Google Data

By Jamal Eason, Product Manager, Android

Today at Google I/O, we announced a developer preview of the next version of Android, the M release. Last year’s developer preview was a first for Android and we received great feedback. We want to continue to give you developers early access to Android so you have time to get your apps ready for the next version of Android. This time with the M Developer Preview, we will provide a clear timeline for testing and feedback plus more updates to the preview build.

Visit the M Developer Preview site for downloads and documentation.

The Android M release: improving the fundamentals

For the M release, we focused on improving the core user experience of Android, from fixing thousands of bugs, to making some big changes to the fundamentals of the platform:

• Permissions – We are giving users control of app permissions in the M release. Apps can trigger requests for permissions at runtime, in the right context, and users can choose whether to grant the permission. Making permission requests right when they’re needed means users can get up and running in your app faster. Also, users have easy access to manage all their app permissions in settings. On M, as a developer, you should design your app to prompt for permissions in context and account for permissions that don’t get granted. As more devices upgrade to M, app permission behavior will be a critical development flow to test.
• 

  Runtime App Permissions

• App links – We are making it even easier to link between apps. Android has always allowed apps to register to natively handle URLs. Now you can add an autoVerify attribute to your app manifest so that users can be linked deep into your native app without any disambiguation prompt. App links, along with App Indexing for Google search, make it easier for users to discover and re-engage with your app.
• Battery – We’re making Android devices smarter about managing power through a new feature called Doze. With M, Android uses significant motion detection to learn if a device has been left unattended for a while. In this state, Android will exponentially back off background activity, trading off a little bit of app freshness for longer battery life. Consider how this may affect your app; for instance, if you’re building a chat app, you may want to make use of high priority messages to wake your app when the device is dozing.

The Android M release: advancing assistance and payments

We are also delighted to announce a couple of big new features:

• Now on tap – We are making it even easier for Android users to get assistance with Now on tap — whenever they need it, wherever they are on their device. For example, if your friend texts you about dinner at a new restaurant, without leaving the app, you can ask Google Now for help. Using just that context, Google can find menus, reviews, help you book a table, navigate there, and deep link you into relevant apps. As a developer, you can implement App Indexing for Google search to let users discover and re-engage with your app through Now on tap.
• 

  Now on tap

• Android Pay & Fingerprint – We’ve built on our work with Near Field Communications (NFC) in Gingerbread and Host Card Emulation in Kitkat to develop Android Pay. Android Pay will enable Android users to simply and securely use their Android phone to pay in stores or in thousands of Android Pay partner apps. With M, native fingerprint support enhances Android Pay by allowing users to confirm a purchase with their fingerprint. Moreover, fingerprint on M can be used to unlock devices and make purchases on Google Play. With new APIs in M, it’s easy for you to add fingerprint authorization to your app and have it work consistently across a range of devices and sensors.

These are just a few highlights from the M Developer Preview that we announced today. The M preview will be available for download right after the keynote.

Android Developer Tools

In addition to the developer preview, we are launching new tools to help you in the development of your Android App:

• Android Studio v1.3 Preview – To help take advantage of the M Developer Preview features, we are releasing a new version of Android Studio. Most notable is a much requested feature from our Android NDK & game developers: code editing and debugging for C/C++ code. Based on JetBrains Clion platform, the Android Studio NDK plugin provides features such as refactoring and code completion for C/C++ code alongside your Java code. Java and C/C++ code support is integrated into one development experience free of charge for Android app developers. Update to Android Studio v1.3 via the Canary channel and let us know what you think.
• 

  Android Studio 1.3 with Android NDK Support

• Android Design Support Library – Making Material design apps gets even easier with the new Android Design support library. We have packaged a set a key design components (e.g floating action button, snackbar, navigation view, motion enabled Toolbars) that are backward compatible to API 7 and can be added to your app to create a modern, great looking Android app without building everything from scratch.
• Google Play Services – Today we also are releasing v7.5 of Google Play services which includes new features ranging from Smart Lock for Passwords, new APIs for Google Cloud Messaging and Google Cast, to Google Maps API on Android Wear devices.

