Category: Programming

For whatever reason, I have a strange fascination with emulators, and making sure that I can emulate as many machines and game consoles as possible on my current PC.

The one thing I haven’t researched until now is emulating various systems on my Android device. Now that I’ve received my shiny new Galaxy S7, I figured it must be powerful enough to emulate a good fraction of older hardware. And indeed, I was pleasantly surprised by the “state” of emulation on Android.  Emulators for NES and Super NES are readily available on the Google Play Store, along with emulators for Atari and Commodore 64, and hardly require the latest hardware to run well.

But what about emulators of  actual PC hardware? Well, there’s the excellent DosBox Turbo app, which is an optimized DosBox port to Android. This is not a free app, but it’s well worth it. However, what I was looking for is a true PC emulator, such as the great bochs emulator that I’ve trusted for a long time to boot into my disk images of Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. After a bit of looking, it turns out that this is available, too!

Thanks to  some fantastic work by Pelya (for porting the SDL 1.2 library to Android, thus  making it easy to port any SDL-based application to Android) and by  Lyubomyr  (for actually adapting bochs to use pelya’s SDL port), we now have a perfectly working version of bochs for Android! Using their build instructions, I was able to build my own bochs APK, load it onto my device, along with a few disk images. And after a few configuration tweaks, I’m now able to run my emulated images nearly flawlessly:

Here it is, running Windows 3.11:

…and Windows 95:

…and Windows XP:

And here it is running one of my favorite old DOS games, Return to Zork!

As a fun side-project during the last few weeks, I’ve been developing a planetarium application for the Samsung Gear VR headset (one of the neater gadgets I’ve gotten my hands on this year), along the lines of Stellarium or Google Sky Map. It’s pretty rudimentary so far, but nevertheless packs most of the features you would expect from a planetarium application, such as constellations, accurate planet positions based on current time, and a selection of Messier objects.

You can “look at” any object in the virtual night sky within the app, and see a pop-up description of its name. While looking at an object, you can also tap on the trackpad on the Gear VR device to retrieve a full description of the object from Wikipedia (using Wikipedia’s new RESTBase API, which I also help develop).

The app is not yet deployed to the Oculus app store (working on it…), but you’re welcome to check it out on GitHub and build it for your own device. Here are some screenshots:

One thing that I’ve been meaning to get my hands on is Google Cardboard, which  is an extraordinary bit of technology that transforms your smartphone into a virtual reality display, for the cost of just a few dollars! I love the simplicity of the concept, and I especially like how it repurposes existing features of the mobile device, specifically how it uses the magnetic field sensor to implement a sliding magnetic button. Anyway, I bought mine from Unofficial Cardboard:

While familiarizing myself with the Cardboard SDK, I realized that a perfect application for Cardboard would be to view .MPO photos taken by 3D cameras. So I created a minimal Android app that automatically searches your device for .MPO files, and displays them for viewing with Cardboard!  You can find the app on the Google Play Store, and the source code on GitHub.

A few notes about the app:

• It automatically searches your phone’s internal memory and external SD card, but only up to two folder levels deep. For best results, place the .MPO files in the root directory of the memory card.
• It creates a slide show out of all the MPO files that it finds. You may advance through the slide show by using the magnetic Cardboard slider control. It does not currently allow any customization of the slide show (excluding/including files, custom ordering, etc). Stay tuned…

Recently I had the opportunity to play around with Project Tango from Google:

I whipped up a quick demo, based on the existing sample code from Google, that takes the real-time point cloud provided by the depth sensor and “records” it into a large buffer of points and displays all of it in real time (allowing you to move around a 3D area and record its geometry), and also allows you to save the point cloud to a file, for loading into an application such as Blender.

Here are some screenshots of the demo, after I used it to record the inside of my living room:

For the last few weeks I’ve been geeking out on Google Glass, which I received after some time on the waiting list. I thought I’d share some firsthand observations and experiences with this marvelous little device.

First, it looks like Google took a lot of lessons from Apple in the design of the product, but especially in the design of the packaging. The box is minimalist and monochrome with a matte finish, with only the logo printed on top in a humbly small font. There’s no plastic anywhere, and therefore no need for a utility knife and the strength of ten men to pry open the package. The inside of the box contains layers of perfectly-shaped cardboard that fit snugly around the curves of the device. It’s enough to make one salivate, an impulse on which Apple has been capitalizing for a while now. But enough about that.

The thing that impressed me the most (at first) was how well Glass fits around my head. I was worried that it would be slipping and wobbling as I move around, but that’s not at all the case. The fit is very comfortable and very stable. I was able to wear it for hours without any discomfort.

The positioning of the see-through display is also very well thought out. It obstructs only a small portion of the field of view, and after wearing it for a while, it becomes hardly noticeable.

I haven’t worn Glass to any restaurants or movie theaters (because I’m not a douche), but I have worn it while exercising, hiking, writing, reading, shopping, cleaning, and playing board games. In each of those instances, Glass contributed positively to the experience, as long as you discount being called a dork by everyone you encounter (although I’m pretty sure I evoke that response regardless of Glass).

The most useful feature to me, so far, has been the ability to read emails right before my eyes, as they come in. A close second is the ability to look things up on the web at any time, using my voice (and the voice recognition is quite good). Being a seasoned Android developer, I’m currently brainstorming possible “apps” that could be developed to enhance the experience even further (ideas are welcome).

So then, is Google Glass another ephemeral fad, or is it the future of wearable computers? There’s no doubt that, at the very least, it’s a powerful demonstration of the potential of today’s technology. Whether this particular implementation of the technology will be widely adopted remains to be seen, as Google still hasn’t set an official release date for the general public.

I think that Glass would be adopted much more readily if it didn’t have the front-facing camera, as useful as it is. Nearly everyone I spoke to while wearing Glass said something like, “You’re not recording this, are you?” There’s definitely some kind of psychological turn-off about having any kind of camera pointed at you. If only Glass came without a camera, and was simply a monitor device for the wearer, it might be much more palatable to the public, and less controversial in the media. But then, who says a little controversy is a bad thing?