iPad Pro iPad Pro better games?

[Bravia3d]

One thing I like about the iPad Pro is how powerful it truly is in such a small form. Benchmarks are showing it is nearly on par with the MacBook Pro at certain points.
I can render numerous 4k videos with ease and not once does it stutter like my iMac.

But one thing that upsets me is gaming, gaming apps suck... I am sorry for those of you that like them, but for me they truly suck.. I can NOT stand purchasing a game and having to buy add on crap or the graphics look like crap.

With the pro models being so powerful, why can't they just port games over? Or make amazing games just for the pro versions? I would love to see games like GTA 5 or Battlefield 1 running on my iPad and I am 100% sure the pro versions could run them with ease. So why don't they do this? I think the market would be huge if they had some amazing FULL games with Xbox One and PS4 graphics. Oh, and being able to use a Bluetooth controller for them would be great also.

 

[AFEPPL]

It's still not even close to the console and lets be honest.. The full on Macs cant do it.
Porting from ARM To intel and a re-write for the GPU, not going to happen.

 

[Bravia3d]

I am sure they could pump much better graphics out from the iPad Pro models, maybe not quite current console graphics but pretty close.

 

[star-affinity]

Metal 2 (coming in iOS 11) in conjunction with the recently released iPad Pro's should give a pretty graphically capable combo, I think. I think you have to give the developers some time.

What is it that you think looks so bad currently on the iPad Pro? Do you have some examples of games?

Also, since it's still relatively few that has an iPad Pro I'm not sure if developers want to focus on it particularly.

 

[acorntoy]

Metal 2 (coming in iOS 11) in conjunction with the recently released iPad Pro's should give a pretty graphically capable combo I think. I think you have to give the developers some time.

What is it that you think looks so bad currently on the iPad Pro? Do you have some examples of games?

Nothing really looks bad, but if you look at it really closely advancements largely dropped off once the iPad Air 2 was introduced, there's plenty of games to play, but few of them have been optimized past late 2014 graphics.


For example in Speedtest videos people are still widely using the years old real racing 3 and modern combat 5. A game that was used to advertise the air 2 when it was new shouldn't really still be 'cutting edge' with all the advancements these tablets have made.

 

[KrisLord]

The main issue is us users.

We’ll pay £50 for a PS4 game but complain about £1.99 for an iOS game.

The hardware is there but the economics don’t make it viable unless you do terrible in app purchases and get a small amount of users to subsidise the rest.

 

[Act3]

One thing I like about the iPad Pro is how powerful it truly is in such a small form. Benchmarks are showing it is nearly on par with the MacBook Pro at certain points.
I can render numerous 4k videos with ease and not once does it stutter like my iMac.

But one thing that upsets me is gaming, gaming apps suck... I am sorry for those of you that like them, but for me they truly suck.. I can NOT stand purchasing a game and having to buy add on crap or the graphics look like crap.

With the pro models being so powerful, why can't they just port games over? Or make amazing games just for the pro versions? I would love to see games like GTA 5 or Battlefield 1 running on my iPad and I am 100% sure the pro versions could run them with ease. So why don't they do this? I think the market would be huge if they had some amazing FULL games with Xbox One and PS4 graphics. Oh, and being able to use a Bluetooth controller for them would be great also.

alot of it is cost of development, are they going to develop for iPad Pro users or the devices that sell more in order to make larger profit? There isn't a game that graphically challenges the Air 2 at the moment on the app store.

Supposedly a game like horizon zero dawn cost $47 million to make.

 

[star-affinity]

Nothing really looks bad, but if you look at it really closely advancements largely dropped off once the iPad Air 2 was introduced, there's plenty of games to play, but few of them have been optimized past late 2014 graphics.


For example in Speedtest videos people are still widely using the years old real racing 3 and modern combat 5. A game that was used to advertise the air 2 when it was new shouldn't really still be 'cutting edge' with all the advancements these tablets have made.

That might be true, but I wonder why that is?

I'm thinking loud now, but the iPad runs iOS just like the iPhone and there are plenty of people having iPhones and improved graphics should appeal to both those running a game on iPhone and thpse running a game on the iPad. Of course some games arent avaliable on the iPad and vice versa. Maybe the problem is that there isn't (currently) a big market for "heavy" cutting edge games on the iPad? I don't know...

 

[thunng8]

That might be true, but I wonder why that is?

