STM / Img Tech mobile graphics accord

maybe something like this would help :

http://www.pentile.com


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: mboeller on 2002-02-21 17:50 ]</font>

 

There's plenty of developers working in 3D for PDA's and GBA ... 320*240 was plenty to revolutionize gaming on the PC at the time 3D hit it big there, and we didnt even have the benefit of high quality anti-aliasing at the time.

 

But the PCs also had the benefit of at least a 15 inch screen, not a few inches. Note that both screens (PC and hand-held) are roughly the same viewing distance to the eyes.

Do hand-helds have enough storage capacity (both in the cartridges and system memory) to handle rich 3D worlds?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Joe DeFuria on 2002-02-21 22:50 ]</font>

 

Hrm - we're not talking Doom3 here! How many disks did Quake 1 come on? How big was Tomb Raider? That probably the level of games we'd be talking about here.

N64 was a cartidge based 3D system - you could probably fit one of those games on a GB/GBA sized cartidge on todays process technologies.

 

Of course we aren't talking Doom3 quality...but you still need to be able to see and distinguish between enemies at a "distance" in a FPS for example....That doesn't matter if it's doom 1 or doom 3.

In a nut-shell, most 3D fully *textured* games IMO, may simply require a larger screen than hand-helds / PDAs can provide in order for the user to see much more than a mess of pixels bunched together on the screen.

I can see the situation different with essentially non-textured games (like Mario64)....but then, is a "powerful" 3D processor needed for that?

 

As someone pointed out N64 was a cartridge system, and once "3D" antifuse ROM chips emerge N64-capacity cartridges will be nickle and dime stuff. Hell, I see a good chance we will see a return of the cartridge format on a much larger scale with that technology ...

BTW I think you are underestimating the capabilities of our eye's.

Marco

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: MfA on 2002-02-21 23:21 ]</font>

 

&lt;shrug> The game will meet the needs / capabilities of the platform its being targeted for. Doom (original) was quite well done on the GBA and that hasn’t even got the resolution that we’re talking about here.

Also remember that MBX has ‘fsaa4free’ which should defiantly be a boon for this resolution.

 

That could very well be. I guess I won't know for sure until I try and play Quake or Unreal on a few inches of real-estate.

 

it will depend on the type of games.

need not to be a FPS

Ecco and Shenmue will both play fine on a PDA screen as is DOA2 type fighting games.

All 3 should be easy ports as well.

the bigger problem would be how and where to fit the controls...

 

The thing to remember is the actual dots per surface area. Have you ever watched a low res movie (MPG, Quicktime, etc) fullscreen on your monitor ? It looks pretty horible and blurry, if you use no filtering it will look ugly and blocky. The same happens if you play a 3D game fullscreen on your monitor and use 320x240 resolution. BUT when you play that low res MPG movie on your desktop in window it suddenly looks pretty good, the same for a 3D game place it into a window on your 1024x768 desktop and it will look just fine. With mobile devices you'll have small screens yes, but the resolution matches the size of the screen and the actual dots per area are good enough. SO what happens is that the game will actually look like the low res movie playing in a window.

I would be more worried about streaking and slow response of these displays, 60Hz is probably a no go on these devices, its probably going to be a refresh rate of 30Hz.

Just think about this if your worried about how it looks : they do readable text on these devices... and text is probably trickier than any kind of fast action graphics.

K-

 

I'm thinking downloadable games through 3G wireless networks into Pocket PC devices using 3G modems. Another option would be to download games to your PC then load them into a handheld device through USB link onto a Secure Digital card. Yet another option would be to sell games on 3" CDROMs that you load into your PC then transfer to the handheld device saving the manufacturing costs of cartridges making the games a little cheaper to consumers. There are a lot of possibilites.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: PC-Engine on 2002-02-22 12:19 ]</font>

 

Would be a good idea to have SEGA develop a GBA beater with this tech. They would not have to upgrade the handheld for ages and they are experts with this tech(SHx and PVR) But they do not have the $$$ Would have been cool to see what they could get out of it.

 

Actually I have worked to put movies on simular devices here at work. My biggest worry was not how it looked, but battery life. Of course our products are more for communication so to us battery life is key as these products are all mobile.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jb on 2002-02-22 15:27 ]</font>

 

Kristof,

Sure...that is certainly one critical aspect of something "looking good." My point is, there is not only a relative aspect (dots per surface area) but an absolute one...total surface area.

Taken to the extreme, I could have a really high "dots per surface area" ratio...320x200, but on a 1 cm square screen. I don't think anyone would enjoy playing on such a thing.

So there is some real point at which the absolute screen real estate becomes an issue for "acceptable" use. I assume that this threshold would vary from person to person, and also from type of game to type of game. And I would guess that for many types of 3D games, the "threshold size" is larger than most 2d ones. I'm only raising the issue of the possibility of PDAs being at or around this threshold for 3D gaming.

I still don't see any use for 3D chips on cell phones.

 

The PowerVR MBX will face competition from at least NeoMagic, which is already shipping products of their MiMagic NMS7041 SoC with 4MB embedded RAM and a 3.2 GB/sec bandwidth.. To bad it only have 50 Mpixel/sec fillrate..

Vidar

 

I don't know. Ultimately, the modern mobile phone sells if it has a 'gimmick' that others don't.

I can imagine people buying a new mobile to show their friends the funky 3D animation of their caller list etc.

 

They had several systems that could have beat the gameboy back in the day , but it didn't , due to nintendo strongarming them , and poor battery life , and from what I see this would also be a problem with this combo .

 

Gamegear rocked. I had one, well, still have and it still works fine. It was compatible with all my master system games with the aid of a cheap converter and the batteries lasted a good time. The screen was also pretty good.
Much better than anything else at the time.

Why would this be a problem? Weve already established that MBX is very low powered. Im sure it would give a good amount.

 

I dont think battery life would be much of an issue if IMG's estimates were accurate, if they put in 1 extra battery they'd make up for more than the MBX uses ... and I doubt they would even need that.

With NiMH batteries and assuming it would have to run for 20 hours like advertised for the GBA the MBX chip would take about 40% of the power ... that should leave enough for the rest of the device, SuperH is right up there in MIPS/Watt area and they have an extra process shrink to work with.