddy programming. There are, what, like 30 different graphics chips currently used by Android devices? If I'm correct, they'd basically have to write in detection and calls for every chip into FPSE.
Whereas the Sony emulator was written explicitly for the Xperia Play and its hardware (the Adreno GPU). That's why it's 10x more efficient and faster than FPSE, and why it can turn on smoothing and still run better than FPSE does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Opengl should solcem ost of the problems of the multitude of gpu chips there are as the calls to all the gpu's would become the same.
Also, to reply to an earlier post, the touchpads will probably be supported in a future version of fpse, probably the devs don't have an xperia play just yet.

The game ISO is in a file called image.ps and appears to be encrypted. That encryption will need to be cracked before we can do any sort of injection of PSX ISOs.

ill throw in £5 GBP ive tied reverse engineering the app, tried and failed; i dont know what source code their using, but i cant get it recognized by anything so far!

Asus Transformer: second thoughts

This may be a slightly different post, since most of the users are big fans or / and happy users of Asus Transformer, but hear me out. For haters of long post – a brief summary of my post: the honeymoon’s with my tablet over, considering what to do now…
About 3 months ago I’ve sold my trusty Asus EEE PC 701 to replace it with Transformer, which I currently own. This was done after careful consideration and study of my needs and available products at the time. When choosing a replacement for EEE PC, my priorities were (beginning with the most important):
1. Fast browsing (waiting for EEE PC to boot became a headache) and emailing.
2. Similar productivity capabilities (I mostly work in Google Docs environment with occasional editing of normal documents and spreadsheets)
3. Occasional movies (EEE PC couldn’t handle 720p)
4. Showing pictures to friends (rare occasions)
5. Games, when there’s no work in sight.
When considering a replacement, I took into the account other devices – a better netbook, a smartphone, a normal laptop and, of course, a tablet, which I eventually chose (Transformer + dock keyboard). The start was pretty nice, until I’ve experienced full “features” of Android Honeycomb…
1. Browsing is not what I expected. In PC’s most browsers work the same, render pages in the same fashion, offer similar capabilities. In Android, most browsers are like day and night in some areas. E.g. only in 1 of 5 browsers I tried I was able to move between cells in Google Spreadsheets with my keys on the keyboard (other browsers moved the scroll bar). I’ve constantly encounter(ed) sites that recognized my tablet as a phone, redirecting me to a low resolution version. And by the way – without internet (I’m using the version without 3G) it’s rather useless.
2. Enough to say that a tablet is not meant to be used for a document editing. It’s basically a pain in the arse. Polaris app is more a WYSIWYG html editor than a document app, “Documents to go” app is let’s say a bit expensive. I’ve also did not know how hard it is to use copy-paste mechanism. I do use this in my editing a lot.
3. Movies also are a pickle. While PC can decode almost any format (by choosing a right decoder), Android can’t offer such capabilities. I have 5 different players, which I use to decode movies. Till now I didn’t encounter any movie that can be played in all 5 players, usually 1-2 players (sometimes – none) can open the movie. Subtitles (I watch anime sometimes) are also a headache. Didn’t know that earlier.
4. Picture showing is, let’s say, ok. But only after one update when Gallery app started to act properly, i.e. show pictures in an ascending fashion (before that I had to scroll to the end of the gallery to start showing pictures from the start).
5. Games… Well, what I found out that I simply hate trivial / casual games and the market is full of them. Angry birds / fruit ninja entertained me for one day only.
To make things worse, Google still doesn’t offer a separate search for tabled optimized apps and, most importantly, the market does not offer capabilities of filtering crapware. I found out that there are websites, rating apps in a proper way, but this is still a nightmare.
After this, I’ve tried to search for answers to solve the mentioned problems, but it seems the Android platform is still very young and it will take some time for it to become mature in the software area. By that time the hardware will be different and my current tablet will be let’s say pretty much useless. So keeping it and waiting for a miracle (I’ve thought that Android 4.0 could be a solution) may be not a viable solution… Unless you’ll convince me otherwise.
Rants aside, I’m considering to sell the tablet and buy a smartphone (maybe a HTC Desire S ?). Of course I won’t be able to edit documents or have a big screen for movies, but I hope having a great time with phone optimized apps, blazing fast boot times, better internet availability (I mean 3G).
Your opinions and suggestions about the current situation are very welcome. For me, it's a hard (and maybe an expensive) decision.
P.S. I’ve also considered buying a Windows 7 tablet (which would suit my needs), but found out that the user interface is still VERY hard to control with touches. I’ve also thought about waiting for a Windows 8 tablet, but it seems it won’t be able to run x86 programs, meaning an Android-like situation with little availability of useful software.

