New version of Augmented Reality Tower Defense

A new version of AR Tower Defense – v0.03 Some bugs fixed (black screen bug)
and minor tracking improvement

Nokia released cleaner for the “Curse of Silence”

Nokia released tool for FP1 phones, cleaning the “Curse of Silence” exploit form the phones.

Still no high-performance Symbian device…

Just checked GLBenchmarks for Samsung INNOV8.

Samsung GT-i8510 Innov8 performance details:
High-level 3D Performance
GLBenchmark HD ES 1.0 : 1602 Frames
GLBenchmark HD ES 1.1 : 628 Frames
GLBenchmark Pro ES 1.0 : 328 Frames
GLBenchmark Pro ES 1.1 : 35 Frames
CPU Performance
CPU Performance: Float : 988
CPU Performance: Integer : 4183

For comparison –

Nokia N95 8GB performance details:
High-level 3D Performance
GLBenchmark HD ES 1.0 : 1944 Frames
GLBenchmark HD ES 1.1 : 1766 Frames
GLBenchmark Pro ES 1.0 : 395 Frames
GLBenchmark Pro ES 1.1 : 570 Frames
CPU Performance
CPU Performance: Float : 1411
CPU Performance: Integer : 4254

Old Nokia N95(8Gb) still beat best of newish Symbian devices hands down.
Other platforms had 600+ Mhz devices long time ago, Palm switched to new generation CPU – OMAP3430. After two years no one still able to produce better high-performance Symbian device ?

Fullscreen version of AR Tower defense is up for download

AR Tower Defense is fullscreen now. I ‘ve also changed default mode from portrait to landscape.

N95 camera distortion part 2

Could be wrong.
Actually what caused my presumed mistake was this research on the Nokia N95 camera calibration
N95 Distortion Evaluation

They got huge distortion estimation – like 3% of the screen width. I don’t detect anything like this in the 320×240 viewfinder. My upper bound is like .7% (though I didn’t do complete calibration, just did some rectangles shots).

N95 camera distortion ?

I’m making full screen version of my AR Tower Defense game, and stumble at some strange problem. It seems to me the camera distortion is absent if I’m getting scaled down viewfinder image (or may be it’s just cropped). If I’m getting full viewfinder image it looks like some camera distortion creep in – seems markers getting distorted. I may have to calibrate camera, and that would create portability problem. The game will work only for N95 camera…

Samsung INNOV8 and AR

Samsung INNOV8 (Samsung GT-i8510) seems to be the best Symbian device for AR so far.(And for 3d gaming too BTW)
Camera: 120 fps in QVGA vs 30fps Nokia N95
CPU: 450 Mhz ARM11 + PowerVR 3d accelerator vs 330 Mhz ARM11 + PowerVR 3d accelerator for Nokia N95
Sound: 3D surround sound effect by DNSe 2.0 technology vs ??? for Nokia N95
GPS : both, but INNOV8 being Symbian 9.3 allow self-signing for developer who want to use GPS.
For Nokia N95 use GPS require complete Symbian Signing.

Overall pretty impressive device, with 3d accelerator, 50% faster CPU and a lot faster camera.
Mobiles on other platforms often have better CPU (533-800 Mhz), but usually lack 3d accelerator and/or have bigger screen resolution. Bigger resolution would either eat more CPU power or would force developer make effective screen window smaller.

PS There are reports that actual INNOV8 CPU speed is 330mhz

Augmented Reality Tower Defense game is up for download

It’s here. In this demo I’ve used the same multimarker tracker I’ve used in last demos. 3d position of the camera calculated form markers used for placing tower. Third dimension used to control tower height
If you don’t know what Tower Defense is, here is wiki entry