Synthesis Complete
Update 1.75
This update has three new segments of Insulin for synthesis. All of them with variations that don’t completely reflect either the speed or look of the molecular interactions during protein synthesis. As a result of all the segments now being included there is a full protein available.
A full protein will provide perspective and help humans who use the app to better and intuitively understand how a protein is made. There’s been updates to the nucleotides in segment selection that reflects a more accurate human version of insulin. So it’s now possible that if you had this sequence of mRNA made in a lab it would work as insulin normally does.
The updated iOS version will cost $ 0.99 USD for the near future. Link to the iOS download is here. The app is now also coming to Android. It won’t include the update but it also won’t include a purchasing cost. The link to download the app on Android can be found here.
Most of the app has objects with pretty sharp edges that blend seamlessly when they connect with other objects. When creating close to a hundred animations that include these connections and then render on different screen sizes and devices it’s a recipe for a small headache.
The animations for the different segments required a lot of refinement. Animations have been given an increase in speed for consecutive segments. There is probably a way the animations might have been automated but each segment has meticulously crafted animations to provide experiences that are specific to each segment.
A lot of the update includes migrating third party assets and upgrading software. There’s also some minor changes that are being tested like segment selection being a PNG instead of an FBX to render an image with higher quality and cleaner edges.
There are a few other additions like a short typographic animation at the end of insulin being synthesised and some small fixes to improve the app.
Most of the time spent on this update was done fixing a very particular issue surrounding a limitation of computers called the floating point imprecision.
A link can be found here that goes into more detail.