Get Started

The M Developer Preview includes an updated SDK with tools, system images for testing on the official Android emulator, and system images for testing on Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, and Nexus Player devices. We are excited to expand the program and give you more time to ensure your apps support M when it launches this fall. Based on your feedback, we plan to update the M Developer preview system images often during the developer preview program. The sooner we hear from you, the more feedback we can integrate, so let us know!

To get started with the M Developer Preview and prepare your apps for the full release, just follow these steps:

1. Update to Android Studio v1.3+ Preview
2. Visit the M Developer Preview site for downloads and documentation.
3. Explore the new APIs & App Permissions changes
4. Explore the Android Design Support Library and Google Play Services 7.5 APIs
5. Get the emulator system images through the SDK Manager or download the Nexus device system images.
6. Test your app with your supported Nexus device or emulator
7. Give us feedback

Posted by Anthony Vallone on behalf of the GTAC Committee

We are pleased to announce that the ninth GTAC (Google Test Automation Conference) will be held in Cambridge (Greatah Boston, USA) on November 10th and 11th (Toozdee and Wenzdee), 2015. So, tell everyone to save the date for this wicked good event.

GTAC is an annual conference hosted by Google, bringing together engineers from industry and academia to discuss advances in test automation and the test engineering computer science field. It’s a great opportunity to present, learn, and challenge modern testing technologies and strategies.

You can browse presentation abstracts, slides, and videos from previous years on the GTAC site.

Stay tuned to this blog and the GTAC website for application information and opportunities to present at GTAC. Subscribing to this blog is the best way to get notified. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Posted by Alex Gawley, Director of Product Management

Back in October we introduced a new type of inbox—one that works for you. Since then you’ve told us what you like best about Inbox by Gmail, as well as how we can make it better. And we want to say thank you.

Because of your feedback, we’re improving many of your favorite features, and launching your most highly-requested ones. So sit back, relax and enjoy all the updates.
More ways to stay organized with Trip Bundles
For starters, you’ve mentioned how much you like seeing key information at a glance, like when your package is arriving. So today Inbox is adding Trip Bundles: All of your emails about a trip will now be bundled together and the most important details (like flight times and hotel reservation numbers) will be available the instant you open Inbox.

More control with Undo Send, Swipe to Delete and Signatures
Being able to control your inbox, like setting your custom Snooze times, is also something you’ve told us matters. So today Inbox is helping you be more productive:

• With Undo Send—now for the first time on your phone—you can take back an email right after sending in case you spotted a mistake, or have second thoughts
• If you’d rather get rid of messages, you can make ‘Delete’ the default swiping action
• If you want to personalize your sent messages, you can now add a custom signature

More ways that Inbox saves you time
You’ve also let us know how much you appreciate a little extra help every now and then—like when Inbox adds phone numbers to Reminders, or finds that flight time in under a second. Today Inbox is adding a few more ways it can be of service:

• When you create Reminders in Keep, they’ll now appear in Inbox
• When someone emails you a to-do, Inbox might suggest adding a Reminder so you don’t forget
• When you get an email from HotelTonight or Eat24, you can now open your reservations and food orders within their app, directly from Inbox

Reminders created in Keep now appear in Inbox

Open your order or booking directly from Inbox

No more invites: Inbox is now open
Finally, you’ve asked for invites. And we’d like to say yes to all of you, all at once. So as of today, Inbox is open to everyone—no invitation required. All your Gmail messages are ready and waiting. So if you haven’t tried Inbox yet, download the app today, and start getting back to what matters.

p.s. While we’re still in the early stages of bringing Inbox to work, today we’re also expanding the Inbox early adopter program so any Google Apps for Work customer who wants to join can do so.

