Blender Running On iPAQ

Blenderlover writes: "The full Blender 3D animation & game creation/playback suite runs on a Compaq iPaq now! Here's what Not a Number (the creators of Blender) write on their website : One of the biggest suprises at the GDC was the demonstration of Blender running on a Win CE PDA (personal digital assistant). Prepared as a demonstration of the portability of the Blender code, the full creation suite was shown running on the 200 Mhz, 32 Mb iPAQ system. With a textured game demo playback of 3-4 frames per second, without CPU optimization, it was another confirmation of the power of NaN technology to shape next generation digital media. Mobile and PDA 3D gaming is arriving! There's a wicked video showing Blender on the iPaq" Why not the Linux version on an iPaq properly equipped? ;) This strikes me as a less-than-ideal development tool for Blender (which screams out for a 36" monitor just to hold the widgets!), but a cool accomplishment anyhow.

Comments

Handheld for everything

[heroine]

Normally I follow the general population in terms of what technology I should be using but for all its marketing success the handheld PC is still the first technological trend which I don't personally use.

When PC makers switched from 550Mhz computers to 133Mhz handhelds I switched from 550Mhz computers to dual 1Ghz computers. That was the turning point. Guess I'll never work in IT.

Re:Opening the way for Palmtop 3D acceleration?

[Wah]

games drive hardware sales. A 3-d accelerated gameboy that links/doubles as a PDA? Sounds pretty golden to me. Wireless internet no less. Batteries would be a problem, but that's not my department.
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Re:I like NaN's approach to game creation...

[mav[LAG]]

Then you havnt seen much. *.blend files in this case are the equivalent of *.pak files for quake.

No kidding. That's why I called it an archive.

Not to be a wet blanket but...

[adrianzhong]

I really cannot see why we would need blender on a handheld. You see, there are two possible applications for this: 3D gaming or 3D design, neither of which handhelds are particularly well suited to do.

I mean, imagine playing counterstrike on your ipaq: "Oh damn i just got shot by that awm whore, where was he? oh yeah he's 2 pixels tall"

Designing dungeon walls with your fat stylus won't exactly be very good for your blood pressure either!

But as a purely challenging application of programming skills, I applaud NaN! After all, pushing the envelope is what brings about progress, and as we all know one of the strongest drives for progress in the computer industry is computer gaming. Full ahead!

Opening the way for Palmtop 3D acceleration?

[Julius X]

This looks like the type of thing that would warrant companies such as NVIDIA to expand into PDA/Handheld 3D graphics acceleration. I would love to be able to render something while I'm sitting on a bus or play a little Tux-racer while I'm in the middle of a boring lecture.

Bring on the GeForce3Go!

-Julius X

I like NaN's approach to game creation...

[mav[LAG]]

..mainly because it's so totally different from anything else I've seen. Instead of a separate executable and support files, you get an archive which you load in Blender 2.x. From there it's press a key to play. The games have:

• complex interaction with a full actor-based system
• a built-in graphics environment (Blender itself)
• scripting through python
• sound through OpenAL

In just a few months, the concept has gone from crazy idea to "wow - they might just pull this off." I'm not sure whether it can really rival a dedicated game engine, but that doesn't matter. It's a different idea well implemented.