10 July 2008

WaterBox Out Of Beta!
Realistic Accelerometer Based Liquid Simulator

I just got informed that Teemu has pushed the release timetable a bit and got 1.00 out a lot sooner than expected.

WaterBox is actually a fluid simulator that uses the built-in accelerometer to detect the phone movement and simulate the fluid moving across the screen according to phone position and moving direction.

All graphics are done with OpenGL ES although it probbably isn't the best possible choice for 2D graphic but since Teemu is already familiar with codding in OpenGL he decided to use OpenGL engine for this cool application.

This particular example uses 75 particles for the fluid simulation and runs on 90~95 frames per second approximately when using a much faster rendering method which only draws particles as simple points.

Application shown on the demo video uses the more realistic rendering engine known as "metaball renderer" which unfortunately reduces the refresh rate to ~25-30 FPS.

"WaterBox is available for free for all non-commercial use. As with most free software, WaterBox comes "as is" without any official support. Since this is my first Symbian project it's bound to have some platform related bugs. If you have a bug you want to report, please try to give more information than "It crashes!".

I only have N95 8GB on which I developed WaterBox so it hasn't been tested on other phones. I'd love to hear feedback on how it works on N95 and other phones. Don't bother trying with phones that don't have an accelerometer though, I'm pretty sure it won't even load ;) Teemu said.

The current 1.00 version has improved rendering engine with better resolution and more detailed water. Gravity is also much more responsive to changes of phone orientation. Video of 1.00 in action will be available "soonish".