It seems that Release 27 of the LCARS Interface app for Windows 8 has been well received by many! If it hasn't with anybody, we haven't heard about it at least! With the huge amount of changes that went on behind the scenes before this release it was very stress inducing to wait for the feedback to come in.
That said, we are already well underway on the next set of updates for the Windows 8 app! While this app started as almost purely functional, there is no way to capture a lot of the LCARS experience with normal tasks like the text editor and calculator. To that end we have added quite a bit of stuff to the entertainment side of things since then and the feedback about it has all been fantastic. Those of you who e-mail us and give your thoughts on what you like, what you don't like, and what else you want to see help us tremendously in figuring out the direction we should take with these apps. We also thank all of you who rate us 5 stars in the Windows 8 Store and Windows Phone Store! Those of you who don't rate us 5 stars, well, we won't rest until we earn the rest of those stars from you! Just tell us what's missing from the experience for you and we will work on it.
Read on for some notes about animations
We have also been hard at work with a ton of new animations for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7/8! We are working to really improve the LCARS experience with new animations in each update because, let's face it, LCARS is all about the animations in the show! Everything we make has to be done from the ground up, as we are not using Flash or anything else where there might be some other resources out there to help. Everything you see from us is 100% native code. All of the buttons and panels are done with vector based graphics, so nothing will look fuzzy when scaled to low or high resolutions. Animations are all hardware accelerated so it should not bog down your device much to use them. We initially started out very conservative on animations because Windows RT devices were still new back then and we were not familiar with Windows Phone at the time, so we did not want to have a bad user experience. Now that we have had a lot more time to test things out, we are investing the time necessary to take the animations to a whole new level. There is a lot in the pipeline and we are very excited about it all!
The red alert animation in both the lcars personnel and simulation app are awesome! Still waiting for it in the lcars interface app though. And also in the simulation app, if you press one of the buttons in red alert it won't flash again so if you used al panels the animation gets a little weird...
ReplyDeleteI will look into the issue you are talking about in the simulator. We are working on adding the same new animations to the LCARS Interface app for Windows Phone also! The next update for that app with be pretty sizeable in terms of animations and new features so it should be worth the wait!
DeleteI've been able to duplicate the issue you are talking about and have a fix that seems to resolve the issue. New updates will be pushed very soon to fix this problem for both the LCARS Simulator and the LCARS Personnel apps! Thank you very much for reporting this issue,
DeleteThank you very much! I am glad I was able help you. Your apps are great! I am looking forward to the next couple of updates :P
DeleteOf course! Any issues where something isn't working right are going to get the highest priority.
Deletethe next LCARS Interface release is currently being beta tested and then we will be pushing the next update! There is quite a bit being added to that one so it's taking a bit longer, as there are a lot more screens.
The animations being added will be done in stages though, so several will be added in the next update along with new functionality, and then more will continue to be added as time goes on. It does take some time to make them but we think it adds a lot to the apps to have them!
Currently LCARS Personnel and LCARS Simulator have updates waiting for certification from Microsoft. Hopefully they will pass within the next day or so. LCARS Interface should have the next update submitted by the weekend if everything goes well with testing. Of course we're already working on stuff beyond what's in the next update as well. There is a lot more yet to come!
I'm sold. Now how can I purchase the LCARS Interface for Windows 8?
ReplyDeleteYou can get it from the Windows 8 Store!
Deletehttp://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/lcars-interface/cf3da302-e3bb-4dc1-a1ab-63cbcbed3662
Thanks for sharing information about animation. I found this information very interesting and useful also.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cliffanimation.com