The settings page in the emulators.
The settings page now works in CloudPebble's emulator, and in the SDK's. Those emulators open a face's settings in a web browser, and a browser won't open the page the way a phone does. So in an emulator the face now opens the same page from the web, at huntrontrakkr.github.io/planisphere-watch-face/settings/, with the face's current settings passed along and returned to the emulator when you save. On a phone nothing changes: the page still opens on its own, without the network. Each release publishes its own page.
The constellations spread out from the pole, whatever the weather.
The chart of the constellations now spreads out from the pole in a widening ring with a softly dithered edge. Each figure is drawn out from the middle to the window's edge as the ring passes, and the face comes back the same way, out from the pole.
Under a grey sky, in rain or snow, or in fog, the chart shows its stars all the same, as a printed chart would: the clouds and the weather are left out while it shows.
The constellations dissolve in and out, and the animations run quicker.
When a flick shows the constellations, the chart now dissolves in over the face through an even, ordered dither: the sky, its stars, the figures and their names come up together over six steps. The chart holds for a moment, then dissolves back to the face the same way. The settings page plays it as the watch does.
The animations draw only what moves. The card, the ring and the time stay as they are, and only the window is drawn again until the last frame, which draws the whole face. Each frame now follows the one before as soon as it can, rather than after a fixed wait. While the chart fades back, the sky's colour is worked out once rather than for every step. While the sky spins, half as many points of the sky's colour are worked out each way and the rest are filled between them, which can't be told apart while it turns. The face at rest is drawn exactly as before.
The memory check now counts each scene's code with the moment that uses it, and the labours' scene no longer keeps a table of the whole card while it draws.
The constellations shown when asked, the sky spun a whole day round, and two flicks to ask.
A flick that shows the constellations now works at any hour and on every plate except the Astrolabe, whose rete carries no figures. The window shows the sky as a printed chart would: the night sky and its brighter stars, each constellation's figure drawn in, star to star, in solid lines in the plate's own colours, with the constellations' names over them. The other names are left off while it shows. It holds a moment, then the face comes back.
A flick that spins the sky now turns it a whole day round. It starts gently, through dusk, the night with its stars and names, and dawn, and settles back on the hour, in about two seconds.
A new setting, How many flicks, asks for one flick or two. With two, the second must come within four seconds of the first: two quick flicks, or one to light the screen and one more. Two is the default, so a flick by chance sets nothing off, and settings from before keep the flick you chose but now ask for two.
The settings page plays the constellations and the spin as the watch does.
A frame of the face also needs less memory: the sky's grid is let go before the time is drawn, and the bright stars' two tables are now one.
The animations to watch in the settings, and the candle on the dark plates.
The settings page can now play each animation in its preview, on the plate and card you have chosen: the minute written, the figures drawn in, the sky spun, a shooting star, birds at twilight, and a fireworks display. The ones that need a dark sky, or twilight, play at an hour of the preview's own day that has it. The figures are not offered on the plates that never draw them in. The preview also shows the battery's candle when it is chosen.
The battery's candle is now off unless you choose it. Its unburnt wax is drawn as a dotted outline in the card's ink, so the candle can be read on the black and dark plates as well as the light ones.
The 0.7.6 build carried a stale table and was not published; this release replaces it.
The constellations' figures drawn in, star to star, as often as you like. They are drawn in once an evening as dusk brings out the stars; under Animations, "And again, while the stars are out" now offers them again at the top of each hour of the night, each half hour, or each quarter. Each drawing in is six frames of the whole face, so the oftener, the more of the battery; at dusk only is as before.
A fix: the fireworks at the top of an evening hour on a calendar's day were going unplayed. The minute's figures being written at the same moment held the memory the display needed, and the display gave way without a word. The display now takes its room first, and at that one minute the figures simply appear; the display's record of what it covers is also kept smaller, with room to spare.
The drawing in whole numbers. The watch has no floating-point unit, and nearly half of each minute's drawing was spent in software arithmetic on fractions. The stars, the constellations' lines, the ecliptic and the Milky Way's grid are now placed with an integer trigonometry of our own, to a 256th of a pixel, the same integers in the prototype, so the two agree to the pixel. A frame takes a little over half the work it did at 0.7.0, which is what the battery pays for; every star lands where it did, to within a pixel, and nothing else changes.
Less work for the battery. The face is drawn afresh each minute, and that drawing is where the watch spends its power; it now takes about a fifth less, and a little more than that with a theme behind the face, with every pixel exactly as before: the sky's shading worked out once for each cell of its grid rather than for every pixel, the Milky Way looked up only where the window is, the ring's rim traced along the window's edges alone, the themes' woodcuts decoded in fewer steps, and the phone's messages, which come a few at a time, answered with one drawing instead of one each.