No offense, but after reading your post carefully I decided any reply I have is futile. You got the transformer with the wrong attitude. You've been using it with the wrong attitude. And you've been expecting things with ALL the wrong attitude.
It's best that you stick with a win 7 netbook or notebook.
PS - I have not touched my laptop since April. Between my PC at home and my transformer on-the-go, I have no complaint whatsoever. I see your complaints comparable to the complaints of someone who got a motorcycle intending to use it like a car.

goodintentions said:
No offense, but after reading your post carefully I decided any reply I have is futile. You got the transformer with the wrong attitude. You've been using it with the wrong attitude. And you've been expecting things with ALL the wrong attitude.
It's best that you stick with a win 7 netbook or notebook.
PS - I have not touched my laptop since April. Between my PC at home and my transformer on-the-go, I have no complaint whatsoever. I see your complaints comparable to the complaints of someone who got a motorcycle intending to use it like a car.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for an oppinion. Yes - my expectations were "something resembling a netbook with a hint of phone". But it's neither a phone, nor a netbook and the tasks I wanted it to do were very limited by the software, which I didn't take into account when considered buying a tablet...

i agree more or less. i owned a 701 too btw. i now own among others an eeepc 1015pem. but i use my transformer all the time. google editing is a bit awkward yes, especially with large docs, but google has his own application for that. it eases the pain a bit.
copy and paste, yes editing is not that easy. i own docs to go, but the user interface is not that intuitive. polaris seems to saves not always that good (it cant be opened with all others wordprocessors). open document format is not very easy to use.
but still i prefer transformer at work for all sort of reasons:
* battery, i can use the transformer (with dock) all day long, with no other hussle.
* it is cool
* boy is the transformer silent - i like that way more than i anticipated.
* the touchscreen, although not always that easy, i love it.
* being more in the cloud (dropbox with 50gb), gmail, and polaris/docs to go, calendar, google contacts, it all works together: fast and easy. i like that too.
* i like the looks, and the way the transformer feels.
* at work with dock, at home: mostly tablet: reading, viewing, surfing
btw i am used to use linux on my netbooks, win 7 moves like a snail.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using xda premium

I have to agree with GoodInte tions over there; which is ironic because the EeePC 1015PE Netbook that I havent touched since September, was bought in April .
For your needs Android is not effective, for me it is almost as effective as BSD or GNU/Linux; where you use gdocs I use programs that I can run in a Debian chroot or I use a PC, rather than try and use LibreOffice locally with X/VNC.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

For someone who took the time to write that thorough analysis, I would have thought you researched the TF with the same level of thoroughness. Everything you point out in your dissertation has been discussed in detail on this forum.

Yes.. exactly what Rumbleweed said. You said you bought this 3 months ago; then you got it around September, which was about 2 months after I got my transformer (if you got it right at the start). When I first got my tablet, I didn't look through any of the online stuff, but I did start about a week after getting it (to know how else I could improve it further, but I was pretty lucky as my B5 had no problems except for a slight creakiness on one side).
Anyway, by around 4.5 months ago, I already knew several points:
-browsing rendering had some issues, some of which was solved by hardware acceleration, etc. (although, I didn't really notice this as an issue until I looked online because my laptop is old and slower by far)
-document editing is a little flawed because typing lags behind the physical typing
-movies.. well, I saw lots of threads about not being able to play 720p except in Dice Player or something, but I don't really watch HD stuff often except maybe for tennis (btw, espn 360 worked perfectly and looked great for streaming)
-there are a lot of trivial games (I was disappointed with this one too, but I found the emulators soon after, so I haven't played much other trivial games except for the more addictive looking tower defense ones)
tl;dr: I don't understand how you didn't know this by the time you got it as you seem pretty thorough (as per your post). Good luck though, I wanted a Windows 7 tablet before in the past, but they're either expensive as hell or ugly looking as hell.. We just need Google and other tablet-making-companies to realize that tablets are for more than entertainment.

asdfuogh said:
I was pretty lucky as my B5 had no problems except for a slight creakiness on one side).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OT but I always thought it was just me and my B50 with that, on the right/starboard side. Just happy to have none of the serious problems I read about here lol.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

Honestly, why not root and stick Ubuntu on there? I realize this would destroy the Android flavor, but that's obviously not what you're looking for.
Specifically:
1. How is not having 3G any different from your EEE PC with wifi? If you wanted the TF with 3G, there's a 3G version. Otherwise, I'm sure your mobile carrier will happily sell you a hotspot device and plan.
2. Do you have the dock? Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X all work for me on the dock. As for an office suite, how about using GDocs? I know it's not as slick as MS Office or LibreOffice, but it's pretty functional.
3. Yeah, I've found that anime can be something of a pain at 720p and decoders aren't brilliant on Android. It's what happens when the majority of the population uses iTunes, Netflix and Hulu for their media, manufacturers get lazy. I really wish VLC would come to Android, with proper codec support (especially with ICS' per-app hardware acceleration capabilities).
4. You know there are non-Gallery photo viewer apps, right? That's the beauty of Android, EVERYTHING (especially if you have root ) can be replaced.
5. Have you looked at the TegraZone? Or some websites for game reviews? It's honestly like trying to find a game for PC, there's a lot of crap to wade through, even in non-casual games.