In March we launched the Places API for Android and opened up a public beta program for iOS. Today, we’re very excited to announce that the Google Places API for iOS is available to all developers!

Why Places?
When’s the last time someone asked you to meet them at -33.921053, 151.257996? Never? Exactly. People think of where they are in context: what shop they’re at or what park they’re in. The Places API enables your apps to speak your users’ language, based on Google’s database of 100 million places worldwide.

Who’s Using Places?
Excited to see the Google Places API for iOS in action?

	Google has incredibly high up time and the highest quality of data available. Because of Google, our users can rely on Places API when requesting a ride with nearly zero down time.
Lyft will be coming out soon with a new version of their iOS app that uses Google Maps and Places APIs to know where you want to be picked up and dropped off. Lyft is a welcoming, affordable ride within minutes. Simply request and go. Lyft launched in San Francisco in June 2012 and is now in more than 65 cities across the U.S.

	Google Places API integrates smoothly into the PicsArt app, providing our users with all the benefits of quick and precise image geo-tagging experience.
In the next version of PicsArt, you’ll be able to simply use the place picker and the chosen location will be added to your post! PicsArt is a full-featured photo editor app and the largest community of creatives and images, now reaching 65 million monthly active users.

Cross Platform
With this launch, all the great features of the Google Places API for Android are now also available on iOS:

• Add a place picker: a drop-in UI widget that allows your users to specify a place (see the Picsart screenshot above)
• Get the place where the device is currently located
• Show detailed place information, including the place’s name, address, phone number, website, and more
• Use autocomplete to save your users time and frustration typing out place names, by automatically completing them as they type (see the Lyft screenshot above)
• Make your app stand out by adding new places that are relevant to your users and seeing the places appear in Google’s Places database
• Improve the map around you by reporting the presence of a device at a particular place.

Get Started

The Places API for iOS is available as part of the Google Maps SDK for iOS, now installable with Cocoapods! Have a go with:

> pod try GoogleMaps

and play around with the “Maps SDK Demos” sample app. Then check out the developer documentation to add Places API to your iOS app.

Finally, a big thank you goes out to all the developers who helped battle-harden and test Places API for iOS during its beta run!

Posted by Jen Harrington, Product Manager, Google Maps APIs

It’s been ten years since we launched Google Maps APIs to developers, and since then, developers have been creating amazing apps and online experiences. To celebrate how maps and location are an integral piece of app development, we’re hitting the road—literally, on a cross-country trip called Code the Road.

Code the Road starts at Google I/O in San Francisco on May 28, where attendees can experience first-hand what we’ll be featuring on the road. The bus will be a permanent fixture during Google I/O across from Moscone West at the corner of 4th Street and Howard Street. Note that because we’re outside the venue, you don’t need an I/O ticket get on the bus, so come down to visit!

From there we’ll be heading across the country—stopping in Utah, Colorado, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Virginia, Georgia and Florida. Along the way we’ll be featuring some of the amazing applications developers have created using Google Maps APIs including apps from iFit, Harley-Davidson, Lyft, Hilton Hotels, The Weather Channel and Walt Disney World.

We will also be hosting three developer meetups in Boulder on June 4, Chicago on June 9 and New York on June 18. The meetups will highlight how developers can use the Google Maps APIs in their apps and websites and include sessions with Google Engineers and customers. We’re expecting these meet-ups to fill-up quickly, so reserve a seat at a location near you.

Here’s where and when you can come visit us:

Follow us on our journey via the Code the Road website to provide additional details about the dates and locations of our stops as well as charting our progress as we head across the country. We will also be sharing on-the-road updates, videos and photos on the site throughout the trip.

We hope to see you on the road!