A new option under the time's settings: Gild the time. The figures of the time are outlined in the plate's own gilding, as a scribe gilt or rubricated a heading, so they stand clear of the sky and the scenes behind: red ink on the paper planisphere, gold on the Book of Hours, silver on the shagreen, grey on Flamsteed and the lantern slide. The small raised h and m are left as they are.
Two new plates. The lantern slide: Flamsteed's chart reversed, white on black, as Victorian lecturers threw the heavens on a screen with a magic lantern. And shagreen: the green ray-skin that cased pocket watches, telescopes and sundials in the 1600s and 1700s, with its pale grain, silver mounts round the ring, and the sky in the window as through the telescope it held.
A fix for the place's name and the tide not reaching some watches: the phone now sends the town's name with every update of the position, and sends the tide again from what it has, so a watch that missed them, or was just updated, gets them the next time the face opens.
The fifth and last theme for the card behind the face: the herbal. Under The card, choose Behind the face: The herbal. Each month a plant as Leonhart Fuchs had it cut for his herbal of 1542 fills the card behind the face, faint, showing where the window and the type leave it open: the hellebore in January, the cowslip in April, the rose in June, the vine in September, the mistletoe in December. In the southern hemisphere it follows the seasons there.
On the Time 2, the new Gardener's Moon corners: the Moon's phase, and what the old gardening books say to do by it, sow while it waxes and gather while it wanes, with the spade and the watering pot. Like all the corners, they go with any backdrop.
Short place names now shorten as the old newspapers did, so Sydney becomes Syd. when the ring has no room for it.
A fourth theme for the card behind the face: the sea. Under The card, choose Behind the face: The sea. Each month a ship as Hollar or Nooms etched them in the 1640s and 50s rides above the window on the tide where you are: down behind the window at low water, up at high, with the sea drawn round it from the hulls to the horizon. The tide comes from the nearest station in the United States, elsewhere from a marine model; inland the ships ride at the mean.
The Time 2's corners are now a choice of their own, with any backdrop: the season's sprigs, the Labours' tools, the zodiac's Sun and Moon, the astronomer's planets, or the sea's Moon and tide with the compass rose and the anchor. If you had the theme in the corners before, you keep what you had.
The settings page explains each backdrop and each set of corners as you choose it.
A new theme for the card behind the face: the astronomer. Under The card, choose Behind the face: The astronomer. Each month one of Tycho Brahe's instruments at Uraniborg, engraved for his Mechanica of 1602, fills the card behind the face, faint, showing only where the window and the type leave it open: the armillary spheres, the great globe, the mural quadrant with Tycho at work, Uraniborg itself.
On the Time 2, with The theme in the corners on, the corners hold the planets above the horizon, the brightest first, in roundels; in a corner no planet takes, the new star Tycho saw in 1572.
A fix: choosing The zodiac under Behind the face now brings the zodiac. Before, the phone passed the choice to the watch as a plain on or off, so the zodiac came out as the labours, and the corners held the Labours' tools instead of the Sun and the Moon in their roundels.
The woodcuts behind the face are now stored in about a fifth of the room, keeping only what can ever show on the card, which leaves space for the themes to come.
A new theme for the card behind the face: the zodiac. Under The card, choose Behind the face: The zodiac. The woodcut of the sign the Sun is in, from Erhard Ratdolt's 1482 Hyginus, fills the card behind the face, faint, and shows only where the window and the type leave it open: the ram's head above the window, the crab's claws raised either side of the time, the scorpion holding the balance. It changes as the Sun moves from sign to sign.
On the Time 2, with The theme in the corners on, the corners hold the Sun and the Moon and the signs they are in, as the Venetian printers cut their glyphs, each in a roundel.
High and low water: a new option under The sky. The next high and low tides where you are, in the face's smallest figures low on the face, marked as tide tables mark them (â–² high water, â–¼ low): on the Time 2 beneath the window, on the Round 2 in place of the coordinates beside NOON. In the United States from NOAA's nearest tide station; elsewhere from Open-Meteo's marine model; nothing inland. Off unless you turn it on.
Behind the scenes, the labours and the corner tools now load only while they draw, which frees memory for the themes to come.
On the Time 2 nearer the equator the window grew past the ring and covered its band. It is now cut by the ring, its rim meeting the band's rule, as the Round 2's window is cut by its own ring.
When the place's name or its state has no room in the band beside MIDNIGHT, both now stand either side of the fleur-de-lis at the window's top instead (NORFOLK ⚜ VIRGINIA), following the window's edge, the two letter-spaced to the same width as old maps space a name. The state's full name is used wherever it fits, then the old newspaper form (VA.), then the postal code (VA).