laikinasis said:
1. Browsing is not what I expected. In PC’s most browsers work the same, render pages in the same fashion, offer similar capabilities. In Android, most browsers are like day and night in some areas. E.g. only in 1 of 5 browsers I tried I was able to move between cells in Google Spreadsheets with my keys on the keyboard (other browsers moved the scroll bar). I’ve constantly encounter(ed) sites that recognized my tablet as a phone, redirecting me to a low resolution version. And by the way – without internet (I’m using the version without 3G) it’s rather useless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried using Polaris Office with GDocs syncing? I know Polaris has some Google Docs support. Does the Android app for Google Docs work at all for you? As for the internet comment, how was your Eee PC any different? The TF and PC are the same in that regard. This isn't a Chromebook or anything...
laikinasis said:
3. Movies also are a pickle. While PC can decode almost any format (by choosing a right decoder), Android can’t offer such capabilities. I have 5 different players, which I use to decode movies. Till now I didn’t encounter any movie that can be played in all 5 players, usually 1-2 players (sometimes – none) can open the movie. Subtitles (I watch anime sometimes) are also a headache. Didn’t know that earlier.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had no issues with media playback since Dice Player came out. It handles all of my 720p or smaller video no problem. Even scenes that were always an absolute ***** on my tablet, like high bitrate Big Bang Theory intro (that always raped it) run great in Dice.
laikinasis said:
4. Picture showing is, let’s say, ok. But only after one update when Gallery app started to act properly, i.e. show pictures in an ascending fashion (before that I had to scroll to the end of the gallery to start showing pictures from the start).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd say better than okay, I love how it syncs pictures between all of my devices with Picasa.
laikinasis said:
5. Games… Well, what I found out that I simply hate trivial / casual games and the market is full of them. Angry birds / fruit ninja entertained me for one day only.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So keep looking. There are plenty of pretty featured RPGs. Go look at Gameloft games. Most of them are kinda crappy, but definitely more than angry birds.
laikinasis said:
After this, I’ve tried to search for answers to solve the mentioned problems, but it seems the Android platform is still very young and it will take some time for it to become mature in the software area. By that time the hardware will be different and my current tablet will be let’s say pretty much useless. So keeping it and waiting for a miracle (I’ve thought that Android 4.0 could be a solution) may be not a viable solution… Unless you’ll convince me otherwise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uhh.. just because Tegra 3 is coming out doesn't make tegra 2 any worse... the TF 1 is still amazing hardware.
laikinasis said:
Rants aside, I’m considering to sell the tablet and buy a smartphone (maybe a HTC Desire S ?). Of course I won’t be able to edit documents or have a big screen for movies, but I hope having a great time with phone optimized apps, blazing fast boot times, better internet availability (I mean 3G).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't currently have a smartphone? I'm far more productive with both. It's easy to pull out the phone for 5 minutes and check my email, read news, etc, but as soon as I need to reply to a client, the phone is absolutely useless and I pull out the TF. I tether my TF to my phone for 3G/4G anywhere. If I need to open a large PDF, spreadsheet, ppt, etc it's a pain to do it on the phone, but so much better on a tablet. Ebooks are also great on the TF, as is videos.
Other pros: super thin, battery life is simply *amazing* (I can be on it for 14 hours a day and it doesn't need a charge), quiet, no heat, great audio output for music/video with voodoo sound, touchscreen that lets me take complex math notes that would be hard to type quickly, allows me to draw out theories and ideas anywhere I am (I used this all the time for solving puzzles in video games, working out the answers to the google nexus twitter challenges), plus it turns into a freaking TABLET when you disconnect it (call it a gimmick all you want, it's still badass).
Sent from my Transformer TF101

asdfuogh said:
Anyway, by around 4.5 months ago, I already knew several points:
-browsing rendering had some issues, some of which was solved by hardware acceleration, etc. (although, I didn't really notice this as an issue until I looked online because my laptop is old and slower by far)
-document editing is a little flawed because typing lags behind the physical typing
-movies.. well, I saw lots of threads about not being able to play 720p except in Dice Player or something, but I don't really watch HD stuff often except maybe for tennis (btw, espn 360 worked perfectly and looked great for streaming)
-there are a lot of trivial games (I was disappointed with this one too, but I found the emulators soon after, so I haven't played much other trivial games except for the more addictive looking tower defense ones)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By the silimilar time I did not know about:
1. Google market search (how it's hard to find a decent app or a tablet optimized app)
2. Copy paste issues (ctrl+c / ctrl+v is STILL not supported in many apps)
3. Video playback. It's rather annoying to use ~5 video players. 720p by itself is not an issue. Almost all players support native (hadware) decoding. I had more problems trying to open lower resolution movies in, I presume, less common containers / codecs.
4. Page rendering in browsing. I mean that different browsers may render the same page differently. This was an issue in pc world loooong time ago and it's now almost non-existent.
asdfuogh said:
We just need Google and other tablet-making-companies to realize that tablets are for more than entertainment.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's an interesting thought that I do relate.

