Hristo Lesev

Plovdiv University · Department of Computer Systems

A novel approach is presented for recording high volume data about ray tracing rendering systems' runtime state and its subsequent dynamic analysis and interactive visualization in the algorithm computational domain. Our framework extracts light paths traced by the system and leverages on a powerful filtering subsystem, helping interactive visualiz...

Migrating your workflow to Xcode and Swift would not be complete without an overview of the tools available to help you diagnose issues, debug and test your code.

Let’s be frank: making apps is fun, but it is also a business undertaking. And with the App Store flooded with beautifully crafted and free apps, a professional app developer faces the dilemma of how to balance providing value for users and keeping app prices competitive. In this chapter we address two aspects of the business of making apps: moneti...

We have so far covered types and operators in Swift and you know how to declare variables and constants. Now is time to go over how you can control the execution of your code. It’s all about loops, conditional statements, keywords for changing the course of action, and Christmas carols . . .

In this chapter we open the door to four topics that either have no counterpart in ActionScript or that Swift redefines in a way that can make them seem new to an ActionScript developer. Enumerations and generics fall under the first category. Subscripts and closures, although present in ActionScript, are taken to a whole new level in terms of func...

One of the significant events in the last decade was the rise of social networks. They transformed not only how we communicate with each other but also how ideas spread. If your app gives a compelling reason and an easy way for users to share thoughts and creations with their social network tribes, it can get the benefit of word of mouth and instan...

Having an integrated debugger is one of the best parts of using an integrated development environment (IDE). The easier and the more convenient a debugger is to use, the more regularly it will be put to work: without one you are shooting in the dark.

Working with data is a big part of app development. Anything from storing user preferences and achievements to providing larger storage for the users’ artistic creations requires that you know how to work with data, how to store it locally, and how to offer your users the option to back it up in the cloud.

It’s good to know where you stand. In this chapter—literally. A mobile app that helps you with that can be priceless: from being able to summon a taxi by just sending your location to the taxi company (useful when leaving drinking establishments in a not entirely verbal state) to finding your way to the family picnic before your cousins get to the...

The ability to play games was an amazing addition to the world of mobile devices. It unleashed developers’ imaginations and allowed users to solve puzzles, create and defend kingdoms, or relieve stress by throwing some really angry birds around.

We begin our journey into iOS development with Swift by making an app, for which you will not have to write a line of Swift code. . . . If you are a coder at heart, as I suspect you are, you probably can’t wait to get your hands on Swift and start making applications, rather than allow an integrated development environment (IDE) to create them for...

In their early days mobile phones were used only for making calls and later on for sending short text messages. Today we don’t even call them phones any more: a mobile device is a computer that fits in your pocket.

The first impression Flash developers usually share with us about Swift is “Oh, it’s almost ActionScript, isn’t it!” What they refer to is how readable syntax-wise a piece of Swift code is, compared to Objective-C, which used to be the typical choice when switching to native iOS programming. And they have a point: in contrast to transitioning to Ob...

When you are done, you will have an app project, which is version-controlled and will have gained experience in profiling it.

In this chapter we dig deeper in designing user interfaces (UIs) for iOS with Swift by making another app. There is a lot of ground to cover both on the UI front and on the language front. To make things easier, we will point out some of the Swift concepts that may look new or strange, explain them along the way, and let you know where you can find...

This chapter is all about setting up that workbench by sourcing, installing, and configuring the tools that you will need for native iOS development.

Xcode and the iOS SDK encourage you to use certain software design patterns when structuring and implementing an app. We are about to have a look at these patterns and learn how to take advantage of them.

When cameras were added to mobile devices and image-editing apps started appearing, we were all transformed into artists overnight. Taking a photo of an interesting object, applying a filter, and immediately sharing the resulting creation is so easy, it would probably inspire Andy Warhol to recreate his Marilyn Diptych. On the following pages we wi...

Prepare for a relatively fast pace in this chapter. We will speed through topics related to types in Swift and delve in more detail into those that are likely to be less familiar to an ActionScript developer. The chapter starts with an overview of Swift’s type policy and goes briefly over some of its primitive types.

Imagine that you share a house with three housemates: Alice, Bob, and Charles; the house is a mess and you want it cleaned up for your mother’s visit on the weekend. You could do it all yourself, starting with the kitchen, moving on to the bathroom, then the hallway, and so on.

A book on iOS development would not be complete without an overview of the process of releasing your app. Being able to share it with users is the main goal of developing a mobile app, after all. Apple’s release process evolves and changes all the time, so it is important to keep in mind that by the time you read this some of the screens we show ma...

We start our exploration of the Swift language with a look at the operators it offers. You will find that your ActionScript experience has prepared you for most of what’s to come in this chapter. The majority of operators look the same and follow the same syntax and rules for associativity and precedence you would expect.

In this chapter we will go over the object-oriented side of Swift. Having experience with ActionScript, you are already familiar with the object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm. It treats a piece of software as a system, which is broken down into objects. Each object is responsible for a part of the system and looks after its own state.

Today most mobile applications are part of an ecosystem of different channels for presenting information to the user. Whether you are reading your e-mail or checking the weather forecast in a web browser, in a desktop client, or in a mobile app all the information and devices are connected via the invisible meta-space called Internet. In this chapt...

This book builds on your knowledge of ActionScript and takes you on the fast track to developing iOS apps with Swift, Apple’s latest language. Swift’s syntax is easier to understand than Objective-C for people already familiar with ActionScript. At the same time, it offers a number of new features and richer expressiveness than either ActionScript...

1. Въведение Системите за контрол на кода са мощен инструмент за професионална разработка на софтуер, използван във всички големи компании. Това е свързано с наложената практика, големи проекти да се разработват от множество екипи. В този случай е необходимо използването на система, която да улеснява екипната работа и да дава ефективни резултати. Р...

This article describes and classifies various approaches for solving the global illumination problem. The classification aims to show the similarities between different types of algorithms. We introduce the concept of Light Manager, as a central element and mediator between illumination algorithms in a heterogeneous environment of a graphical syste...

This paper will describe a technique that can help to minimize redundant shading calculations, and will try to overcome the limitations of the modern rendering architecture. The implementation includes examples from optimizing classics algorithms like antialiasing.

В доклада се обсъждат ползите от включването на фотореалистичната компютърна графика и визуализирането на данни в обучението по информатика. Разглежда се практическото приложение на метода за проследяване на лъчи в различни научни направления. Описания подход се илюстрира практически от опита, добит при провеждане на факултативната дисциплина „Ray...

In this paper we present new algorithm for accelerated global illumination com-putation in scenes with camera movement. The method is based on caching and interpolating irradiance in scene volume and on diffuse surfaces. In particular we extend irradiance volume algorithm [1], to automatically decide which parts of the scene needs to be improved an...