Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK
iSimulate brings iPhone apps to the big screen
Apple's iPhone simulator built into Xcode is nice, but it doesn't completely replicate the actual feel of playing with an iPhone (not to mention that things like multitouch and accelerometer info can't be tested on screen). Enter iSimulate, a new app from a company called vimov. In conjunction with a program on your Mac, it allows you to take the input (including multitouch and accelerometer) of an iPhone, and wirelessly connect it to an app running on your monitor. The effect, as you can see above, is basically an iPhone controlling a big-screen app.
Which has all sorts of possibilities. Developers can use it to both test and show off their apps, which is nice. But perhaps more importantly, (assuming it works smoothly -- we haven't tested it yet) it will let people use apps on their big screen monitors. Playing on the iPhone's screen is fun and all, but wouldn't it be nicer to play on two big screens at the same time?
The app might not quite be ready for that use quite yet -- not only is the app for your Mac called an "SDK" (which definitely means it's meant for developers, not gamers), but the price might be prohibitive as well. They launched it at $2, and the price is going up exponentially (it's now $8) until it arrives at its final price of $32. But this is definitely a great idea. And it if happens to be popular even at that price (for consumers and developers), we wouldn't be surprised to see Apple finally "get it" in terms of bringing some of the App Store's offerings to their own big screen.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jack said 3:25AM on 8-07-2009
A free alternative might be iPhoney - http://www.marketcircle.com/iphoney/
I use it to test iPhone websites i create locally before uploading them.
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cbh said 3:41AM on 8-07-2009
To clarify, the only sense in which iSimulate controls a "big-screen app" is that, when run on the iPhone, it sends multi-touch events to an iPhone application hosted in the iPhone Simulator and linked with the iSimulate SDK.
It's meant for developers. When I first read your synopsis I thought you were describing an iPhone-based remote touchpad app (ala teleportd) that could be used with any arbitrary desktop app. Not the case.
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Poil d'Ortie said 3:44AM on 8-07-2009
Straight from their documentation (http://www.vimov.com/isimulate/documentation/) :
6. Limitations
Due to technical restrictions, iSimulate does not send touch events for the following UIKit objects: Keyboard, UIScrollView, UIPickerView and UITableView. All of the other UIKit objects receive all touch events. There are no limitations on OpenGL-based applications.
Quite a drawback...
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Dzamir said 3:59AM on 8-07-2009
Uh??? iPhone apps on big screen with iSimulate? What are you talking about? This is just for developers. You need the source code of the application compiled with the iSimulate SDK and you can run the application on the simulator while simulating the touch events from the iPhone, and like Poil d'Orties says, it doesn't even pass all touch events.
If Apple want to let us use the iphone on a bigger screen, they just need to give us a tv cable that supports all the OS and not only the video and the music application.
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Wakka said 7:44AM on 8-07-2009
As far as I know, you can do two-fingered multitouch in the simulator (Hold Ctrl and move the finger dots)
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renode said 9:45AM on 8-07-2009
There's been a solution for this for some time now. A Cydia/Icy app called "ScreenSplittr" along with the Mac client "Demogod".
http://www.plutinosoft.com/blog/projects/demogod/
I used it to create a Jailbreak howto video on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT5y-r2dDTA
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drunknbass said 12:06AM on 8-08-2009
that is not the same thing, screen splitter or vnc, etc are too slow.
btw i have started an opensource project for this which will work in the same way as isimulate but will also support tableview and keyboard and be free.
hopefully its done soon. :P
Brian W said 10:02AM on 8-07-2009
I would by an Apple TV right now if I could also play games and use my iPhone as a virtual controller. I can already use it as a media remote. An app store for Apple TV would be competition for the wii market. (They would have come up with some cheaper controllers than an iPhone.)
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Piticli Bonico said 10:35AM on 8-07-2009
It's a great tool for developers! I've just bought it and I'm going to check it.
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Jose Andrade said 4:53PM on 8-08-2009
I purchased the app and made my game's video with it. It's pretty easy to use.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeQzC4s8KUw
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