The place's name on the ring is rethought. In the United States, Canada and Australia the state or province now stands beside the city, in the old newspapers' style (Norfolk, Va.; New York, N.Y.; Calif.; Ont.; N.S.W.), dropping to the postal code (VA, NY, CA) when room is short; elsewhere, the country as before.
A name too long for its room is now shortened rather than left out, the way atlases and catalogues abbreviate: generic words first (St., Ft., Mt.), then leading words to their initials (N. York), then the last word cut back a syllable at a time (Norfolk becomes Norf., Philadelphia Philad. or Phil., Switzerland Switz.), then the initials alone. The watch sets the longest form that fits, since the room beside MIDNIGHT changes with your latitude. Places chosen on the settings page get the same treatment, with the state filled in for places in those three countries.
A new option for the Time 2, under The card: the labours' tools in the corners. Each month's tools take the four corners instead of the season's sprigs, drawn after the woodcuts of the 1490s Shepherds' Calendar and a Paris Book of Hours: the scythe and the hay rake in June, the sickle and a sheaf in July, the flail in August, the baker's peel in December. A tool hangs in each top corner and one stands propped in each bottom corner. On the printed plates they are drawn in the plate's ink. It is off unless you turn it on.
New animations, now and then, each with its own switch under Animations (and, like the others, left out while the battery runs low):
- Shooting stars: on a clear dark night a meteor crosses the window as the minute turns. Rarely on most nights; one minute in five near a meteor shower's peak, flying out of the shower's radiant.
- The figures drawn in: once an evening, as dusk brings out the stars, the constellations' figures are drawn in star to star.
- Birds at twilight: in the months birds migrate (March to May, September to November), a skein crosses low through the window at dawn or dusk, once a twilight.
- The village's life: windows light and go dark as the village's people come and go, and the hearth smokes on a cool evening.
Settings from earlier versions keep their choices, with the new animations turned on.
The settings page's preview follows the watch's own clock: "As the watch" now shows the watch's 12- or 24-hour setting (and so each plate's own numerals on the 12-hour ring, figures on the 24-hour), where before it guessed from the phone.
Animations, each with its own switch: the minute written, and the fireworks displays. All are left out while the battery runs low.
The minute written: when the minute changes, its new figures are written as a scribe writes them, outlined and then filled in, in under a second: eight small frames over the figures alone. A switch under The clock; left out when the battery runs low.
A place by name: the settings page finds a town or city by its name (Open-Meteo's place names) and sets its latitude, its longitude and the name on the ring.
On the Round 2, one star disc for every place, as a planisphere has: it is fitted to a 40-degree window, the commonest planisphere's. Nearer the equator the ring's edge hides the farthest sky, as a star disc's edge does; nearer a pole than about 63 degrees the card covers the window's top, where the almanac keeps its room. North and south alike, to either pole.
The gallery's sweep now runs from the equator to the north pole and to the south pole.
On the Round 2, the window no longer rises into the almanac near the poles: beyond 56 degrees north or south the chart keeps its scale and the window shrinks toward a round one about the pole, so the time, the date and the almanac's line stay clear in Scandinavia, Iceland, Alaska and beyond.
The store's gallery now goes through the options: the variations of plate, clock, place and sky; the sky anywhere from the tropics to the Arctic; the weather; besides a day, the almanac's days, a fireworks display, the plates and the sky's news.
The first release of Planisphere: a star chart and an almanac for Pebble Time 2 and Pebble Round 2.
The chart: the sky over where you are, turning behind the card's window as a planisphere's does. About a thousand stars, the Milky Way, the constellations' figures, the Moon in its phase, the planets and Jupiter's moons, with the Sun as the hour hand on the ring; the weather from Open-Meteo, and eclipses drawn as they happen.
The almanac: the date, the next sunrise or sunset, and the sky's news (planets meeting, the Moon passing one, a meteor shower's peak). Twelve calendars to keep, from the Christian and Eastern years and ancient Rome to the Hebrew, Chinese, Islamic and Hindu calendars: about ninety days, the great ones in red, each with an emblem drawn after the carved calendar sticks of England and Scandinavia. Some light every window or fires on the hills, some bring fireworks at the top of each evening hour, and some mark the sky itself: Christmas Eve's first star, the magpies' bridge at Qixi, the rabbit in the Mid-Autumn moon. The Labours of the Months, after the shepherds' calendars of the 1490s, as an option.
Ten plates, each after a real chart or instrument, and a settings page that shows the face live as you choose.