New DeviceOrientationEvent.absolute property

Dean has suggested adding a flag to the DeviceOrientationEvent to
indicate whether or not the orientation values are absolute, as
opposed to being only relative. A device without a compass may be able
to provide only the latter, but this could still be of use in some
applications.

I propose adding a new 'absolute' property ...

interface DeviceOrientationEvent {
    readonly attribute boolean? absolute;
    ...
}

If there are no further comments, I'll add this to the spec.

Thanks,
Steve


>>> Along these lines, I wonder if DeviceOrientation should have a flag to indicate whether or not it is real
>>> world accurate. For example, some hardware might be able to accurately return orientation changes
>>> but not have a compass. This is still extremely useful in games, where they don't necessarily care
>>> about real-world orientation, but rather the change in orientation.

>> Good point. Would this use case be solved by the rotation rate data
>> we've added to DeviceMotionEvent?

> Sort of, but the DeviceOrientationEvent is much easier to use. I feel bad because I proposed it, but in most
> cases the gyro change data is too low-level - all you care about is the current orientation :) I'm sure there
> are games that will use gyro rotation rates, but it would be very nice to have a flag on the
> DeviceOrientationEvent.


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Received on Friday, 3 September 2010 10:49:36 UTC