Posted by Ashley Smith, Developer Marketing, Google Maps APIs

• What the rapid growth of mobile video means for marketing and content creation
• What’s next for programmatic in its evolution as a brand-building tool for reaching consumers in the moment
• How the industry can truly understand and measure the full consumer journey when it now happens in moments that are spread across multiple screens and devices

• Neal Mohan, VP of Display and Video Advertising at Google
• Laura Desmond, CEO at Starcom MediaVest Group
• Meredith Kopit Levien, EVP and CRO at The New York Times Company

Register for the live stream here and join us to learn how marketers and publishers are responding to a dramatic shift in consumer behavior towards mobile.  Together we’ll discuss topics including:

• What the rapid growth of mobile video means for marketing and content creation
• What’s next for programmatic in its evolution as a brand-building tool for reaching consumers in the moment
• How the industry can truly understand and measure the full consumer journey when it now happens in moments that are spread across multiple screens and devices

• Neal Mohan, VP of Display and Video Advertising at Google
• Laura Desmond, CEO at Starcom MediaVest Group
• Meredith Kopit Levien, EVP and CRO at The New York Times Company

For the last 10 months, multilingual users around the world have flocked to the Google Translate Community to help improve their language(s) on Google Translate through translating and validating common phrases.

Since launch, we’ve seen some amazing contributions, from Kyrgyz speakers who are getting us closer to adding their language to Google Translate, to Bengali speakers who organized 80 translate-a-thon events, significantly increasing translation quality for their language.

Translate Community: Google I/O Challenge (May 26 – June 5, 2015)
Now, we’re challenging all Google I/O attendees (onsite and offsite!) to represent your language(s) during the Translate Community: I/O Challenge running from May 26 to June 5, 2015. Our goal is to reach over 5 million total contributions during the challenge.

You can make meaningful contributions in just a few minutes, and remember that all contributions matter—we encourage you to spread the word in your local community and amongst your friends and family to increase the contributions for your language(s). More contributions mean higher quality translations for your language(s), or helping your language(s) become supported on Google Translate, if they aren’t yet.

To get started:

• Sign up in the new version of Translate Community at g.co/translate/io
• Set your language(s) and contribute with as many high-quality translations / validations you have time for
• Invite others to join the challenge and show support for your language on social with the official #io15 & #loveyourlanguage hashtags

You can follow which languages are getting the most contributions on our Google+ page, where we’ll post updates on who’s leading the way throughout the challenge. Besides helping your language rise to the top of our leaderboard, if you’re one of the top high-quality contributors, you’ll get a Google Translate certificate for your linguistic legerdemain and might even get a shoutout on our social channels.

Built with Polymer
In the spirit of Google I/O, we recently released a new version of the Translate Community using Polymer. In addition to supporting your language, be one of the first to try out the new look of Translate Community.

This new version takes advantage of Web Components in Polymer. We’re one of the first teams at Google to use Polymer this way—it’s now much easier to add new features like badges, upgrade our design, and ensure it works great on smartphones and tablets, in addition to desktop. We’re looking forward to leading the way by offering our community a fun and engaging place to make a positive impact.

Posted by Aaron Babst, Google Translate, Community Program Manager

When Laura Palmaro was 10 years old, she woke one morning to find that the central vision in her left eye had all but disappeared. She was not ill and had no genetic issues—it was completely out of the blue. When she was 14, the same rare condition struck her right eye, and she began her freshman year of high school legally blind. Suddenly she was forced to depend on other people to read everything aloud, from school assignments to menus. The toughest part, according to Laura, was losing her sense of independence—and not knowing when or how she would get it back.

Laura has since adopted technological solutions to her vision challenges, using a combination of screen-readers and magnification software to read, work and more. Now a program manager at Google, she is following her passion, helping Chrome and Chrome OS teams make their products more accessible. “Technology has truly transformed my life,” she says. “Assistive technology can tear down boundaries, and empower people to find their independence and fulfill their dreams.”

