Introduction

In this chapter, we will transition to an increasingly powerful and ubiquitous computing platform by demonstrating how to visualize data on the latest mobile devices, from smart phones to tablets, using OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES). As mobile devices become more ubiquitous and with their increasing computing capability, we now have an unprecedented opportunity to develop novel interactive data visualization tools using high-performance graphics hardware directly integrated into modern mobile devices.

OpenGL ES plays an important role in standardizing the 2D and 3D graphics APIs to allow the large-scale deployment of mobile applications on embedded systems with various hardware settings. Among the various mobile platforms (predominantly Google Android, Apple iOS, and Microsoft Windows Phone), the Android mobile operating system is currently one of the most popular ones. Therefore, in this chapter, we will focus primarily on the development of an Android-based application...