About Gears for Android(TM)

Gears for Android(TM) is a heavily modified port of the infamous "gears" demo to Android.

The Gears demo is an open source project intended to help developers learn how to create OpenGL ES programs on Android. The Gears demo was originally written by Brian Paul as part of the Mesa3D project. My implementation includes variations for Java/OpenGL ES 1.x, Java/C/OpenGL ES 1.x and Java/C/OpenGL ES 2.0. I have also added several features not found in the original implementation including touch screen support, VBOs and an on-screen FPS counter.

The FPS (frames-per-second) counter is often used as a benchmark metric for graphics programs. On Android the frame rate is limited by v-sync (typically 60 FPS) which is the fastest rate that a display can refresh the screen. Since Gears is capable of rendering much faster than v-sync on most devices it provides limited benchmarking value.

Texas Instruments demonstrated Gears during the 2010 Mobile World Congress.

Screenshot

Release (ES2/eclair+)

To install, simply download the apk using your Android phone then click on the download when it completes.

Gears is also available from the Android Market.

20110501 [source] [apk]

• For Android 2.0 (eclair)
• Fix lighting bug observed when zooming
• Replaced simclist library
• Compile in thumb mode
• Simplified a3d GL wrapper
• Updated Gears icon (again)
• Uploaded source to github

20101218 [source] [apk]

• For Android 2.0 (eclair)
• Workaround for rendering corruption on Nexus S and Galaxy S
• Updated Gears icon

20101113 [source] [apk]

• For Android 2.0 (eclair)
• Reimplemented in OpenGL ES 2.0
• Based on 20100905 release

Release (ES1/eclair+)

To install, simply download the apk using your Android phone then click on the download when it completes.

• For Android 2.0 (eclair)
• Replaced simclist library
• Compile in thumb mode
• Simplified a3d GL wrapper
• Updated Gears icon
• Uploaded source to github

20100905 [source] [apk]

• For Android 2.0 (eclair)
• Reimplemented in C with NDK
• Included better FPS counter font
• Added GLES performance analysis logging
• Based on 20100211 release

Release (ES1/cupcake+)

To install, simply download the apk using your Android phone then click on the download when it completes.

20100905 [source] [apk]

• For Android 1.5 or Android 1.6 (cupcake or donut)
• Only for legacy devices
• See additonal apps from developer for eclair+ release
• Based on 20091229 release

Legacy Releases

To install, simply download the apk using your Android phone then click on the download when it completes.

20100211 [source] [apk]

• For Android 2.0 (eclair)
• Multitouch zoom support
• Fullscreen support
• Faster orientation changes
• Render gears with VBOs
• Disable blending when not required

20091229 [source] [apk]

• For Android 1.6 or Android 2.0 (donut or eclair)
• Fixed EGL config selection for Droid
• I would like to thank David Van de Ven for help debugging/testing on the Droid

20091010

• For Android 1.6 (donut)
• Touchscreen performance patched by Greg Copeland with additional suggestions by Alexander Mikhnin
• Rewrote texture loader
• Changed data passed into gl*Pointer functions to be allocateDirect
• Changed various data to be nativeOrder
• Added directions for running Traceview

20090621 [source] [apk]

• For Android 1.5 (cupcake)
• Fixed performance bug (allocating variables on heap causing gc to run)

20090620

• For Android 1.5 (cupcake)
• Added on-screen fps counter at 1 second interval
• Removed logcat fps counter
• Fixed a bug handling EGL_CONTEXT_LOST event
• Updated About screen to use WebView
• Updated Gears icon

20090502 [source] [apk]

• For Android 1.1 (pre-cupcake)
• 3D hardware accelerated rendering is implemented using OpenGL ES 1.0
• Demo may be run on either an Android device such as the T-Mobile G1 or on the emulator that is included with the Android SDK
• Available from the Android market
• Touchscreen may be used to rotate camera
• fps is written to logcat
• Achieves 60 fps on the T-Mobile G1 (performance is limited by display, not GPU)
• Performance may drop while using the touchscreen (known problem with the Android SDK)

Feedback

Send questions or comments to Jeff Boody at jeffboody@gmail.com

License

Copyright (c) 2009 Jeff Boody
Gears for Android(TM) is a heavily modified port of the infamous "gears" demo to Android/Java/GLES 1.0. As such, it is a derived work subject to the license requirements (below) of the original work.

Copyright (c) 1999-2001 Brian Paul All Rights Reserved.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.