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X-Forge 3D Engine Arrives

Posted by timothy on from the tiny-tiny dept.

suhit writes "Infosync is reporting in this article that Fathammer has finally launched its X-Forge 3D Engine. The screenshots on Infosync are amazing, plus this means that researchers out there can finally port Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash style Metaverse to a handheld device."

18 comments

  1. Porting the Metaverse by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 3

    "Port," that's funny. It's great we all have our high definition 3D force feedback full body immersive metaverse access portals at home, but like you said, the only problem is we can't carry it around with us...

  2. By amazing... by Tom7 · · Score: 3, Funny

    By amazing, you mean, "worse than Doom?"

    1. Re:By amazing... by yasth · · Score: 1

      More like software mode quake I really.

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      I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
    2. Re:By amazing... by cpeterso · · Score: 1


      yup, amazingly worse..

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      cpeterso
    3. Re:By amazing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Software-mode Quake at least had texture maps...

    4. Re:By amazing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was playing pitfall on my atari and then
      i saw this and was like whoaaa!!

  3. Sweet! by tswinzig · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's like 1990 on your PDA.

    --

    "And like that ... he's gone."
  4. Amazing? by CounterZer0 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Maybe it was just REAALY bad compression, but those screenshots looked like crap compared to...just about any commercial 3d engine - they looked very 'unsmooth' and 1997'ish.

    1. Re:Amazing? by satanami69 · · Score: 2

      It cuz they're for a handheld not a real computer. But yeah, they still do look like crap.

      --
      I really hate Dan Patrick.
    2. Re:Amazing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      put any commercial 3d engine on PDA :-) oh wait, this is the one you can do that with.. no unreal or doom3 for you

  5. huh by standsolid · · Score: 0

    this is incredible because it runs on a phone, right? people are talking bad about it are probably assuming it's a normal 3d engine. If I can play this on my nokia, Then i would be /very/ impressed. And it says it can do multiplayer via bluetooth. sounds good to me.

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    WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
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  6. Worse than Doom? Hardly. by yerricde · · Score: 3, Insightful

    By amazing, you mean, "worse than Doom?"

    You can't expect Doom 3 on a handheld machine. The best you can do on a handheld with a 16.8 MHz ARM7TDMI processor is Doom 1 at 120x120 pixels and 15 to 20 Hz.

    The screenshots of the X-Forge demos look vaguely like those of Sega's Virtua games: simple maps, ok character models, few textures. But it looks good for a handheld.

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    Will I retire or break 10K?
    1. Re:Worse than Doom? Hardly. by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      yeah, and it's more than just a raycast engine like doom anyways, which is NICE imho.

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      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  7. Should I be impressed? by Guspaz · · Score: 2

    People have ported DooM, Quake, and even Quake II to the Pocket PC. Last I heard DooM and Quake ran at very playable speeds. Now I hear news about some new commercial engine that doesn't even look as good as DooM, and I'm supposed to be impressed? Sorry, not buying it.

    1. Re:Should I be impressed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fps on quake is very bad on all handhelds, doom maybe ok but you can't compare it since it's 2d fake stuff..
      you haven't seen any of this stuff personally?

    2. Re:Should I be impressed? by Abnormal+Coward · · Score: 1

      looking at the screen shots of Fathammer it looks pretty good.

      Also I would say most of the games are demos to show of the SDK, comparing to doom which is a complete polished game is not really fair :).

      quite impresive considering the spec of the devices that they run on.

    3. Re:Should I be impressed? by lahna · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Doom and quake both look like crap and run like crap on Pocket PC (ok, doom runs some 10-15 fps, but it still isn't real 3d). Don't buy everything that's been told to you. And x-forge runs fast, at least it did when i tried their first technology demo.

  8. Seems damn good to me! by abdulla · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You all seem to forget that this is aimed at things less powerful than the Sharp Zaurus, I've never seen such wonderdul graphics on a Gameboy Advance or a mobile phone before, the pictures at the bottom of this page look pretty damn good to me!