In some of my previous WP7 blogs, such as Basic XNA Graphics for the WP7, I go over how to build basic 3D models for your applications. What happens when you want something more complex? You need a good 3D tool to generate those models for you. I started exploring Google SketchUp as a possibility for generating 3D models for the WP7. I found Jim’s Blog on how to load a Google SketchUp model into a XNA game. Jim used the DirectX/XNA Exporter Plugin. So I installed the plugin and started playing around. I thought it would ...

I’ve been looking at several alternate reality application ideas and how to best show the real world on the phone. It’s easy to get the camera preview to show up in a WP7 application, but sometimes you want to maximize the camera preview in the screen. One problem is that the camera preview is a different size and aspect ratio than the WP7 screen. The size differences are illustrated below.

The WP7 screen is 480x800 and the camera preview is 480x640. If you want to show controls, then you can use the extra space at the top and bottom. ...

If you missed my blog about showing the WP7 magnetometer in 3D with an XNA/Silverlight application, you can read about it by clicking here. We are in the process of putting this application in the Marketplace so you’ll be able to check it out on your phone shortly. One of the steps in the Marketplace process is coming up with screenshots of the application. You can always use the screen capture option in the Windows Phone Emulator; however, in this case it was going to take some code to emulate the magnetometer sensor. Figuring out how to take screen ...

With Christmas coming up soon, what better blog can a nerdy geek come up with than to explain how to draw a Santa hat on the WP7 using the XNA Graphics Framework.

I’ve been working with computer graphics on and off for most of my 20+ year career. For me, it all started with OpenGL in the early 90’s. Since then I’ve worked with DirectX and now XNA. It’s amazing how little things have changed over that time. All those frameworks are based on triangles and arrays of vertices and normals. When you learn one of those frameworks, you ...

I’ve always been interested in 3D graphics and wanted to investigate the capabilities of the WP7. As an engineer who has dealt with sensor technology most of his career, I was also interested in investigating the sensor capabilities of the WP7. Using the Mango Teapot as an example, I came up with a simple compass application to dive into these areas. This application is a Windows Phone Silverlight and XNA Application similar to the Mango Teapot but with a 3D blue arrow that always points up and a yellow arrow that always points North.

I found that the 3D graphics ...