I'm currently at the very beginning of developing an Augmented Reality App that's supposed to run on Surface Pro devices. I should probably mention that this is the first time I ever dealt with AR.
While most solutions seem to favor iOS, Andoid or the Unity platform, I have also stumbled across Windows Mixed Reality.
I'm aware that the website explicity says that it's only for use with headsets. However, I have Microsoft's "Mixed Reality Viewer" on my Surface Book which includes pretty much the functionality I want to deliver myself and I think the name and background suggest, that the two belong together.
Does anyone know any more about this? Ideally straight up if it could be useful for my purposes.
Thanks a lot!
I think what you are looking for is Vuforia, a VR/AR SDK that is now integrated into Unity. You create apps in Unity with C#, and then deploy them to UWP (Universal Windows Platform), which can run on Surface devices and use the cameras for AR. Vuforia lets you do image and object recognition and alter the virtual parts of your app based on the real world environment - if you don't need those features, you can use Unity on its own to create virtual models, UI, etc.
So interested to hear more about the "Mixed Reality Viewer" application you have on your Windows 10 -- did you have the Microsoft Insider "Skip Ahead" version of Windows installed?
https://winbuzzer.com/2017/09/06/microsofts-new-windows-10-mixed-reality-viewer-app-leaks-online-xcxwbn/
I'm on the "Slow Ring" for Windows Insider and already have the Fall Creators Edition installed - and no "Mixed Reality Viewer" - just "View 3D" - which sounds like it will morph into MRV
Either way -- you will likely want to do all of your development in Unity -- which can be used to not only make Hololens application, but also application for the new Mixed Reality Headsets. Going to guarantee that this will also be the case for MRV when it is generally released.
Love to hear more about what you are seeing - and know any time you spend looking at Unity development will be time well spent. :)
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I'm about to start a fairly large project. I have about 10 different PC/MAC Flash(AS 2.0)/MDM Zinc software packages I have inherited from a previous programmer. They are a series of math educational applications that are all contained on numerous CDs which is pretty frustrating for our customers. I've been tasked with converting these applications into a digital medium with emphasis on iOS/Droid compatibility.
They don't want to ditch the flash because of the way it's written and compiled with MDM Zinc it would almost require a complete rewrite. Currently the customer installs the application using Disc 1 of their set and the application will pull the lesson material (SWF files) from the discs in the set. I want to move these lessons onto a web server and build a single client app. Something that just works as a generic container for these lessons.
Currently I'm using Visual Studio 2012 and Xamarin to build these containers. Unfortunately my strongest languages is vb.net and not C# though so It's taking a little getting used to. Does anyone have any tips or light they may be able to shed on the best way to go about getting a foot hold in this project?
I've pretty much decided I'm going to have to build this "container" from the ground up. Here is an example of the software I'm working with http://184.168.83.81/Math7Demo/movie100.htm
Thanks in advance
As a fellow developer who works with e-Learning for almost a decade, I'd say your best bet is to build the containers with PhoneGap, convert the SWFs with Google Swiffy and load them as HTML inside your app.
I have made one windows phone based application. i want some designing ideas from you wp7 people.how can we apply styles,transparent background or the design which suits wp7 app. may i have some links which provides snaps for good designed apps. please help
One app that jumps to my mind when talking about great use and adaption to the metro design, it's "Cocktail Flow". It has very well done implementations of many design cues for WP7. As special treats it has features like parallax effects controled via gyroscope.
You can find a free version on the marketplace. Definitely worth a look.
MSDN user experience guidelines are pretty good, User Experience Design Guidelines for Windows Phone.
Also, it helps to install some popular apps from the marketplace and study their design.
The BEST thing you can possibly do to get a good idea of how to build a great WP7 app is to own a Windows Phone, and use it as your primary phone.
Get used to the way the operating system flows. Download cool apps. As time goes on you begin to understand from the user's perspective what a "good" app looks (and more importantly) feels like. It's a hard thing to nail down in a "user experience" spec. I find that a lot of people who set off to build a WP7 app do so before understanding how apps are supposed to behave on the platform. It is vital that you understand how users expect applications on the windows phone to operate. If you use a windows phone for a good 3-4 months, and really make an effort of butting it through the steps, it will be hard to walk away from that experience without a very clear idea of what a "good" application looks like for the windows phone.
That being said, and while I honestly don't believe that there are any short cuts to good design for the windows phone, I highly recommend downloading the following apps, and playing around with them to get a feel for "good" UI:
Wordament
Cocktail Flow (previously mentioned)
Twitter
Spotify
Yelp
Any of the built in applications (Office, Zune, Internet Explorer)
The above are good to start with, but again, you're really not going to understand it unless you live and breath it everyday for at least a few months.
