GenyMotion - Android Emulator

[bigsofty]

Just discovered this one, any one tried it, good for quick Android testing? 

http://www.genymotion.com

[erico]

I have tried a few other more free ones, they felt more like an emu to give you the ability to play your stuff on pc/tv then an actuall emulator for debugging purposes.
Like Bluestacks.

But them I stumbled into problems as it is really not quite for debugging and my game displayed wrongly with it.
I guess that has to do with the orientation stuff Space Fractal always talks about.
While my game works fine with GLB on the real stuff, on emus, it goes wrong.
I believe Android Extras fix this.

Either way, owning a note 2, it is faster and better to test with it.
My reasons for an android emulator, was to be able to set resolution to tablets I don´t own and can´t simulate under GLB because the required resolutions are way higher then my monitor. I didn´t allow me to do so.

I´m not sure about this one though, but from my resolution tests, I don´t believe I will have trouble with androids for quite a while.

[bigsofty]

OK, thanks for that Erico.

This one claims to emulate the 10 most popular devices for Android, which could be handy for compatibility testing. I think I'll give it a go.

[erico]

Ok, get back your thoughts about it, maybe stuff evoluted and I wasn´t aware...I don´t check these emus much often.

Since you asked about android stuff, be sure to check this thread:
http://www.glbasic.com/forum/index.php?topic=9834.0
And this site:
http://screensiz.es/phone

It might help out.

[bigsofty]

Thanks for the links Erico, I'll look into them tomorrow. 

So far no luck with GLBasic, ADB does not seem to like the virtual machines that this emulator uses, at least with GLB.

[spacefractal]

Yes it's property the orientation issue. This also happens on ouya. This was one of the first issue I'm fixed with ae and main reason to uses it. You don't need to uses other than that and adding the assest check.

This is also why many glb apps seems to been in portrait mode, which should have been landscape. A similar issue also now happens with ios8.

[MrTAToad]

Its not a bad emulator - the last time I used the preview/demo (before they started charging for it), it used VirtualBox.  Speed was very reasonable, but did have a bit of stability issues.

It is certainly better (speedwise anyway) over Googles emulator.  I think Bluestacks gives better performance though and is a more general device emulator.

[MrTAToad]

There is also Andy : http://andyroid.net/

Haven't tried it though!

[bigsofty]

Hmmm, Andyroid, this one is new to me too, I'll have a quick look too, thank you.

[bigsofty]

OK, small update on how I got on with Geny.

Pro:

You can test against a lot of hardware, for example you can choose a tablet, say the Galaxy Tab. Then choose and Android version, say API 18 for example. One of the very nice things is that it seems that the emulator uses genuine firmware images from the original devices, which is a little surprising. So the Samsung custom Android changes are still intact on the Galaxy range for example. It's not just changing the skin and the window res to match a device res it seems.

Con:

Slow, I have quite a powerful PC yet emulation is quite slow for 3D Game APKs, GL Emulation is not great in this sense.

Also, I can't actually get my app to run yet, it complains that I can an incompatible CPU type when I install my game. This could be due to one of the extra command line compiler options my app uses(unroll-loops etc.), I need to look further into this.


So to re-iterate, it could be a great way to test compatibility BUT not to check performance on different devices, which is a pity.

[erico]

Hey bigsofty, if you don´t mind, I have a question about this emulator.

Is it capable to emulate resolution of 2560x1600?
Like in a window mode, scaled to 50%?

Bluestacks was quite fast here and there was this japonese android emulator that was even faster IIRC.

[bigsofty]

Yes Erico, it can, if you select the Nexus 10 image.