I'm thinking loud now, but the iPad runs iOS just like the iPhone and there are plenty of people having iPhones and improved graphics should appeal to both those running a game on iPhone and thpse running a game on the iPad. Of course some games arent avaliable on the iPad and vice versa. Maybe the problem is that there isn't (currently) a big market for "heavy" cutting edge games on the iPad? I don't know...

Need for speed: No limits does take advantage of the iPad Pro. I have access to the ipad air 2, ipad pro 9.7 and ipad pro 12.9 (1st gen).

Moving from ipad air 2 to ipad pro 9.7 - you can clearly see there there is much longer drawing distances and less jaggies especially on the cars (most likely higher AA settings). The ipad pro 12.9 runs the game at a clearly higher resolution (maybe even native?).

 

[kasakka]

The CPUs on iPad Pros may give some desktop machines a run for their money, but the GPUs do not. They are a far cry from anything found on traditional consoles and even the Nintendo Switch is more powerful in that department, though maybe not by that much.

Porting games to a different architecture is a huge effort and that's before you have to figure out how to control the game with touchscreen input instead of a game controller. While you can hook up a game controller to an iPad, it cannot be a requisite and is most likely even in Apple's guidelines.

Mobile game market is becoming pretty big, but at the same time there is more money to be earned from the micropayment model than from single purchases. People on mobile are also not willing to pay fair prices for games as anything over 10€ is considered expensive when console games are 60-70€ and PC games 40-50€. Game development is a hard field and to create anything like GTA V takes the effort from a big studio with hundreds of people. They could not sell it at the low low prices mobile games typically go for.

So it's a risk where the studio has to decide if they would rather sell their game on Nintendo Switch (games only platform with high game price as standard) or on iPad (not designed for gaming, having to compete on an App store with tons of crap cluttering the market and expected low price for the game).

 

[thunng8]

The CPUs on iPad Pros may give some desktop machines a run for their money, but the GPUs do not. They are a far cry from anything found on traditional consoles and even the Nintendo Switch is more powerful in that department, though maybe not by that much.

The iPad Pro is much more powerful graphically than the switch. The switch uses a tegra X1 gpu. The 2015 first generation 12.9 iPad Pro was already faster than x1 in standard benchmarks like gfxbench and 3dmark graphics. E.g. Looking up gfxbench the iPad Pro gets 34fps vs 26 for the tegra x1 in manhatten offscreen 1440p.

The a10x is said the to be 40% faster than the a9x - so the latest gen iPad Pro could be up to 2x faster than the switch.

The iPad Pro is no match for the Xbox one or PS4 - but then again they are not portable machines

 

[Skika]

it cannot be a requisite and is most likely even in Apple's guidelines.

This is a big deal. A reason i dont game on my iOS devices but much rather on my vita, 3ds or switch. I cant imagine playing Killzone with touch controls.

 

[sparksd]

The CPUs on iPad Pros may give some desktop machines a run for their money, but the GPUs do not. They are a far cry from anything found on traditional consoles and even the Nintendo Switch is more powerful in that department, though maybe not by that much.

Porting games to a different architecture is a huge effort and that's before you have to figure out how to control the game with touchscreen input instead of a game controller. While you can hook up a game controller to an iPad, it cannot be a requisite and is most likely even in Apple's guidelines.

Mobile game market is becoming pretty big, but at the same time there is more money to be earned from the micropayment model than from single purchases. People on mobile are also not willing to pay fair prices for games as anything over 10€ is considered expensive when console games are 60-70€ and PC games 40-50€. Game development is a hard field and to create anything like GTA V takes the effort from a big studio with hundreds of people. They could not sell it at the low low prices mobile games typically go for.

So it's a risk where the studio has to decide if they would rather sell their game on Nintendo Switch (games only platform with high game price as standard) or on iPad (not designed for gaming, having to compete on an App store with tons of crap cluttering the market and expected low price for the game).

The controller support as optional only is in Apple's guidelines:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...issing-elephant.2051933/page-20#post-24812344

 

[akash.nu]

The CPUs on iPad Pros may give some desktop machines a run for their money, but the GPUs do not. They are a far cry from anything found on traditional consoles and even the Nintendo Switch is more powerful in that department, though maybe not by that much.

Porting games to a different architecture is a huge effort and that's before you have to figure out how to control the game with touchscreen input instead of a game controller. While you can hook up a game controller to an iPad, it cannot be a requisite and is most likely even in Apple's guidelines.