We agree with Laura about the power of technology to change lives. And in order to support more people like her—people who see obstacles as opportunities—we’re launching the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities. We’re putting $20 million in Google.org grants behind nonprofits using emerging technologies to increase independence for people living with disabilities, and today we’re issuing an open call to identify new areas of opportunity at g.co/ImpactChallengeDisability.

We’re kicking things off with support for two remarkable organizations. Each of these organizations is using technology to dramatically reduce the cost of and access to prosthetic limbs and auditory therapy, respectively—which could be transformative for hundreds of millions of people.

• The Enable community connects people who want prosthetics with volunteers who use 3D printers to design, print, assemble, and fit them, for free. This dramatically cuts costs, increases speed of distribution, and meets unmet needs. We’ll support the Enable Community Foundation’s efforts with a $600,000 grant to advance the design, distribution and delivery of open-source 3D-printed upper-limb prosthetics.
• Diagnosing auditory challenges can be a struggle in low income communities—the equipment is expensive, bulky and unrealistic, particularly in the developing world. With our support, and a $500,000 grant, World Wide Hearing will develop, prototype and test an extremely low cost tool kit for hearing loss using smartphone technology that’s widely available—and affordable—in the developing world.

The Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities will seek out nonprofits and help them find new solutions to some serious “what ifs” for the disabled community. We will choose the best of these ideas and help them to scale by investing in their vision, by rallying our people and by mobilizing our resources in support of their missions.

But of course, we realize there’s always room to improve our products as well. We have a team committed to monitoring the accessibility of Google tools; and we provide engineering teams with training to incorporate accessibility principles into products and services. That doesn’t just mean improving existing Google tools, it means developing new ones as well. For example, Liftware is a stabilizing utensil designed to help people with hand tremors eat more easily, and self-driving cars could one day transform mobility for everyone.

Historically, people living with disabilities have relied on technologies that were often bulky, expensive, and limited to assisting with one or two specific tasks. But that’s beginning to change. Thanks to groups like Enable and World Wide Hearing, and with tools like Liftware, we’re starting to see the potential for technologies that can profoundly and affordably impact millions. But we’ll all get there sooner if we make it a team effort—which is why we’re launching Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities today. Together, we can create a better world, faster.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director, Google.org

Today’s guest blog post is from Tam O’Shaughnessy—life partner of astronaut Sally Ride, and co-founder & CEO of Sally Ride Science. Over the past few months, Tam worked with our Doodle team to create a doodle for Sally’s 64th birthday. In this post, she tells us more about Sally’s life, her flight aboard the space shuttle Challenger, and her passion for helping kids stay excited about science and technology. -Ed.

As the first American woman in space, Sally Ride—who would have been 64 today—captured the nation’s imagination as a symbol of the ability of women to break barriers. But her historic flight represented just one aspect of a remarkable and multifaceted life. She was also a physicist, a science writer, and an inspirational advocate for keeping kids excited about science as they go through school.

Sally was born on May 26, 1951, in Los Angeles. She grew up playing with a chemistry set and small telescope—and playing football in the streets with the neighborhood kids. Later she considered playing professional tennis, but decided instead to study science.

In 1977, Sally was finishing her Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University when she saw an article in the student newspaper saying that NASA was looking for astronauts—and for the first time was allowing women to apply. Sally didn’t hesitate to send in her application, and became one of six women selected as part of the new crop of astronaut candidates. On June 18, 1983, she soared into history as the first American woman in space.

Looking back at Earth through the window of the space shuttle, Sally was moved by the view of our beautiful blue planet wrapped in its thin blanket of air. She realized how important it is for all of us to take care of our fragile home in space, and became an environmentalist. Many years later, we wrote books for young adults about Earth’s changing climate.

After leaving NASA, Sally became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. She loved being a scientist, but she was concerned that many young people—especially girls and minority students—abandon their early interest in science and math.

