Anti-idle Options

[Napster]

Excellent phone app! ....but I dislike the anti-idle. I assume it's in place for your battery life's protection or perhaps it was somethng that keeps the connections to furc clean (unlike the PC/Mac client) or even a feature that was old and was pushed through anyway but I've had to reconnect like 40 times in a 6 hour period. If there is an update, I vote for control panel to turn it off.

I've waited forever for this, so excellent. Runs smoothly, no graphical lag at all and the whisper feature is awesome. Beats the heck out of remote desktop which I gave up on. Too much battery life sucked out of my phone for that.

So yes. Optional anti-idle, me love you long time? Etc.

[Thomart]

Napster long time no see.

[Rydia Aslin]

I think it was explained that it was there for battery protection, yeah. There's actually kind of an anti-idle already in place - plug your iPhone in. It won't disconnect or idle if it senses there's an external power source.

[Napster]

I think it was explained that it was there for battery protection, yeah. There's actually kind of an anti-idle already in place - plug your iPhone in. It won't disconnect or idle if it senses there's an external power source.

Oh, then cool! That might be doable. I have a chargeable battry pack that might keep it afloat when I'm not near a wall. However, I do like to roam around.

[Rydia Aslin]

I'm not sure if the battery pack would work, precisely, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to try. From the FAQ:

...after a couple of minutes, the app will shut down your connection so it doesn't use up all your battery charge. When this happens, Furcadia may ask you to tap the Reconnect button if it's been a while since you went idle. You can set "Auto Login" in our Settings and it will usually bypass the Reconnect dialog for you. Also whenever you're plugged into a USB charger, Furcadia will keep you connected, as battery charge isn't a problem.

[Napster]

Thanks Rydia! And hello Thomart who had a name-change and I don't know who you used to be. xP

[Napster]

Nope, still can't stay connected after a certain amount of time with the USB plugged in and charging. I'll hit someone up later if everybody hasn't changed their names by now. xP

Thanks Rydia! And hello Thomart who had a name-change and I don't know who you used to be. xP

[Ghost Tiger]

Excellent phone app! ....but I dislike the anti-idle. I assume it's in place for your battery life's protection or perhaps it was somethng that keeps the connections to furc clean (unlike the PC/Mac client) or even a feature that was old and was pushed through anyway but I've had to reconnect like 40 times in a 6 hour period. If there is an update, I vote for control panel to turn it off.

I've waited forever for this, so excellent. Runs smoothly, no graphical lag at all and the whisper feature is awesome. Beats the heck out of remote desktop which I gave up on. Too much battery life sucked out of my phone for that.

So yes. Optional anti-idle, me love you long time? Etc.

This is actually controlled by the operating system--we defer to it on issues of power management because all that hair nom noms the heck out of the battery if you're not careful.

If you make a formal bug report on this, I might be able to get something into the bug fix release.

[Crucified]

This is actually controlled by the operating system--we defer to it on issues of power management because all that hair nom noms the heck out of the battery if you're not careful.

If you make a formal bug report on this, I might be able to get something into the bug fix release.

Does the operating system also manage the multi-task feature bundled with 4.0? I only ask because whenever I try to use it in conjunction with Furcadia, like, say, to check my email while connected, when I tab back into the Furcadia application it resets. Same thing happens if my phone goes to screensaver and I get a phone call or text.

[Ghost Tiger]

Does the operating system also manage the multi-task feature bundled with 4.0? I only ask because whenever I try to use it in conjunction with Furcadia, like, say, to check my email while connected, when I tab back into the Furcadia application it resets. Same thing happens if my phone goes to screensaver and I get a phone call or text.

It does, and it places restrictions on how an app can behave in the background. At best, we'd be disconnected automatically upon going to the background--at worst, we'd eat up the user's battery back there while doing nothing useful. So for the sake of your phone, and your phone bill, we exit out. (Note also that we use most of the phone's memory holding the current and default patches; whenever you launch an app in the foreground, Furcadia would be force-quit to make room in memory for that other app.)

I hope that helps explain the situation.

[Napster]

Control panel for all of this imo. At least we can set things ourselves to eat battery life or not. An advanced users tab or something. I'll make a formal complaint soon. My power-supply suddenly took a dumb though so I had to swap them.

It does, and it places restrictions on how an app can behave in the background. At best, we'd be disconnected automatically upon going to the background--at worst, we'd eat up the user's battery back there while doing nothing useful. So for the sake of your phone, and your phone bill, we exit out. (Note also that we use most of the phone's memory holding the current and default patches; whenever you launch an app in the foreground, Furcadia would be force-quit to make room in memory for that other app.)

I hope that helps explain the situation.

[Ghost Tiger]

Control panel for all of this imo. At least we can set things ourselves to eat battery life or not.

We don't have any code we can write to actually make this happen though. I wish I could switch between Furcadia and Mail and Safari and back again, but there's not actually any way to do that within the bounds of the current SDK. We can go to the background, but we get disconnected and can't run any code, so you end up having to do the whole reconnection sequence all over again anyway.

We'll be keeping an eye on this though--if Apple adds APIs to allow stuff like Furcadia in the backround, we'll definitely take advantage of them!

[therianthrope]

As GT said, Apple is very restrictive in how they let third party applications behave. Maintaining a connection in the background is a no-no, and all applications must close when requested to (eg. no third party "locks") for example. The iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch platform is very controlled at this point in time. I personally think the iPhone client is a great step in marketing Furcadia to the general public, and I like it.