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State of 3d Graphics on Wireless Devices
An anonymous reader writes "This
Computer Graphics World Magazine article
discusses the current and future state of 3d graphics on wireless platforms. Apparently Japan is ahead of the game with a relatively standardized 3d render engine. Seems like the main use is for 3d virtual pets and the standard sort of games one might expect. What I'm waiting for is what I believe to be the next step; the one described in, oh, so many sci-fi novels... a personality for my handheld! Imagine, if you will, a
personalized avatar or something that can interact with you and perhaps assist you in your daily endevours (with a touch of attitude?).."
How about they build reasonable networks in the US first! Half the time when I ask "Can you hear me now?" I get a "what?" in reponse.
Keep your 3d graphics, give me a phone that works well and consitantly first.
What I'm waiting for is what I believe to be the next step; the one described in, oh, so many sci-fi novels... a personality for my handheld!
What, are you nuts? A personality? What about huge bouncing boobies?
"Imagine, if you will, a personalized avatar or something that can interact with you and perhaps assist you in your daily endevours (with a touch of attitude?).."
Great. Clippy for my cell phone. Wonderful idea.
I'll sit this techno fad out...
;-)
Let me know when I can play UT2003 on my cell phone using a 1280x1024 virtual screen that's projected straight into my retinas. Oh yeah, and wireless broadband net access of course.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Until computers/processors begin to approach the complexity of the human brain, you can forget about ...a personality for my handheld! unless you're willing to settle for a souped-up 3D cousin to Clippy(tm).
The level of present 'chatterbots' doesn't even live up to their lowly title.
See www.chatterboxchallenge.com and cry for real AI
I'm saddened that it appears ALL the new wireless phones coming out are active matrix color screens. I personally would prefer form over fashion in this case, and would be happy with a conventional indiglo type displace.
The benefit: greatly increased battery life. Even with the new-fangled lithium-polymer (and soon to be proton-polymer) technology, the full color display are batter wasters!
1) MSAvatar - Where would you like to go today?
2) OpenSourceAvatar - You wanna go somewhere, go there yourself!!
I'm done imagining that. No offence to the supporters of such a UI, but it's a lot quicker for me to look down at my watch and see the time than it is for me to look down, see a teddy bear, ask it the time, and listen for it to tell me the time and that it loves me.
until I get a personality like the guy in Mona Lisa Overdrive, or at least the librarian from Snowcrash.
new life for Microsoft Bob...
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
My sister works on the Avatar technology that is mentioned in this article (at Haptek), and I must say that it is pretty stunning in real life. I haven't seen it on the handhelds, but using it on the PC is pretty damn good looking - much higher res and more believable mouth movement for speech than I have seen anywhere else. And I must say that it is always fun to have it try and pronounce impossible words :) When I first saw it, it definitely made me flash to "Snow Crash".
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Apparently Japan is ahead of the game with a relatively standardized 3d render engine.
OpenGL is perfectly suited to 3D rendering on handelds, with the caveat that software rendering for OpenGL, which is to say, Mesa, has not been seriously optimized for this purpose. This is only because there hasn't been much manpower focussed on the job, to date. What's needed is some more thinking like this.
After all, it's just a matter of programming.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
The two main standards currently under development are OpenGL ES by the Khronos group and the JSR-184 headed by Nokia. If you read through the list of participating companies, you'll notice a good bit of overlap; we can expect the two APIs to play quite nicely together.
Mobile 3D hardware will also be coming probably sooner than what most people think. Some Ericsson researchers will be giving a SIGGRAPH talk on the subject ("Graphics for the Masses: A Hardware Rasterization Architecture for Mobile Phones") even if nothing more than the title is known at this time.
While all mobile devices will have to make their own compromises on functionality, battery life, weight and cost, almost all of them are capable of running 3D graphics when the software is carefully constructed. Many modern software rendering techniques are based on dynamically generated/compiled code, and the processes are very similar to what happens inside 3D hardware. As these libraries will also be fairly small, they will not add cost or weight to the devices themselves. 3D chips will be reserved to those more keen on playing games on the road.
The technology is definitely coming, now all we need to do is invent the killer application. Ideas anyone?
Jouni
Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant