LCARS Interface [Windows 8] Version 3 Sneak Preview

Hopefully all of you are having a wonderful holiday season around the world! We are having a great time getting a lot of new features in the works! Included in this is version 3 of LCARS Interface for Windows 8. The lack of updates recently has not been due to a lack of work being done by any means.

With version 3 we will be transitioning the application to Windows 8.1, which will bring a lot of useful new productivity features such as viewing PDF files, in addition to what we have been spending the bulk of time on which is overhauling the entire Entertainment mode. Currently the ship systems operate independently and changes to one have no effect on the others. This is going to change, as we have been writing a brand new "ship" to control! The systems will be interconnected to each other, and so for example going to Red Alert will trigger the shields to be raised and weapons to be brought online automatically. Navigating with the Conn to new planetary systems will change the readings of the sensors, etc. As you can imagine this takes a HUGE effort to figure out how all of these things need to work together and to accumulate the information necessary to make it happen.

The other question we are trying to answer is whether to have actual playable scenarios with which you need to perform certain tasks in order to be successful. This would give it a very game-like feel. Then there would be the possibility of a "scenario editor" where you could program your own situations for role playing purposes, fan film making, etc. This is all speculation and it has not been decided whether or not this functionality will ever be included.

Another feature planned for the (not exactly near) future is to allow multiple LCARS terminals to connect to each other via the local network and interact with each other! This is still in the very early stages of research and will not be focused on until we have all of the ship systems working together on the same device. Windows Phone may also be incorporated into this as well, and be able to possibly control some subset of the systems from the phone app.

Here's a little peak at our newest module, on our first ship configuration that we will have.

From this image you can see what details about the shields you will be able to view. The buttons on the left modify the shield modulation frequency, and the buttons at the top operate the shields. Maintenance such as diagnostics can be performed, and there will be an entry pad for inputting custom values for things like the power level for the shields.

You may also notice that the "horseshoe" around the edge of the screen is missing. This is part of the total re-design that we are making to the interface, which will allow for more animations, less resource use, and better use of screen real estate across many different device sizes and resolutions! The previous design was too limiting for the amount of new things that will be included for the entertainment side. That design will likely remain for the productivity portion. The interface design and included features for this module are not final yet, but this is just an example of what we have been working on. The difference here is that this display is actually controlling, and is also controlled by, the whole "ship" instead of being standalone. Many of the current modules will be re-designed as well to accommodate new features and capabilities related to other systems.

That is all we have for now! We are sorry there is not anything else visual to show about the work being done. Most of it all happens behind the scenes and that is hard to provide information about. Stay tuned for more information about this monster of an update! We currently have no ETA on when it will be ready. There is a lot of work still to be done, and then a lot of testing to follow before it can be released. Of course the artwork for the ships has to all be done from scratch which takes a lot of time, as we cannot use anyone else's work without them providing it to us explicitly.

LCARS Interface [Windows 8] Release 33 to be released soon

Release 33 of LCARS Interface for Windows 8 has been submitted to Microsoft for approval. It will likely be released and start rolling out within the next couple of days. Those of you who have been unable to load playlists since Release 31 will now be able to again. Sorry about that! There are also several other bug fixes and performance optimizations included which should have the app running a bit more lean on lower end devices.

With our track record of pumping out new features with nearly every release, you may have noticed that recently it's been mostly maintenance releases. We haven't stopped working on new content! Quite the contrary, actually.  We are looking ahead to version 3.0, which is going to be a HUGE update, and will be the first one that will require Windows 8.1. So what does that mean for you? Quite a bit, actually! Read on to find out...

New awards for our Windows 8 apps!

We are happy to announce that both of our current Windows 8 apps, LCARS Interface and Rename It! Pro, have been chosen as Editor's Picks by bestwindows8apps.net! Rename It! Pro received a perfect 10/10 stars!

http://bestwindows8apps.net/lcars-interface/
http://bestwindows8apps.net/rename-it-pro/

LCARS Interface [Windows 8] Release 31 is now available!

