Summary

In this chapter, we took many of the tricks learned in previous chapters and combined them into a more complete and more attractive (read: less lame) solar-system model, depending on implementation. A one-planet solar system is not that impressive as it stands. So, I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to add the moon, add some other planets, and get the earth to revolve around the sun.

We added lens flare from Chapter 7 and point and line objects for the stars and constellation outlines, inserted text into an OpenGL environment, and mixed both OpenGL views and standard Android controls on the same screen.

I also pointed out how the graphics subsystem is the one that can vary most from device to device, causing much pain, anguish, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments. In the next chapter, we'll look into optimization tricks, and following that, OpenGL ES 2.0 and how that might be applied to enhancing our earth model.