

Epic Demonstrates Unreal Engine 3 for the iPod Touch/iPhone 3GS - chaostheory
http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3695

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Shamiq
I need some kind of controller I can mount the iPhone to -- maybe better
speakers, a d-pad, a couple buttons, extended battery pack.

I would pay for that (maybe you could even bundle some games with it!).

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jamroom
I would settle for being able to simply use a bluetooth keyboard - that would
be sweet - just put on some headphones for audio. I do quite a bit of itouch
gaming, and would love to be able to do that.

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nitrogen
Maybe now they'll finally make a finished Linux port of the engine for all of
those Linux-based smartphones.

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mickt
We can but dream. Icculus was working on an Unreal 3 port to Linux (on the
desktop), but appears to be on ice for whatever reason.

Latest news about UT3 on Linux:
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzI4N...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzI4Ng)

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moron4hire
So I take it the iPhone 3GS has programmable pipe-line graphics hardware? I
was just talking with some folken over at gamedev.net about whether or not
there were any handheld devices out right now that have shader support. That's
really the only big deal here. Graphics engines like Unreal 3 are intended to
be very, very efficient. You don't end up with a top-of-the-line 3D rendering
engine by being wasteful of processing cycles, and that translates to handheld
development universally. The change in rendering paradigm from fixed to
programmable pipeline has been the biggest hurdle to getting the latest
engines running on "less performant" hardware. After that, it's all content.
It makes no sense to use Unreal v1 to push 100,000 triangles when Unreal v3
will push 100,000 triangles a lot faster.

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drawkbox
iPhone 3GS has OpenGL ES 2.0 with shader support. OpenGL ES 1.1 was fixed-
function and is what is currently on the iPhone/Touch. So when everyone moves
to 3rd gen touch or 3GS then shaders will be in effect for the market.

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moron4hire
Yeah, that was something that surprised me about the Motorola droid: it's only
GLES 1.0, with _vague, incomplete_ support for 1.1. Fixed-function is an
unfortunate conceit these days. Programmable pipeline is actually easier to
teach to complete noobs.

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drawkbox
It is really just a matter of the timing of the hardware. Mobile is about late
nineties systems, when it breaks into the opengl es 2 support and 1GHz and
512MB RAM area then we will see the devices jump up to shader support.

Then you will also start to have flash and other software rendered stuff being
fast enough. But battery technology needs to advance further as well.

Couple years out except for the cutting edge like the iPhone or the coming
Google Phone (HTC) which has Android 2 which also has OGL ES 2. Android will
also have the NDK (native) to compete with the native iPhone SDK to speed
things up. It is just like coding for old hardware but with better software.
So native, graphic tricks, hardware rendering, etc are all relevant again for
a moment.

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drtse4
AFAIK android sdk 2 doesn't support opengl es2

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drawkbox
Yeh they might not, but they need to. Android NDK 1.6 uses OpenGL 1.1 so you'd
think with the iPhone 3GS being OpenGL ES 2.0 that the rumored Google Phone
Nexus One would also be that and the next version of android would be as well.
Guess we'll have to see. WebGL is based on OpenGL ES 2.o and Windows 7 mobile
might even support it.

It is rumored to be so: [http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-
eaton/technomix/guts-goo...](http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-
eaton/technomix/guts-googles-nexus-one-smartphone-spill-
net?partner=homepage_newsletter)

~~~
drtse4
Yeah, completely agree, supporting the 2.0 standard is essential to remain on
par with the iphone and not make android phones look like second class
citizens. The wave of "handheld-console level" 3d games on iphone is coming
soon, so if not in 2.1, it would be ok even if they slip it in one of the next
minor releases. Just one thing bothers me, the introduction of gl2.0 will
further segment the market...

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kuda
Taking bets that the "other mobile platform" is the ZuneHD.