Well it's that time again....another LCARS update!

This release is mostly small changes that have been requested, as well as a few much needed bug fixes.

Check out the version history for the full list of changes, but the short list is that the simulator should now be fixed to not occasionally get stuck and not allow you to fire. The weather icons for the 5 day forecast will now show the daytime icons even at night. Only the current conditions will use the night time icons (at the appropriate hours of the day). This brings it more in line with most weather apps you see and forecasts on TV. 

There's been a lot going on in the way of new content development, though most of it will have to wait until a future update. We've got some other projects in the works which will be showing up in the coming months. We may also throw in another Google Chrome theme or two soon...

We certainly appreciate all the feedback we've been getting lately, and we are happy to be able to incorporate many of your requests into these updates!

LCARS Interface [Windows 8] Release 30 is now available, bringing new Weather Icons!

We promised it a couple days ago, and now it's here! As probably the first real product of our recent back end overhaul, we were able to submit updates for Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8, and Windows 8/RT all at the same time! I think we already recovered most of the time spent doing that.

So, after more user requests and stars taken off reviews than I can remember, new Weather icons are here! It's been a long time coming, and it certainly took some effort to manually match all the new icons to the weather codes provided by the weather service, but it's now complete and we think you will be much happier with the new ones!

Also included in this update is a new feature...the ability to get the weather for your current location! This feature uses the new location services in Windows 8, so it should be reasonably accurate even if your device doesn't have GPS. Make sure that you have location services turned on if you would like to use this feature. Currently it only works "on demand" by clicking the "My loc" button right above the scan button, but it may be possible in the future to set this behavior as the default way to retrieve weather.

This update is now available in the Windows 8 Store! The updates for Windows Phone 7 and 8 will be available as soon as Microsoft approves them, which should be any time now. The Windows 8/RT store was faster on the approval process this time even though they were all submitted at the same time.

LCARS Interface Weather Updates Coming

The last couple of updates have dealt with some changes to the Atmosphere module, mostly fixing bugs and improving the performance, and adding the Live Tile to the Windows Phone version.

There is an update for Windows Phone currently in certification that should fix an issue that a couple of you have reported about the app crashing. That update should hopefully be released in the next day or two. Right behind it within a week or so will be another update, which will finally address an issue many of you have had with the Atmosphere module since the beginning....new weather icons!

It's been a bit of a painful process to match all of the new icons to the weather codes retrieved from the weather service, but we are happy to say that it is finally complete! These icons will also not have to be downloaded from the web servers each time, so that will slightly reduce the data used when checking the weather (not that it was much anyways, but any improvement is a good thing).

We will also be making a long overdue change to the 5 day forecast view on Windows Phone, which will hopefully make it look a lot better, especially on smaller devices.

The Windows 8 version will also be getting the same new icons in its next update, although we haven't determined what else will be a part of that update yet.  Stay tuned!

LCARS Interface [Windows Phone] Release 7 is now Available!

It was a busy weekend for us in making LCARS Interface updates, and now the second of our submissions has been approved and should be available to download soon!

This update brings a brand new module to the mix, the Scanner! The scanner includes a Compass for finding your way, as well as being able to read the magnetic fields around the device and show you the vector for it. Some great new animation was added for this module, and we will be making adjustments and additions to the Scanner module in future updates. As with the other modules, this one can also be pinned to the Start screen from the "Settings" page for quick access!

We have also included a few bug fixes, including one issue that sometimes occurred when coming back from standby, and a couple other smaller issues. We have also fixed several minor glitches with the animations, so they should hopefully always be more fluid now when moving between screens. We've also changed the start up animation to match the new one on the Windows 8 app, and it is slightly different depending on whether you have "Extra Animations" enabled or not. We also now have more testing devices, so everything for Windows Phone is going to be tested on Windows Phone 7.5, Windows Phone 7.8, and Windows Phone 8! We will be making some adjustments in the next few weeks to optimize the experience across multiple device sizes and resolutions, rather than being optimized only for Windows Phone 8 and 4.5" screen sizes as it is currently.