Gary13579 said:
Have you tried using Polaris Office with GDocs syncing? I know Polaris has some Google Docs support. Does the Android app for Google Docs work at all for you? As for the internet comment, how was your Eee PC any different? The TF and PC are the same in that regard. This isn't a Chromebook or anything...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didn't know about Polaris GDocs support, thanks. It works rather how I expect it to work... Speaking about Google Docs - the most common task I do is writing grades to studens in a spreadsheet. In normal PC's, you click a cell, write something, click on another. In Google docs (and most browsers I tried on Android, except one, that is REALLY slow) you click a cell, edit it and must press "SUMBIT". It's a big setback, when you consider larger amounts of editing.
Gary13579 said:
I've had no issues with media playback since Dice Player came out. It handles all of my 720p or smaller video no problem. Even scenes that were always an absolute ***** on my tablet, like high bitrate Big Bang Theory intro (that always raped it) run great in Dice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use that player too. Lots of unopened files, like with other players. Again, it's not about the smoothness of the playback, it's about supporting different codecs / containers.
Gary13579 said:
I'd say better than okay, I love how it syncs pictures between all of my devices with Picasa.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you suggest an app, which would work like default Gallery app, but support inner folders ?
Gary13579 said:
So keep looking. There are plenty of pretty featured RPGs. Go look at Gameloft games. Most of them are kinda crappy, but definitely more than angry birds.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Believe me, I am looking
Gary13579 said:
You don't currently have a smartphone? I'm far more productive with both. It's easy to pull out the phone for 5 minutes and check my email, read news, etc, but as soon as I need to reply to a client, the phone is absolutely useless and I pull out the TF. I tether my TF to my phone for 3G/4G anywhere. If I need to open a large PDF, spreadsheet, ppt, etc it's a pain to do it on the phone, but so much better on a tablet. Ebooks are also great on the TF, as is videos.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought about owning both of them. Maybe it's the solution I'm looking for, but now it seems that phone may replace most of the tablet functions.
Thanks for your answer.

I have to say, i bought the TF with the premise of getting a tablet that was at least as good as an iPad, without paying Apple Tax. After three months, I am also quite disappointed with the tablet.
I think what a lot of members on this specific website seem to forget, is that many people want to buy a tablet to just use, not to have to tweak and hack to get it to work.
I still cannot play live streamed 30fps 480p flash videos without juddering.
Apps (especially games) for Android simply are not up to the same quality as iOS - this is obviously due to developers not bothering with the platform. And compatibility issues is probably the biggest joke I have ever seen. Even Windows doesn't have that problem.
My own opinion is that HC was simply developed quickly to try and compete with tablet iOS, and was rushed out. I don't know how much of a difference ICS will make - that remains to be seen.
My biggest issue however, is as I said earlier. While I and most people on this website don't mind tinkering and tweaking with their tablet, the vast majority of customers looking for a tablet want it to just work - and HC doesn't. And the hard truth is, iOS does. Except flash, obviously.

Kaltern said:
I think what a lot of members on this specific website seem to forget, is that many people want to buy a tablet to just use, not to have to tweak and hack to get it to work.
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Recheck the title of this website. XDA Developers. Kind of like buying a 1968 GTO based on a recommendation in Hot Rod magazine then complaining that it doesn't get 35 mpg like a 2011 Prius. If you are looking for a " tap and play" tablet get an ipad.

Hey there,
hope nobody metioned it before, but why didn't you try installing ubuntu on your TF?
Well in my opinion its an even better os than windows and you get a bunch of free software with ease.
There is a thread over in the qa-forum from lilstevie giving you a pretty easy way to install ubuntu (as long as you got sbk1 at the moment)
It got no hardware graphics acceleration at this point but it didn't sound as you would need it.
Maybe this can save you a few bugs
Greets, coni
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

A lot of your cons will be fixed with the Android 4.0 update.

When I first bought my transformer, I fully agreed with everything you said. I even wanted to sell it because I felt I had wasted my money. But I have to say it is growing on me, for two different reasons.
1) Problems are getting fixed. Better software is coming out or I'm finding solutions to the problems I had. Just the other day I updated flash and started using stock browser to for tudou.com (Chinese youtube), and the videos played flawlessly. Astro made a update recently that greatly improved my file management experience. Granted solving these problems/waiting for updates is still a pain in the ass. But progress is being made.
2) I'm finding things I can do on the transformer that I couldn't do on a laptop. I was taking short notes during an evaluation of one of our teachers. I used evernote with swype (no dock), and it was a great silent experience with no laptop screen blocking my view. Reading books on the transformer is also great. It even got me to start reading comic books, The Walking Dead is a freaking awesome series. I never would have known about were it not for the transformer. And pictures, I feel you on the backwards order thing. But you can't compare sharing pictures on the transformer with a laptop. It's so much better on the transformer.
I still agree that 99% of the games are just terrible. If they can get playstation emulation working a good bit better graphics wise, I'll be happy. Speaking of which, I need to check to see if there have been any recent improvements to the sixaxis app and the emulators.

