We’re proud to announce we are beginning a beta test of our new engine in Google Play today! This is an experimental build, and very much a ‘beta’ product. We’d love to have you all help us improve the engine by trying the new beta and reporting any issues.
First of all: Congratulations on finally releasing this new engine.
It runs so smooth!
I CAN SEE THE 1/100 PART OF SECONDS FLIPPING IN REAL TIME ON MY MOST COMPLEX FACE!
I do see those issues mentioned before so I will limit myself to other ones:
I can clearly see a problem with sizes of shapes, especially lines. It seems like the line is treated as a rectangle.
semi-transparent images seem to have a gray line in the places where it normally when from nontransparent to fully transparent.
The Battery Bar of my Watchface Nflate! has got an issue: It is absolute-positioned to be inside the battery - but it’s not since the update (spot it above the right side of the battery).
Note I only looked at overall render rate. I wan’t necessarily scoring the animation per se. My method for calculating frame rate was to watch the DWE counter at the bottom and see how many times it refreshes with a new number. In the case of the 287 frame set, it would refresh about 3 times every 2 seconds. Whereas the old Engine would only post a new frame every 1 1/2 seconds.
From a true usability standpoint I think 60 frame elements seems ok in terms of performance. The 0.16/sec frame rate is roughly equivalent to 6/fps. My opinion of animations is that 8/fps is generally pleasing, with 12-15’fps being really smooth. Based on that the 30 frame group posts around a 8/fps performance. That works well with using a 2 second loop with 24-30 images.
I tested one of my designs in development. I’m getting some weird results on the DIM screen and with some of the other elements. Design looks fine on phone app.
On the wake side, the leftmost digit (I did individual digits to match the background text)
On the DIM side, a bunch of my masks are coming up white instead of black. Also noting a weird refresh flicker on the white elements.
Tried my ISO 205 - Subsector design. Animation looks good. Text and other elements have issues.
The main time text color should be pinkish. On my watch its closer to orange. Themeable colors don’t work on icons. On DIM side, my dim mask which is normally a black full screen rectangle with a transparency set is coming up white instead. Themed colors are showing white on dim side.
Thanks so much for your reports everyone! We’ve continued work and just released the latest Beta. This includes the following fixes:
Fixes an issue where theme colors would always show as orange
Fixes an issue where Dim mode would render with white images
Fixes an issue with misplaced shapes in watch faces
The latest versions are 4.5.0_4525 and 4.5.0_4524
I believe this will cover many of the issues reported so far, but our team will continue to investigate all new issues, so keep the reports coming! Thanks again everyone!
Hyphens in Date text field on my “Rick and Morty” design seem to not render. Hyphens on other designs look fine
Weird result on first time a design loads. Whenever I load a new design, the first time it wakes there is a delay for when elements start to display. I’ll try an upload a video to explain.
Happy Weekend everyone! We’ve continued our work on the new engine and a brand new Beta is going to Google Play now! Here are the release notes:
- Improves image rendering
- Improves font rendering
- Adds support for gyro / accelerometer
- Adds support for text stroke
- Fix to theme colors being applied in dim mode
- Fix to complication tapping & rendering
- Improves initial watch face loading 'stutter' in animation
There are still a few things finicky about loading, particularly if your watch face uses a lot of fonts. We’re continuing our work on that front, but we’d love to hear any additional feedback!
Great job again to solve almost all of the problems (incl. gyro & accelerometer) in only a few days. I was trying to check my last open issue again - nr. 2 from this post.
Anyway, I found something a very interesting and potentially highly useful effect for animations (if you know about it).
Unfortunately, build 4.5.0_4636_beta-(4636) didn’t fix the lack of stroke effect for me.
Sony SWR50 and Vernee Mars Pro
Android Wear 1.5.0.3508863 Android 7.0
I tested my new watch face today and there is still tremendous slow down with accelerometer function in the BETA.
Regular Facer 4.4.3_4603 App
Gif-video shows the (accelerometerRawY()) “light effect” with double speed (screen shot from my phone during turning the display in the y-axis). At the watch it looks very similar according to the reaction time.
Beta Facer App
Gif-Video from the real watch (8 times speed). It takes more than 15 second to get a new (accelerometerRawY()) value and move (jump) the shadows and the “white strip” to new position.
Phone:
Samsung SM-G950F
Watch:
LG Urbane
Facer 4.4.3_4603 vs. Beta (Jan 16, 2018)
Watch Face:
Anyway, the speed for standard animation (based on regular time or at “interpAccel”) is amazing
