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OpenGL Coming to your Cellphone

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the why-the-hell-not dept.

Little Hamster writes "SGI and Nokia have signed an agreement to co-operate on the development of a 3D standard suitable for all embedded mobile terminals, based on OpenGL. This could be used for bringing real 3D Games to mobile devices, 3D global positioning systems, 3D representations of buildings or even creating entire interfaces in 3D. You can also find the press release press release here."

2 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. OpenGL? lets make a usefull cell phone first. by Saahbs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is absolutely no need for anything 3D on cell phones. What I would like to see, and so far I haven't seen in Europe, is a cell phone featuring:
    - full calendar with appointments, alarms, repeats and no-ringing "timespans".
    - nice T9 SMS entry like Sagems (as opposed to "menu bloated" alternate word lookups in Nokia's T9 implementation)
    - FM _and_ AM radio tuner
    - MP3/OggVorbis playback capability with CF storage
    - 300hour standby
    - flip-out microphone so people can hear what I'm saying
    - amber backlight instead of white/green/blue
    - notepad/voicerecord/simple_finance app
    - GPRS, HSCSD, Bluetooth

    If I could find a set that had ALL of the above I could replace my walkman, mp3 player and a pocket calendar. Unfortunately I have not seen one cell phone that has all of the above. Anybody has seen such a beast in a standard cell-phone form factor?

    OpenGL? Sure, 3d menus, crappy 3d games in 160x160, will wonders never cease... arghh

  2. But why? by gusnz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They won't stand a snowball's chance of running DOOM 3 at full res unless you want them to double as central heating. And OpenGL for a cellphone UI would be overkill, and hard to use -- remember how VRML was going to take over the web?

    But I can think of at least one valid use for this - streaming videoconferencing. Why stream 24fps video when you can run facial-recognition software, break a face up into polygons like a game model, and transmit the facial movements to be rendered on a screen. Lots of cellphones now come with cameras built in, so it wouldn't be that great a step up. Or perhaps if it was too cheesy for live conferencing you could have a face "read" text messages to you.

    Any more ideas, or is this just another flash in the pan?

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