I like the simplicity of the iPad with the complexity of Android. Minus HC. Not a fan. I have this and the OC Ipad. I like games like Madden 12 and the new NFS and Riptide. Lots of nice graphics. One thing that frustrates me is there are Tegra 3 games out that will not work on Tegra 2. And there is not a huge offering for T2. So Will that mean T2 games will be obsolete?
I find Polaris and Docs to Go are just fine for preparing reports and simple spreadsheets. The 16 X 9 screen is great for movies as well as the nice IPS screen on the Pad. I give the speaker quality to the ipad. Not a fan of the speakers on the Transformer.
Hardware wise, the Transformer blows the Ipad away. Better camera, more RAM, the dock, USB and the sdcard to add on. I think if you are creative then you are using a net book. Plus I can wireless print.
I don't think there is anything wrong with wishing for that perfectly fined tuned device and it will come in time.
To the OP I would recommend the Samsung galaxy note coming out early next year. 5.3 inch screen. IPS screen, dual core processor, phone, and great note taking ability.
I don't like Apples scam of upgrading every year and the costs are incredible. I'm praying for ICS and continued tweaking of problems.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

Really, what video formats has Dice been unable to open? It has opened *every* file I've thrown at it.
Sent from my Transformer TF101

Rumbleweed said:
Recheck the title of this website. XDA Developers. Kind of like buying a 1968 GTO based on a recommendation in Hot Rod magazine then complaining that it doesn't get 35 mpg like a 2011 Prius. If you are looking for a " tap and play" tablet get an ipad.
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Click to collapse
Exactly the sort of reply I'd expect.
This site began as a Developer's site, but has since grown into a site for non-devs to get help and information.
You are basically saying that unless you know what 'sudo' means, you shouldn't buy anything other than an ipad, and you shouldn't be on this site.
Which is arrogant and well, not unexpected.

Finally REAL info about hardware acceleration, ICS, and the Nexus S.

This is a must-read.
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s
I gather a couple of interesting things from this: 1) the ICS OTA will be a drastic improvement over the ICS ROMs we have now, and 2) I thought it interesting how Google will actually improve UI smoothness in the Nexus S by turning OFF hardware acceleration in some areas.
This really clears up a lot of misconceptions and wrong information people around here seem to pass around regarding UI speed and hardware acceleration
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App

