3D Games?

[maven1975]

Am I understanding things correctly when I read that the Pre has little to no 3D acceleration?

While I am impressed with my Pre, this would be not so hot for developers and the App store.

[mrloserpunk]

I've not read that.

[Rennat]

I don't think so because there was a developer that ported DOOM. DOOM is a true 3D game. Therefore, I assume that it does have 3D rendering.

[Mannyman]

YouTube - Doom on the Pre (Nearly Fully Functional)

From the TI OMAP 3440 Specs page:

The OMAP™ 3 architecture combines mobile entertainment with high performance productivity applications
Advanced Superscalar ARM® Cortex™-A8 RISC core enabling 3x gain in performance
Designed in 65-nm CMOS process technology adds processing performance
IVA™ 2+ (Image Video Audio) accelerator enables multi-standard (MPEG4, WMV9, RealVideo, H263, H264) encode/decode at D1 (720x480 pixels) 30 fps
Integrated image signal processor (ISP) for faster, higher-quality image capture and lower system cost
Flexible system support
Composite and S-video TV output
XGA (1024x768 pixels), 16M-color (24-bit definition) display support
Flatlink™ 3G-compliant serial display and parallel display support
High Speed USB2.0 On-The-Go support
Seamless connectivity to Hard Disk Drive (HDD) devices for mass storage
Leverages SmartReflex™ technologies for advanced power reduction
M-shield™ mobile security enhanced with ARM TrustZone™ support
Software-compatible with OMAP™ 2 processors
HLOS support for customizable interface
Support for OpenGL ES 1.1

[maven1975]

How does it differ from the iPhone 3G S as far as 3D games/environments. Does that device not have a secondary chip specifically for 3D?

Although, I spent WAY too much time dicking around on the old 3G with games. So it might be a blessing in disguise.

[showson1]

As far as I know there is no hardware acceleration for 3D.
This doesn't mean it can't do 3D though, it will just have to be pure software 3D without help from the hardware.

[maven1975]

Originally Posted by showson1

As far as I know there is no hardware acceleration for 3D.
This doesn't mean it can't do 3D though, it will just have to be pure software 3D without help from the hardware.

Bummer!

[MannyZ28]

The Pre has a PowerVR graphics chips, just like the iPhone does, however, it's the operating system and the SDK that's the problem. The OS wants to be programmed in web based languages, which is not that 3d friendly at all. The iPhone on the other hand is programmed in some sort of iteration of C, which allows programmers direct access to the hardware. People are hoping that later on in the Pres lifecycly, Palm will open up deeper hardware access to the developers.

[maven1975]

Originally Posted by MannyZ28

The Pre has a PowerVR graphics chips, just like the iPhone does, however, it's the operating system and the SDK that's the problem. The OS wants to be programmed in web based languages, which is not that 3d friendly at all. The iPhone on the other hand is programmed in some sort of iteration of C, which allows programmers direct access to the hardware. People are hoping that later on in the Pres lifecycly, Palm will open up deeper hardware access to the developers.

One would hope from a owner & developers standpoint. We need the app store to have games that attract the masses, That was a huge shot in the arm for Apple and their app store endeavors. The other apps were icing on the cake.

[Banger]

Well manny I look at it this way, why have a PowerVR unless at some point they planned to open it up for more native 3D "apps" and or games?

[mrloserpunk]

Originally Posted by Banger

Well manny I look at it this way, why have a PowerVR unless at some point they planned to open it up for more native 3D "apps" and or games?

I can't imagine Palm making the norm something that was derided as a stop gap measure with Apple. More access is coming I'm sure...July might be an important month in the evolution of this company.

[maven1975]

Well Palm has time if they are going to work on Apple's time line. 11 months to be more precise. Thats when Apple opened the iPhone up (1 yr Point).

[mrloserpunk]

yeah, that is what i find so fascinating about this phone. It does have its short comings right now, but the potential is more than there for a serious challenge to some (not all not by a long shot) but some of apples market share. Take some from apple, a bit from BB and some of the white space of 1st time smart phone users and you have a recipe for success!

[Auzo]

Another possibility that has been brought up in these forums before is that there is a new web browser plugin (O3D) being developed that would allow 3D in a browser. We will have to wait and see where the future of 3D on the pre takes us.

The Google Code Blog: Toward an open web standard for 3D graphics (part 2): Introducing O3D

[odditory]

We will see 3D games for the Pre, but they'll be C/C++ native Linux apps that draw directly to the framebuffer. Spawning them from WebOS will be the trick, and it won't be impossible.

[mosdl]

Originally Posted by odditory

We will see 3D games for the Pre, but they'll be C/C++ native Linux apps that draw directly to the framebuffer. Spawning them from WebOS will be the trick, and it won't be impossible.

Actually, if you provide a javascript api that allows 3d stuff it will work. HTML5 already has 2d drawing apis (Firefox and webkit support it), so 3d drawing apis are easily possible.

The problem is performance - native C will be faster than JS talking to C code.

[TymonFlak]

I'll bet you are already seeing the 3D hardware in use. Apps all render to their own space, when you 'push the view back' to card view. apps continue to render to their 'full size' space. The CPU is not drawing all those pixels at a lower resolution while in card view. It's using the texture filtering of the integrated graphics to smoothly 'shrink' the image.
All the transparent effects are also using the accelerated blending of the graphics as well.

I also would not be suprised if all the html5 <canvas>(path, rect and image) methods are HW accelerated.

The powerVR onboard is for polygons and depth buffering. it doesn't do transforms, but that's what the DSP is for.

The pre is effectively a 'multi-core' device. The CPU can be doing stuff, like slurping network data, while the DSP decodes video, and the powerVR filters or rotates the image... all at the same time.

[wynand32]

Originally Posted by TymonFlak

I'll bet you are already seeing the 3D hardware in use. Apps all render to their own space, when you 'push the view back' to card view. apps continue to render to their 'full size' space. The CPU is not drawing all those pixels at a lower resolution while in card view. It's using the texture filtering of the integrated graphics to smoothly 'shrink' the image.
All the transparent effects are also using the accelerated blending of the graphics as well.

I also would not be suprised if all the html5 <canvas>(path, rect and image) methods are HW accelerated.

The powerVR onboard is for polygons and depth buffering. it doesn't do transforms, but that's what the DSP is for.

The pre is effectively a 'multi-core' device. The CPU can be doing stuff, like slurping network data, while the DSP decodes video, and the powerVR filters or rotates the image... all at the same time.

Sounds good to me!

[geodim]

Why is it so important that we play 3D games on our phones?

[Xyg]

To echo the consensus here, the hardware of the Pre supports 3d gaming. In fact, the innards of the Pre are very similar to another very popular smartphone...

There are some pretty interesting things that popped up on the Pre’s PCB’s. This is the first production device we’ve seen on the OMAP3 (Open Media Applications Processor) platform. OMAP3 is powered by the 600MHZ ARM Cortex A8, PowerVR SGX 530 (GPU), 430MHz C64x, DSP and ISP (Image Signal Processor) and was clearly designed to pack a punch – Dr. Wreck thinks we’re going to see this processor popping up in future netbook endeavours.

source