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

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.