Good find man, lot of useful info.
From Degobah

Utterly fantastic find, and a must-read for anyone concerned with Android UI performance. It's quite ironic that due to that 8-MB per-process memory hit, it's actually faster for the Nexus S to render parts of the UI in software. I wonder if the same driver limitations are present in iOS, since they use PowerVR GPUs as well.
For reference, I am including Dianne's complete post below.
Dianne Hackborn said:
How about some Android graphics true facts?
I get tired of seeing so much misinformation posted and repeated all over the place about how graphics rendering works on Android. Here is some truth:
• Android has always used some hardware accelerated drawing. Since before 1.0 all window compositing to the display has been done with hardware.
• This means that many of the animations you see have always been hardware accelerated: menus being shown, sliding the notification shade, transitions between activities, pop-ups and dialogs showing and hiding, etc.
• Android did historically use software to render the contents of each window. For example in a UI like http://www.simplemobilereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/2-home-menu.png there are four windows: the status bar, the wallpaper, the launcher on top of the wallpaper, and the menu. If one of the windows updates its contents, such as highlighting a menu item, then (prior to 3.0) software is used to draw the new contents of that window; however none of the other windows are redrawn at all, and the re-composition of the windows is done in hardware. Likewise, any movement of the windows such as the menu going up and down is all hardware rendering.
• Looking at drawing inside of a window, you don’t necessarily need to do this in hardware to achieve full 60fps rendering. This depends very much on the number of pixels in your display and the speed of your CPU. For example, Nexus S has no trouble doing 60fps rendering of all the normal stuff you see in the Android UI like scrolling lists on its 800x480 screen. The original Droid however struggled with a similar screen resolution.
• "Full" hardware accelerated drawing within a window was added in Android 3.0. The implementation in Android 4.0 is not any more full than in 3.0. Starting with 3.0, if you set the flag in your app saying that hardware accelerated drawing is allowed, then all drawing to the application’s windows will be done with the GPU. The main change in this regard in Android 4.0 is that now apps that are explicitly targeting 4.0 or higher will have acceleration enabled by default rather than having to put android:handwareAccelerated="true" in their manifest. (And the reason this isn’t just turned on for all existing applications is that some types of drawing operations can’t be supported well in hardware and it also impacts the behavior when an application asks to have a part of its UI updated. Forcing hardware accelerated drawing upon existing apps will break a significant number of them, from subtly to significantly.)
• Hardware accelerated drawing is not all full of win. For example on the PVR drivers of devices like the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus, simply starting to use OpenGL in a process eats about 8MB of RAM. Given that our process overhead is about 2MB, this is pretty huge. That RAM takes away from other things, such as the number of background processes that can be kept running, potentially slowing down things like app switching.
• Because of the overhead of OpenGL, one may very well not want to use it for drawing. For example some of the work we are doing to make Android 4.0 run well on the Nexus S has involved turning off hardware accelerated drawing in parts of the UI so we don’t lose 8MB of RAM in the system process, another 8MB in the phone process, another 8MB in the system UI process, etc. Trust me, you won’t notice -- there is just no benefit on that device in using OpenGL to draw something like the status bar, even with fancy animations going on in there.
• Hardware accelerated drawing is not a magical silver bullet to butter-smooth UI. There are many different efforts that have been going on towards this, such as improved scheduling of foreground vs. background threads in 1.6, rewriting the input system in 2.3, strict mode, concurrent garbage collection, loaders, etc. If you want to achieve 60fps, you have 20 milliseconds to handle each frame. This is not a lot of time. Just touching the flash storage system in the thread that is running the UI can in some cases introduce a delay that puts you out of that timing window, especially if you are writing to storage.
• A recent example of the kinds of interesting things that impact UI smoothness: we noticed that ICS on Nexus S was actually less smooth when scrolling through lists than it was on Gingerbread. It turned out that the reason for this was due to subtle changes in timing, so that sometimes in ICS as the app was retrieving touch events and drawing the screen, it would go to get the next event slightly before it was ready, causing it to visibly miss a frame while tracking the finger even though it was drawing the screen at a solid 60fps.
• When people have historically compared web browser scrolling between Android and iOS, most of the differences they are seeing are not due to hardware accelerated drawing. Originally Android went a different route for its web page rendering and made different compromises: the web page is turned in to a display list, which is continually rendered to the screen, instead of using tiles. This has the benefit that scrolling and zooming never have artifacts of tiles that haven’t yet been drawn. Its downside is that as the graphics on the web page get more complicated to draw the frame rate goes down. As of Android 3.0, the browser now uses tiles, so it can maintain a consistent frame rate as you scroll or zoom, with the negative of having artifacts when newly needed tiles can’t be rendered quickly enough. The tiles themselves are rendered in software, which I believe is the case for iOS as well. (And this tile-based approach could be used prior to 3.0 without hardware accelerated drawing; as mentioned previously, the Nexus S CPU can easily draw the tiles to the window at 60fps.)
• Hardware accleration does not magically make drawing performance problems disappear. There is still a limit to how much the GPU can do. A recent interesting example of this is tablets built with Tegra 2 -- that GPU can touch every pixel of a 1024x800 screen about 2.5 times at 60fps. Now consider the Android 3.0 tablet home screen where you are switching to the all apps list: you need to draw the background (1x all pixels), then the layer of shortcuts and widgets (let’s be nice and say this is .5x all pixels), then the black background of all apps (1x all pixels), and the icons and labels of all apps (.5x all pixels). We’ve already blown our per-pixel budget, and we haven’t even composited the separate windows to the final display yet. To get 60fps animation, Android 3.0 and later use a number of tricks. A big one is that it tries to put all windows into overlays instead of having to copy them to the framebuffer with the GPU. In the case here even with that we are still over-budget, but we have another trick: because the wallpaper on Android is in a separate window, we can make this window larger than the screen to hold the entire bitmap. Now, as you scroll, the movement of the background doesn’t require any drawing, just moving its window... and because this window is in an overlay, it doesn’t even need to be composited to the screen with the GPU.
• As device screen resolution goes up, achieving a 60fps UI is closely related to GPU speed and especially the GPU’s memory bus bandwidth. In fact, if you want to get an idea of the performance of a piece of hardware, always pay close attention to the memory bus bandwidth. There are plenty of times where the CPU (especially with those wonderful NEON instructions) can go a lot faster than the memory bus.
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Click to collapse

Skimmed through it but it seems that its a compromise to free RAM but not really to speed up performance. Maybe faster app switching but not scrolling, animations, etc. Hopefully the Galaxy Nexus comes to Sprint.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