Studies show that the reason kids turn away from STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) is not that they don’t like it or aren’t good it. Instead, young people get turned off because society sends false messages about who scientists are, what they do, and how they work. So Sally decided to use her high profile to motivate young people to stick with their interest in science and to consider pursuing STEM careers.

In 2001, Sally and I and three friends started Sally Ride Science to create programs and publications that bring science to life and show young people that STEM is fascinating, creative, and fun. Since then, we’ve trained thousands of teachers on how to spark and sustain interest in STEM and reached millions of students with our books and programs.

Sally died almost three years ago on July 23, 2012, from pancreatic cancer. But I know she would be honored by today’s Google Doodle. With whimsy, it expresses Sally’s sense of fun and adventure, and her ability to inspire young people. And who knows—maybe her Doodle will motivate some girl or boy somewhere in the world to become a scientist and adventurer just like Sally.

Sally said it best . . .

Everywhere I go I meet girls and boys who want to be astronauts and explore space, or they love the ocean and want to be oceanographers, or they love animals and want to be zoologists, or they love designing things and want to be engineers. I want to see those same stars in their eyes in 10 years and know they are on their way!

Posted by Tam O’Shaughnessy, Co-Founder & CEO of Sally Ride Science

Posted by Shanee Nishry, Games Developer Advocate

Imagine a beautiful virtual forest with countless trees, plants and vegetation, or a stadium with countless people in the crowd cheering. If you are heroic you might like the idea of an epic battle between armies.

Rendering a lot of meshes is desired to create a beautiful scene like a forest, a cheering crowd or an army, but doing so is quite costly and reduces the frame rate. Fortunately this is possible using a simple technique called Geometry Instancing.

Geometry instancing can be used in 2D games for rendering a large number of sprites, or in 3D for things like particles, characters and environment.

The NDK code sample More Teapots demoing the content of this article can be found with the ndk inside the samples folder and in the git repository.

Support and Extensions

Geometry instancing is available from OpenGL ES 3.0 and to OpenGL 2.0 devices which support the GL_NV_draw_instanced or GL_EXT_draw_instanced extensions. More information on how to using the extensions is shown in the More Teapots demo.

Overview

Submitting draw calls causes OpenGL to queue commands to be sent to the GPU, this has an expensive overhead which may affect performance. This overhead grows when changing states such as alpha blending function, active shader, textures and buffers.

Geometry Instancing is a technique that combines multiple draws of the same mesh into a single draw call, resulting in reduced overhead and potentially increased performance. This works even when different transformations are required.

The algorithm

To explain how Geometry Instancing works let’s quickly overview traditional drawing.

Traditional Drawing

To a draw a mesh you’d usually prepare a vertex buffer and an index buffer, bind your shader and buffers, set your uniforms such as a World View Projection matrix and make a draw call.

To draw multiple instances using the same mesh you set new uniform values for the transformations and other data and call draw again. This is repeated for every instance.

Drawing with Geometry Instancing

Geometry Instancing reduces CPU overhead by reducing the sequence described above into a single buffer and draw call.

It works by using an additional buffer which contains custom per-instance data needed by your shader, such as transformations, color, light data.

The first change to your workflow is to create the additional buffer on initialization stage.

To put it into code let’s define an example per-instance data that includes a world view projection matrix and a color:

C++

struct PerInstanceData
{
 Mat4x4 WorldViewProj;
 Vector4 Color;
};

You also need to the structure to your shader. The easiest way is by creating a Uniform Block with an array:

GLSL

#define MAX_INSTANCES 512

layout(std140) uniform PerInstanceData {
    struct
    {
        mat4      uMVP;
        vec4      uColor;
    } Data[ MAX_INSTANCES ];
};

Note that uniform blocks have limited sizes. You can find the maximum number of bytes you can use by querying for GL_MAX_UNIFORM_BLOCK_SIZE using glGetIntegerv.

