Oolite Bulletins

Like all things British it will be worth waiting for (with the exception of the Austin Allegro)... [fingers crossed]

Ha, yet another hold up

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/ra ... atio-70202

F***ing Europe AGAIN!

I tell ya, if I could set off a charge that would disconnect the UK from this god-forsaken, rules-obsessed continent I'd do it today and sail off to the bahamas.

Where you've got to meet FCC requirements instead? If you want to sell anything potentially dangerous and/or disruptive to other devices, you always need to have it tested, whether it's against the CE mark, the good ol' kite mark or whatever else.

That the Pi foundation 'forgot' to do the testing is only human, and underscores how much of a labour of love the Pi is, but being upset with the EU because in this case they're the relevant authorities seems a bit excessive...

Good idea about the bahamas though, wouldn't mind tropical weather and beautiful seas!

Kaks wrote:

being upset with the EU because in this case they're the relevant authorities seems a bit excessive.

Being upset with the EU is a great British hobby, and well justified!

Kaks wrote:

That the Pi foundation 'forgot' to do the testing is only human, and underscores how much of a labour of love the Pi is,

I find it is quite on the embarrassing side.

Otoh., if you look how long things sometimes take from announced plans to delivered product with the "big players", or the discrepancies between big fat announcements and finished product, then the Pi-delays are nothing exceptional imo.
Only that they communicate the reason(s), while some big players may be more secretive, hoping noone notices ?

But I wonder how much it will affect the Pi's reputation, opposed to how it never seems to affect those of the "big players".

snork wrote:

I wonder how much it will affect the Pi's reputation

At this rate it'll be up there with Sir Clive Sinclair's C5, Eddie the Eagle Edwards and the Beagle II lander.

El Viejo wrote:

Being upset with the EU is a great British hobby, and well justified!

Fair point! We shall never forget those bananas!!

Kaks wrote:

Where you've got to meet FCC requirements instead? If you want to sell anything potentially dangerous and/or disruptive to other devices, you always need to have it tested, whether it's against the CE mark, the good ol' kite mark or whatever else.

That the Pi foundation 'forgot' to do the testing is only human,.

I remember that also the watch makers did not realie those rules also would apply to quatz wrist watches. Intuitively you know it will not disturb other equipment, because the kristal inside is so small that it cant emit much electromagnetic radiation. Now, we have a certificate in house that states they are safe

That's a relief... it must be nearly Pi time! Anyone here got one?

Greyth wrote:

That's a relief... it must be nearly Pi time! Anyone here got one?

Yes me! I have one already and another one due to arrive soon in the post (which is being given to me by Nokia for free).

Here is my blog if anyone is interested;
http://blogs.arcsoftwareconsultancy.com/pi/

So I have just had a read back through this thread and these are the comments that stick out for me the most;

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Raspberry Oolite Pi sounds like a wonderful idea - would have to rewrite the graphics engine to use OpenGL ES v2.0 (and only 256MB)

aegidian wrote:

A version of Oolite for RaspberryPi should really be a priority - in fact I'm quite tempted to come out of retirement to have a bash at it myself.

The key problem is that Oolite uses features of OpenGL that aren't available in OpenGLES - however OpenGLES has alternatives to them that wouldn't be an impossible task to implement. Since OpenGLES is used by many mobile devices this would also open up the chance of an iPad or Android Oolite, which would be a killer app.

I propose we begin an OpenGLES branch now and work on it a bit.

aegidian wrote:

Yes, I'm pretty serious about wanting to do this. There are other major hurdles in the way of a PadDroid Oolite, fun ones like touch controls and very difficult ones like OXP support, so it's no small undertaking, but I think it's something I should try to do.

So I think everyone is in agreement that having an Arm/OpenGL ES port of Oolite is a desirable thing.

What you may not know about is the educational intentions for the Raspberry Pi, by this time next year there could be one in every school kids bedroom throughout the UK (maybe the US later on). So there is an opportunity here for a whole new generation of kids to start playing it. I think that is a good thing to aim for because the outcome will be that those kids will go on to become games programmers.

I would like to offer Aegidian remote SSH / VNC access to my Raspberry Pi if that would help in this endeavour. I expect that may not be good enough to test directly drawing graphics to the frame buffer, but I can always be on hand to sit in front of the machine to test stuff.

Getting your hands on a Pi could be difficult unless you placed an order on launch day. There is quite a big backlog that stretches as far as August from what I have heard. So maybe this way we could start moving towards the goal.

All the best!
Dave

Damn. August?! You may have to start work without me.

Despite Dave's offer I'd rather have a machine plugged into my telly for testing than a VNC window here.

I wonder if anyone would be willing to donate a RasPi to Giles?

Probably not, given that they're like rocking horse poo at the moment...

Actually, I just had an interesting thought. I wonder if Mr Braben would donate one to Giles with the incentive of an independent programmer developing a version of the game that made him famous to run on the hardware that he's helped promote and develop...

That's a media WINNER. The IT press would love it.

Now all we need is someone brave enough to suggest it to him...

On it
Well... I'll try...