Award Tour said:
Skimmed through it but it seems that its a compromise to free RAM but not really to speed up performance. Maybe faster app switching but not scrolling, animations, etc. Hopefully the Galaxy Nexus comes to Sprint.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1) Faster app-switching IS improved performance.
2) Maybe you skimmed past this part?
"A recent example of the kinds of interesting things that impact UI smoothness: we noticed that ICS on Nexus S was actually less smooth when scrolling through lists than it was on Gingerbread. It turned out that the reason for this was due to subtle changes in timing, so that sometimes in ICS as the app was retrieving touch events and drawing the screen, it would go to get the next event slightly before it was ready, causing it to visibly miss a frame while tracking the finger even though it was drawing the screen at a solid 60fps."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

matt2053 said:
1) Faster app-switching IS improved performance.
2) Maybe you skimmed past this part?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Freeing RAM to allow more background processes and faster app switching would mean (app launching) performance that is no better than what we already have. With ICS and the anticipation of HW acceleration, we all wanted BETTER INTERACTIVE performance. From playing around with it on the AOSP build, I can clearly see its faster than 2.3 on that regard. I experience constant app relaunching, much more than 2.3 so maybe that's what Google is talking about. But Google scaling GPU acceleration back because of RAM limitations is kind of disappointing to me but understandable.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

thnx for posting this again. I have read his post a while ago. And it was very informative. I am beginning to understand Android more. And I'm beginning to get more excited with the upcoming ICS update for our phone.

Award Tour said:
Freeing RAM to allow more background processes and faster app switching would mean performance that is no better than what we already have. With ICS and the anticipation of HW acceleration, we all wanted BETTER INTERACTIVE performance. From playing around with it on the AOSP build, I can clearly see its faster than 2.3 on that regard. I experience constant app relaunching, much more than 2.3 so maybe that's what Google is talking about. But Google scaling that back because of RAM limitations is kind of disappointing to me but understandable.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I think the constant app re-launching is exactly what they are trying to fix by limiting the HW acceleration.
There are also several comments from other members of the Android team about how they are regularly blown away by how well the Nexus S Hummingbird processor handles SW rendering, and that it does so with such ease that you won't notice the difference, because it will be a steady 60 fps, and 60 fps is 60 fps to the user.
But the main thing that I think is important to take away from reading the post is that Google seems to know exactly wtf they're doing in this area, and they're doing a lot of work perfecting ICS performance on the Nexus S before they release it. So anyone who has felt disappointment regarding performance of ICS on the Nexus S so far can be assured that their apprehensions are indeed premature, and the Google team is keenly aware of the exact same performance issues that have been noted in this forum.
Plus they want it perfect on Nexus S because that seems to be the phone most Googlers personally own and use

Because of the overhead of OpenGL, one may very well not want to use it for drawing. For example some of the work we are doing to make Android 4.0 run well on the Nexus S has involved turning off hardware accelerated drawing in parts of the UI so we don’t lose 8MB of RAM in the system process, another 8MB in the phone process, another 8MB in the system UI process, etc. Trust me, you won’t notice -- there is just no benefit on that device in using OpenGL to draw something like the status bar, even with fancy animations going on in there.
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Click to collapse
good enough explanation for me. So we can expect a better performing ICS for our nexus S. I am always pissed on how my nexus running on an alpha ICS rom can have a very very slow and painful app switching.

matt2053 said:
Yeah, I think the constant app re-launching is exactly what they are trying to fix by limiting the HW acceleration.
There are also several comments from other members of the Android team about how they are regularly blown away by how well the Nexus S Hummingbird processor handles SW rendering, and that it does so with such ease that you won't notice the difference, because it will be a steady 60 fps, and 60 fps is 60 fps to the user.
But the main thing that I think is important to take away from reading the post is that Google seems to know exactly wtf they're doing in this area, and they're doing a lot of work perfecting ICS performance on the Nexus S before they release it. So anyone who has felt disappointment regarding performance of ICS on the Nexus S so far can be assured that their apprehensions are indeed premature, and the Google team is keenly aware of the exact same performance issues that have been noted in this forum.
Plus they want it perfect on Nexus S because that seems to be the phone most Googlers personally own and use
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know about you but third party apps with hardware acceleration on is visibly more smooth than the same app on 2.3. Night and day difference. I wonder how much of it they're scaling back. Its too bad that you can't easily upgrade RAM on a phone.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

Award Tour said:
I don't know about you but third party apps with hardware acceleration on is visibly more smooth than the same app on 2.3. Night and day difference. I wonder how much of it they're scaling back. Its too bad that you can't easily upgrade RAM on a phone.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't get from her post that hardware rendering within app windows would be disabled. Just that certain parts of the UI will be drawn with software executed by the CPU.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App

Good read! Thanks for posting

Not bad
Thx

matt2053 said:
This is a must-read.
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s
I gather a couple of interesting things from this: 1) the ICS OTA will be a drastic improvement over the ICS ROMs we have now, and 2) I thought it interesting how Google will actually improve UI smoothness in the Nexus S by turning OFF hardware acceleration in some areas.
This really clears up a lot of misconceptions and wrong information people around here seem to pass around regarding UI speed and hardware acceleration
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using xda premium

