Voidware · iOS & Android
RetroFX
3D Scientific Calculator
Classic 70’s design calculator, now in live 3D.
A calculator you can pick up
Rendered in realistic detail, RetroFX is a scientific calculator that looks, moves and operates like the real thing. It is not a picture of a calculator with buttons drawn on it; it's a 3D object sitting on your screen, and you can turn it over in your hands.
- Rotate, turn, scale and move it in 3D with your fingers
- Green seven-segment display with adjustable glow
- Buttons physically press, with sound
- Move the mode switch with your finger
- Even the on/off button works
- Calculates like the original, but with modern fixes
- Tap the screen to reset the position, ready for use
- High-resolution modelling
- Tilt affects the light reflections
- Life-sized on a large screen
Screenshots
Using it
Your RetroFX calculator is a live 3D object. Touch the sides, the screen or the top and turn it around with your finger. Two fingers pinch the view in and out, and turn it.
Tap the screen to bring it back to the home position. Tapping toggles between two: tilt view, which shows the whole calculator best, and face view, which brings the keyboard and display close to the glass and is easier for actually calculating.
The gear icon in the top right adjusts the light brightness, the screen glow and the audio volume.
Where it comes from
RetroFX is based on the Casio fx-39, made in Japan in 1978. Casio built many models around this very popular design; they looked alike but were all slightly different inside.
The display is a reconstruction of the green vacuum fluorescent display — which is really a small cathode ray tube. RetroFX recreates the glow those tubes gave off, including the way it varied with the strength of the battery.
The original worked internally to ten digits and showed you eight. RetroFX works to higher precision than that, so for some calculations it is more accurate than the original.
Differences from the original
Part of the point of bringing these machines back was to leave their limitations behind. So RetroFX is not quite faithful on purpose.
- The C key
- On the original, “C” cleared the whole entry. Modern machines delete the last digit instead, like a backspace. So a typo can be fixed without starting again. RetroFX works the modern way.
- Rounding
- Rather shockingly, the original did not round the number on display: 2 ÷ 3 showed as 0.6666666 rather than 0.6666667, and π as 3.1315626 rather than 3.1415927. RetroFX rounds the display properly.
- Smaller annoyances
- Results convert back into fractions, and the trigonometric functions are not limited to values below 1440 degrees.
Questions
- Why can’t I open the battery compartment?
- Maybe in the next release ;-)
- Is RetroFX an emulator?
- No. RetroFX is a from-scratch simulator.
- Does RetroFX calculate in decimal?
- Yes! Like real calculators, all the arithmetic is decimal, not binary.
- Are the well-known but undocumented functions on INV implemented?
- Oh yes.