V1.16 and the Android SDK issues

  • For testing these WebGL features, try the Corfu Tour Example


    V1.16 is an exciting progression on so many fronts. One of my biggest concerns is display on Android devices. For iOS development I love working with Apple's iOS simulator. I rarely find differences vs testing on physical iOS devices and the native Safari browser works great. For Android simulation there is the Android SDK. What I get there is less than optimal but seems to simulate what a lot of devices display and... the example tour for the newest player still has problems:

    This is using Android OS 4.2.2 and the native browser. The simulator has no problem displaying Google's spherical panos, BTW, so it isn't that the SDK is just a piece of junk. It is a display engine issue.

    The SDK can only use the native Android browser which is a problem for testing -- no Chrome or FF. At the same time I get the feeling most Android users depend on it rather than download Chrome or FF. (Maybe someone has actual stats on that.) Native browser compatibility would be really, really useful.

    Thoughts? Solutions?

    Klaus - Could you update the display engine to be even more universal? Should we test for a minimum version of Chrome or FF and suggest/insist on downloading/updating one before viewing a tour? (What would those versions be?)

  • Hi,

    what you see in your screen-shot is the css-3d software-rendering of the Android WebView browser.
    And this rendering is extremely slow and buggy!

    The Android browser seems typically falling back into that rendering mode when there is not enough (GPU?) memory, but for the html page or the Javascript (=the krpano viewer) it is not possible to detect this situation.

    Btw - is that Android simulator supporting hardware-accelerated rendering anyway?
    If not, that might be a problem too!
    Have you tested on real devices too?

    Btw2 - in your screenshot, still the 1.0.8.15 version is used - try clearing the browsers cache and load again.


    Could you update the display engine to be even more universal?

    The engine itself is already very universal, but it depends on CSS-3D or WebGL. That means when the browser itself is rendering the given html/css code that wrong, then there is nothing that the viewer can do.
    And I think using a slow and low quality 2D-Canvas based rendering like that what you mean with 'Google's spherical panos' is not a real option for high quality panos - especially now where Google has stopped the development of that buggy WebView browser and Android Chrome, Android Firefox and Android Opera are getting better and better.

    Best regards,
    Klaus

  • Klaus,

    Thanks for the reply. I tested several Android 4+ devices a few months ago. Some failed completely some showed the kind of display I showed above. I think all worked for the Google test. I haven't tried with this new engine nor with the current version of Chrome. I'm not certain on the rendering/GPU memory aspects. I know overall performance improved significantly a couple months ago but that may not have been in the areas you mentioned. So that may well be the issue. if so any Android simulation will fail to properly render panos. If the tech Google uses is being discontinued it becomes irrelevant.

    Reinitialized the simulator and got the correct version of the pano. Not sure it is much better....

    Really looking like only physical devices can be used for testing. Frustrating. And a little expensive.

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