Pro OpenGL ES for iOS

286 CHAPTER 8: Putting It All Together^

And surprisingly, the performance generally holds up. So, it has two things going for it.

The downside is that it will lock you even more into the iOS universe. Considering that

OpenGL ES is an industry standard, you might want to consider the implications of

mixing the standard with nonstandard objects. In fact, many authors eschew any

Objective-C and iOS-specific stuff as much as they can, rolling their own UI within the

OpenGL world. That way, ports to other devices can be reduced to days, instead of

months.

Figure 8-10. Adding interface elements to the solar system

In Distant Suns I have a date/time widget on the left side of the screen that lets users

very quickly advance forward or backward in time (Figure 8-11). That was completely

rendered in the OpenGL layer, largely to see whether I could do it. It looks and works

very well, while the bottom and top toolbars are standard issue UIKit models.