My comments, since I do some graphics work professionally:
Either I'm reading this wrong or Android has an extremely stupid rendering design. I do professional embedded GL graphics (and some Qt) so I'm not up to date with the Android framework yet:
* Why isn't drawing a client-server model where all draw commands are funneled to a unified multi-threaded draw server? That way, each app doesn't need a 8MB chunk of driver memory (which is stupid in itself already especially on embedded, Windows Mobile, Qt on Windows Mobile, etc). Only full-screen apps should have direct rendering to the framebuffer. Android is already suffering from draw consistency, resource contention by allowing each app to direct render. C-S would separate touch event contention from drawing contention that each Android app suffers from and why iOS has smoother UI.
* Why isn't Android using a multi-process scene-graph (each app is a item, and then each item has multiple sub-graphs per app) so Android can not only retain what needs to be drawn per global animation updates, but can instantly and easily cull unnecessary updates per app. Putting each app into an overlay isn't the best way to go without this culling.
* Why isn't Android using "dirty-regions" as another way to cull necessary updates (I assume this is what tiles are)? It should be since its a standard technique that dates back to QuickDraw and QuickDraw II, besides MS's windows API.
* With the pixel-overdraw bandwidth issue, Android can easily first cull through the scene-graph, then the per-app dirty-regions (or stencil buffer*), and then use the hardware-accelerated *depthbuffer to eliminate more overdraw, and draw front-to-back. This is just simplified because there's more modern GL tricks for culling. So, Android shouldn't have to touch each displayed pixel more than once.
* Is Android using pixelshaders at all to accelerate standard widgets such as buttons, etc? There's no reason to have large simplified buttons that can't be replicated by instanced models with pixel-shaders in a scene-graph.
Maybe Android should switch to the Unreal Engine for drawing instead, or some other modern game engine. These are all solved issues. Android has hardware that's generations more performant than the old game systems, but a software engine that's generations behind.

.
lol in other words no iOS smoothness for us fail I hope ICS hooks up my nexus s tho

NuShrike said:
Maybe Android should switch to the Unreal Engine for drawing instead, or some other modern game engine. These are all solved issues. Android has hardware that's generations more performant than the old game systems, but a software engine that's generations behind.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Aye, I agree with you there!!!!!

NuShrike said:
My comments, since I do some graphics work professionally:
Either I'm reading this wrong or Android has an extremely stupid rendering design. I do professional embedded GL graphics (and some Qt) so I'm not up to date with the Android framework yet:
* Why isn't drawing a client-server model where all draw commands are funneled to a unified multi-threaded draw server? That way, each app doesn't need a 8MB chunk of driver memory (which is stupid in itself already especially on embedded, Windows Mobile, Qt on Windows Mobile, etc). Only full-screen apps should have direct rendering to the framebuffer. Android is already suffering from draw consistency, resource contention by allowing each app to direct render. C-S would separate touch event contention from drawing contention that each Android app suffers from and why iOS has smoother UI.
* Why isn't Android using a multi-process scene-graph (each app is a item, and then each item has multiple sub-graphs per app) so Android can not only retain what needs to be drawn per global animation updates, but can instantly and easily cull unnecessary updates per app. Putting each app into an overlay isn't the best way to go without this culling.
* Why isn't Android using "dirty-regions" as another way to cull necessary updates (I assume this is what tiles are)? It should be since its a standard technique that dates back to QuickDraw and QuickDraw II, besides MS's windows API.
* With the pixel-overdraw bandwidth issue, Android can easily first cull through the scene-graph, then the per-app dirty-regions (or stencil buffer*), and then use the hardware-accelerated *depthbuffer to eliminate more overdraw, and draw front-to-back. This is just simplified because there's more modern GL tricks for culling. So, Android shouldn't have to touch each displayed pixel more than once.
* Is Android using pixelshaders at all to accelerate standard widgets such as buttons, etc? There's no reason to have large simplified buttons that can't be replicated by instanced models with pixel-shaders in a scene-graph.
Maybe Android should switch to the Unreal Engine for drawing instead, or some other modern game engine. These are all solved issues. Android has hardware that's generations more performant than the old game systems, but a software engine that's generations behind.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In case anyone wonders, this was Romain Guy's reply to the questions above:
"We use dirty regions and overdraw would not be eliminated through the use of a depth buffer since pretty much everything drawn by apps requires blending. We user fragment shaders and instanced models already. Apps don't have access to the framebuffer, they draw inside what we call a "surface" which is basically an OpenGL texture used by a separate process (the window compositor.) Android 3.0 already moves towards a full scene graph approach by keeping a tree of display lists (one per View) inside each window."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

barmanham said:
lol in other words no iOS smoothness for us fail I hope ICS hooks up my nexus s tho
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Click to collapse
I don't even consider iOS that smooth. Multitasking and app switching in that OS is a big pain. My IP4 and iPod touch 4th slows down a lot when multitasking. To a point that it freezes for seconds.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

I posted with my girls pre 2 and the multitasking in that is perfect
Sent from Oxygen 2.3.2 powered Nexus S 4G

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