On Sep 22, 2:27*pm, Max Kellermann wrote:
PCool wrote:
There was a video of VMWARE running on an Android platform.

Found that video. *It's a hypervisor which can run Android and Windows
CE in parallel. *It's not technically "VMWare on Android", but rather
"Android on VMWare". *The demo is already 1,5 years old, and I'm not
holding my breath for the real product.

For this to support LK8000 (or older XCSoar versions), a user needs to
buy a Windows CE license. *And of course the VMWare license.

I guess buying a used Windows PDA is cheaper. *And faster.

XCSoar 6.0 will be able run on a fully free operating system, with no
additional cost, and no rendering overhead. *We will use blazingly
fast OpenGL rendering on Android.

Max

I was also trying to understand the VMware comment.

Conventional VMware desktop and server products virtualize an x86
processor and provide virtualized or raw access to underlying PC/
server architecture devcies. That entire enviroment is radically
differnet to what Windows Mobile/CE sees on a mobile device, starting
with it's not an x86 processor - an ARM processor in the case of the
demo. And Windows Mobile/CE will not run in conventional VMware
virtual machines (oh sure you can run a Windows CE or Windows Mobile
software simulator in a VM.... you can also poke your eyes out with a
pointed stick, and that's probalby more fun... and yes Windows CE can
run on x86, but that's not what we use for soaring software
applications).

The prototype VMware MVP (Mobile Virtulization Platfrom) software show
in the video demo is a different beast that needs to be embedded on
the phone, if your a big IT organization interested in using this
across corporate smart phones then contact VMware. It's very different
from other VMware products and not a product for mere mortals,
certainly not yet. It is unclear what device vendor support this has,
I've just not been following it in detail.

The answer is... do a native port with Android. Software running on
Windows Mobile and Windows CE badly needs to die, it just a crap
platform from the last century. Microsoft breaking backwards
compatibility with Windows Mobile 7 will help us all eventually move
off that platform, I expect Android to dominate. Current Apple devices
just don't have the right form factors and there are walled garden
issues with bluetooth and serial port interfacing, its doable stuff
but a bit of a pain. Currently there is a bit of a lack of really
interesting Android devices and many things are sort of waiting on the
Android Gingerbread release. I hope the open source and other soaring
software products are particularly targeting Gingerbread...and the
Android app market.

Darryl
(I was an early employee at VMware, no longer there).