Following on from my previous post on 3D Data Visualisation Comparison I’ve ported the prototype over to WP7 and added some gesture support for rotating the data.
Thanks to the much improved emulator that comes with the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta I’ve now been able to easily capture the above video. My previous post compared one-point to two-point perspective projections with the consensus being that the one-point perspective was the most intuitive/pleasant to view. This was fortunate as due to the lack of the 3DViewport control in Silverlight, the one-point perspective is far easier to implement.
Due to the data binding annoyances that I always come up against when moving from WPF to Silverlight (often solved by one of Josh Twists excellent posts on MultiBinding for Silverlight 3) I had to do a bit of a much needed re-architecture of the code which I’m pleased to say resulted in far less C# and far better XAML. In doing so I did also manage to address some of the to-do bullet points mentioned in the previous post (move to WP7, sorting out z-index on rotation of data, gesture actuated rotation of data and an element of sorting my maths out).
One of the most interesting things for me from the recent Mango update news was being able to try out the new wp7 emulator and this app is ideal for making use of the accelerometer emulation. As you can see in the video it is very easy to use and very reactive (it actually runs a lot smoother in the emulator than on the phone itself). The emulator also includes the ability to set the location and so making development of location based apps a huge amount easier which I will also cover in a later post.