How would the Games app industry handle a faster iPad?

[Piggie]

I know there have been various thoughts about what the next iPad will bring.

Some people thinking it will be just a camera, some memory, a gyro perhaps, a tweak to the apps that that's it.

Others thinking it will be a complete Mk2 overhaul.

Myself, I'm in the former category as I think it's too early in the cycle to remodel from scratch and it will me Mk3 till we see anything major change.

There is no doubt that the iPad will get a faster CPU/GPU chip at some stage.
Dual core and a few hundred more Mhz, both that the same time I guess.

What I'm wondering is, how will the be handled when it comes to games?

For utility apps of course, it won't matter, they will just product the answer a little faster, and the user interface will slide around smoother, perhaps even tweaked to look even more fancy than Apple can manage now with the power available to the device.

But games.

Say for example, thanks to dual core, another 200 or 400mhz and a better GPU a game could run, say, 50% faster.

What's going to happen?

Would there be an iPad3 (shall we say it happens on this model) area on the app store where only game suitable to run on the new model will be available for download?

I can't really see that happening.

Or will the new model be held back from running faster?
I can't see that happening.

Or will games writers have to code 2 versions of their games, one for slow iPad1's and another for the new 50% faster iPad3 models?

I know we had this a little with the iPhone, but they took longer and apps were growing quite slow then, also mobile chips were not advancing at the speed they are now.

Industry hardware focus really seems to be on low power multi core silicon right now, and I'd predict the power of things like the iPad will ramp up a lot faster than they did over the past 5 years of smart phones.

I just wonder how we are going to handle it when it comes to games that demand the power to give the best to the consumer.

 

[Intell]

I'd be just like the bump from the iPhone 3G to the 3Gs. Better CPU/GPU = faster better games.

 

[Piggie]

I'd be just like the bump from the iPhone 3G to the 3Gs. Better CPU/GPU = faster better games.

I suppose I'm thinking, given the industries focus right now being very heavily on the low power mobile chipsets.

Thing will move faster than they did a few years ago.

10% for example speed up would just make a game a little smoother.

But say 50% speed up we could be in the unplayable on the older iPad very easily.

Not having an iPhone I don't know what happens if you have the 1st 2G iphone pay and download a game that runs terribly on it.

 

[ExnomenDei]

Improving the processing power of the iPad will change two things: the graphics capabilities and the general processing capabilities.

For the first part, I consider that to be absolutely useless. RAGE looks really, really good wiout reserve, and there is a whole bunch of games that look more than good enough. Graphics do not a fun, good game make.

The latter is harder to say. What can a new, more powerful iPad compute that the current one can not in terms of game design? I do not know. The games that we have been seeing so far seem to draw less than the maximum power from the iPad processor. What can possibly be going on in a game that requires a lot of processing power?

A game like a touch-based Starcraft 2, in one form or another, might be an example of a game that can fully utulize the processor in an iPad. I don't know what else is worth playing on the iPad, or is playable with a touch screen as well.

 

[Piggie]

Improving the processing power of the iPad will change two things: the graphics capabilities and the general processing capabilities.

For the first part, I consider that to be absolutely useless. RAGE looks really, really good wiout reserve, and there is a whole bunch of games that look more than good enough. Graphics do not a fun, good game make.

The latter is harder to say. What can a new, more powerful iPad compute that the current one can not in terms of game design? I do not know. The games that we have been seeing so far seem to draw less than the maximum power from the iPad processor. What can possibly be going on in a game that requires a lot of processing power?

A game like a touch-based Starcraft 2, in one form or another, might be an example of a game that can fully utulize the processor in an iPad. I don't know what else is worth playing on the iPad, or is playable with a touch screen as well.

Not wanting to take anything away from the great work they have done.

But I'm positive a lot of what we are seeing in Rage is, what you might call, faked.

Pre rendered stuff that you just look around at.

It works well, but it's not generating it all like a PS3 or 360 would have the power to do.

I'll take my hat off and say the games writers have done a fantastic job with what they have to work with. But you could give the iPad 5x or 10x the power and they would still be able to use it for entertainment.

 

[Don Kosak]

Piggie,

Don't worry. Games built on OpenGL, Cocoa, and platforms that layer on top of them all use the realtime clock for timing. Most of them even throttle back pure FPS so they have more cycles to read accelerometers and the touch screen. (i.e.: be more responsive to the user.)

Even if the processor is 300% faster, the game will still play the same. It may even improve, as there will be more time to read the various input signals.

Even today, with iOS 3.x, there is background multitasking going on, and games need to share the processor (say for background location services or polling for new mail). No one writes games that have X CPU cycles = Y Frames any more.

So, bring on the faster processors!

 

[Piggie]

Piggie,

Don't worry. Games built on OpenGL, Cocoa, and platforms that layer on top of them all use the realtime clock for timing. Most of them even throttle back pure FPS so they have more cycles to read accelerometers and the touch screen. (i.e.: be more responsive to the user.)

Even if the processor is 300% faster, the game will still play the same. It may even improve, as there will be more time to read the various input signals.

Even today, with iOS 3.x, there is background multitasking going on, and games need to share the processor (say for background location services or polling for new mail). No one writes games that have X CPU cycles = Y Frames any more.

So, bring on the faster processors!

Thanks for your reply.

I guess I was wondering if you are a games writer, you look at the power of any device, and you say.

"You know what, given this new speed, I think if we get clever we can just about pull this off"

But oh, it will run like a dog on the old machine.

A PS2 attempting to run PS3 games for example.