Example:

GLint max_block_size = 0;
glGetIntegerv( GL_MAX_UNIFORM_BLOCK_SIZE, &max_block_size );

Bind the uniform block on the CPU in your program’s initialization stage:

C++

#define MAX_INSTANCES 512
#define BINDING_POINT 1
GLuint shaderProgram; // Compiled shader program

// Bind Uniform Block
GLuint blockIndex = glGetUniformBlockIndex( shaderProgram, "PerInstanceData" );
glUniformBlockBinding( shaderProgram, blockIndex, BINDING_POINT );

And create a corresponding uniform buffer object:

C++

// Create Instance Buffer
GLuint instanceBuffer;

glGenBuffers( 1, &instanceBuffer );
glBindBuffer( GL_UNIFORM_BUFFER, instanceBuffer );
glBindBufferBase( GL_UNIFORM_BUFFER, BINDING_POINT, instanceBuffer );

// Initialize buffer size
glBufferData( GL_UNIFORM_BUFFER, MAX_INSTANCES * sizeof( PerInstanceData ), NULL, GL_DYNAMIC_DRAW );

The next step is to update the instance data every frame to reflect changes to the visible objects you are going to draw. Once you have your new instance buffer you can draw everything with a single call to glDrawElementsInstanced.

You update the instance buffer using glMapBufferRange. This function locks the buffer and retrieves a pointer to the byte data allowing you to copy your per-instance data. Unlock your buffer using glUnmapBuffer when you are done.

Here is a simple example for updating the instance data:

const int NUM_SCENE_OBJECTS = …; // number of objects visible in your scene which share the same mesh

// Bind the buffer
glBindBuffer( GL_UNIFORM_BUFFER, instanceBuffer );

// Retrieve pointer to map the data
PerInstanceData* pBuffer = (PerInstanceData*) glMapBufferRange( GL_UNIFORM_BUFFER, 0,
                NUM_SCENE_OBJECTS * sizeof( PerInstanceData ),
                GL_MAP_WRITE_BIT | GL_MAP_INVALIDATE_RANGE_BIT );

// Iterate the scene objects
for ( int i = 0; i 


And finally you can draw everything with a single call to glDrawElementsInstanced or glDrawArraysInstanced (depending if you are using an index buffer):

glDrawElementsInstanced( GL_TRIANGLES, NUM_INDICES, GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0,
                NUM_SCENE_OBJECTS );

You are almost done! There is just one more step to do. In your shader you need to make use of the new uniform buffer object for your transformations and colors. In your shader main program:

void main()
{
    …
    gl_Position = PerInstanceData.Data[ gl_InstanceID ].uMVP * inPosition;
    outColor = PerInstanceData.Data[ gl_InstanceID ].uColor;
}

You might have noticed the use gl_InstanceID. This is a predefined OpenGL vertex shader variable that tells your program which instance it is currently drawing. Using this variable your shader can properly iterate the instance data and match the correct transformation and color for every vertex.

That’s it! You are now ready to use Geometry Instancing. If you are drawing the same mesh multiple times in a frame make sure to implement Geometry Instancing in your pipeline! This can greatly reduce overhead and improve performance.

• Add or concatenate values with +
• Subtract values with -
• Check for equality with != and ==
• Compare values with , >, and >=

• Inversion of true/false values with !/not e.g. cond=‘!data:post.allowComments’>…
• Picking between 2 values with ?: e.g. expr:class=‘data:post.allowComments ? “comments” : “no-comments”‘ …
• Checking if a value is a member of a set or array, with in/contains e.g. cond=‘data:blog.pageType in {“index”, “archive”}’>…
• Combining multiple conditions with and/or e.g. cond=‘data:blog.pageType == “index” and data:post.allowComments’>…
• Changing the order of operations with () e.g.

  expr:style=‘”max-width: ” + (data:width + 10) + “px;”‘>…

  
  

  For a full specification of the new operators, see the help article.

  Happy Templating!

  
  
  

  Posted by Luke Bjerring, Software Engineer