We are developing an Windows Phone 7 mobile application. We are new to this platform. In our application, screen will be dynamically generated. So we would like to render the UI
programmatically - without using any xmls. Please share some example code or resource or links, wherein UI is rendered programatically. In case of iPhone development, we referred "UICatalog" example. We are looking for similar type of example
It is possible to render the UI in code, though the examples of doing so are few and far between because it's a rare thing to do with XAML-based technologies like Silverlight and WPF. Instead, you tend to find that developers use to databinding and data templates to present generated content.
If you are porting an application from iPhone to Windows Phone (or even if you're just starting from scratch), the best thing to do is to firstly make sure that you understand the development platform. There are some great resources for this on MSDN here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/wp7trainingcourse_wp7gettingstarted_unit.aspx
The next thing to do is to make sure that you understand the Metro design language that Windows Phone is built upon. Here are some great resources in that respect:
Metro Design Language for Windows Phone 7
Microsoft design .toolbox
From Transportation to Pixels
Once you've reached this point, you will most likely realise that your current approach isn't the right one and switch to a databinding and data templates approach :)
If you are doing an iPhone port, it's important to realise that the design approach is different for Windows Phone applications. Content is King, so work out what that is, put it "front and centre", and trim away every thing else.
I hope this helps.
You may want to investigate the XNA path for Windows Phone development.
Developing with SilverLight but choosing not to use the most useful features of the platform is probably not going to be fun.
I have an application for Windows Phone 7 that I need to bundle up and send to several doctors for a content review. Ideas on how this might be done? I can't expect the docs to install the full SDK, but if I could bundle the emulator with it that might work, or if there's an easy way to convert the app to a Windows EXE that would as well. All suggestions welcomed!
While the theory is that since it's SIlverlight it should just run on the desktop. Years of Compact Framework development have taught me that this theory is almost never correct and getting it to work is often a real chore.
Microsoft has not yet delivered a stand-along WinPhone emulator (no idea if they will, but they did for WinMo) so for now that option is off the table. Getting your end user to install the stand-alone emulator is a fair bit of work anyway.
To be honest, my experience has been that just doing a Camtasia capture of the developer screen while you step through the app is one of the easiest ways to get ideas across to these types of groups. No, the end result isn't interactive, so they can't clock on buttons themselves, but if you walk through the feature they want to see, you can usually answer 95% of the questions this way.
When you need to address that other 5%, my experience has been that it's easiest to just send them a physical device with the app installed.
If they are (or have ready access to someone who is) fairly tech-savvy, shipping a Virtual PC image of a PC with the emulator installed and the app installed on it sometimes works.
Dot NET code using MS libraries is partially upwards compatible and most runtime classes present on a mobile device are also available on desktop Windows (see MSDN docs for details). So create a copy of your source code, ask visual studio to create a desktop .exe from it, it'll tell you it can't for several reasons, and you will need to recode some sections of it, resize the frame window etc. to make it work.
If one is careful about what methods one uses, I have managed to actually use the exact same .EXE file on the desktop without problems!
You simply cannot present the application without the SDK, since Windows Phone 7 applications rely on a completely different subset of .NET Framework and require an emulator to run XAP packages. Although you might say that it's the same Silverlight, don't forget about Microsoft.Phone and derivatives - you need the SDK in order for those libraries to be properly handled.
Also, you cannot convert a WP7 application to a Windows executable due to difference in platform architectures.
What you could do is simply allow the doctors to test your application through TeamViewer or similar products.
i think a "killer app" for winphone7+silverlight would be a desktop browser based emulator. want to try the app? just have the store run the emulator in the browser. (yeah, lots of technical hurdles, limited multitouch etc, but it would be pretty slick!)
What Windows Phone 7 demo/reference applications have you seen which really made you interested in developing for the platform?
I know of Scott Gu's Twitter example and Foursquare. Also see here for MIX10 demo apps.
Other than developing games and re-creating functionality already present on other mobile platforms (iPhone, BlackBerry, Android), is there any good reference material and business benefits of developing for Windows Phone 7? Does the Silverlight dev environment really offer an advantage over what is already out there? My gut feeling is that this is definitely the case, but it will take some time for the platform to establish itself, if it does.
You can find a lot of examples and reference applications here www.reddit.com/r/wp7dev/ or search using the hashtag #wp7dev on twitter (full disclosure - some of my examples appear there).
There a examples of what people are openly working on, but one can assume it is a lot more - hopefully this is useful, as it shows what can be done, or is being done on the platform.
As a novice developer, other phone platforms came with a lot of overhead required to build even the simplest application. The fact that XNA will be available for game development is a huge thing for me, it means I can create simple games for me and my friends without having to spend time learning a new language or setting up awkward SDK's and deployment settings.
More advanced developers may scoff at that, but development tools that are already being used that can work right out of the box for the intended platform is important for the hobbyists. I think this will open up a huge arena for homemade games and apps just like XNA did for 360 development.
It should also help sales. I will buy a Windows 7 phone because of this, and I can imagine others will do the same. As it stands, I am going to port my existing XNA games over so I can play them on the go. It will be cool to show people at the office, airport, etc. projects I have made right on the spot, and even give them the option to play if they have the right hardware.