Mobile game market is becoming pretty big, but at the same time there is more money to be earned from the micropayment model than from single purchases. People on mobile are also not willing to pay fair prices for games as anything over 10€ is considered expensive when console games are 60-70€ and PC games 40-50€. Game development is a hard field and to create anything like GTA V takes the effort from a big studio with hundreds of people. They could not sell it at the low low prices mobile games typically go for.

So it's a risk where the studio has to decide if they would rather sell their game on Nintendo Switch (games only platform with high game price as standard) or on iPad (not designed for gaming, having to compete on an App store with tons of crap cluttering the market and expected low price for the game).

Couldn't have said it any better. Spot on with every point.

 

[TomOSeven]

I see a whole different issue here, and that is proper gamepad support. AFAIK you can't use any of the modern gamepads, let alone mouse and keyboard, as input devices for the iPad, so only turn based games will provide a good experience on the iPad.

For every other game, you will wish you had a gamepad or keyboard / mouse instead of imprecise and limited touch controls.

 

[AFEPPL]

The GPU in the A10X will not be able to sustain any serious throughout due to the thermal throttling they employ.
Using a higher clock speed comes at a price and when in a fanless device like the iPad that's a big problem.

I don't know what the performance is on the GPU but it's in GFLOPS range.

 

[thunng8]

The GPU in the A10X will not be able to sustain any serious throughout due to the thermal throttling they employ.
Using a higher clock speed comes at a price and when in a fanless device like the iPad that's a big problem.

I don't know what the performance is on the GPU but it's in GFLOPS range.

I've had no issue with thermal throttling in any of my games for the a9x in the 12.9.

There have been several tests of the a9x for throttling and in all cases it is minimal. Will try to find if anyone has done the same for the a10x.

Edit
Here you go under emissions. No throttling at all in a less strenuous test and a maximum of 15% during 30 runs on gfxbench manhatten

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-iPad-Pro-12-9-2017-Tablet-Review.230600.0.html

I would say throttling is much less of an issue on these iPad than they are on most laptops.

 

[AFEPPL]

Yeah because it's much lower powered and running kids games.
It's a consumption media device not a pc/console.

 

[thunng8]

Yeah because it's much lower powered and running kids games.
It's a consumption media device not a pc/console.

You said it uses high clock speeds and throttled, now you are saying it is lower powered running kids games. Make up your mind.

FYI, the latest iPad Pro is higher powered in graphics than the majority of laptops sold. Laptops sell in far greater numbers than desktops.

 

[AFEPPL]

I have two new ones, it throttles when it needs to but given most of the games are kiddy games you could run on a TV it's not really challenged now is it!

Graphic capabilities is no where close.

 

[thunng8]

I have two new ones, it throttles when it needs to but given most of the games are kiddy games you could run on a TV it's not really challenged now is it!

Graphic capabilities is no where close.

Ok, smarty. What kiddy games make your iPad throttle?

You are not much sense at all. I do sometimes play games on my iPad. They are need for speed no limits, f1 2016. They are not kiddy games.

And what are you comparing against? No where close to what? while certainly not close to a high end Graphics card on pc, it beats my mac laptop in graphics (2015 13' MacBook Pro)

 

[darkarn]

It is easier to develop for a single type of machine rather than trying to accomodate for many types of machines that don't scale well

 

[richpjr]

We’ll pay £50 for a PS4 game but complain about £1.99 for an iOS game.

^This. There has to be a business justification for spending the huge amount of money it takes to develop and maintain a modern high end game and I'm sure the low price people are willing to pay comes into play.

 

[AFEPPL]

Ok, smarty. What kiddy games make your iPad throttle?

You are not much sense at all. I do sometimes play games on my iPad. They are need for speed no limits, f1 2016. They are not kiddy games.

And what are you comparing against? No where close to what? while certainly not close to a high end Graphics card on pc, it beats my mac laptop in graphics (2015 13' MacBook Pro)

Groan, No you're not making sense. It's a consumption device the games are designed to run on everything from the A7 and on.. nothing is available to run only the on the A10X... Decent graphic cards have more DRAM than the iPad has RAM in total. The mac is not capable of running decent games so its still a pointless call out to the iris card.

This is just pointless and boring, if you want to believe the IPP is a top of the line graphics engine, youre welcome to.

 

[thunng8]

Groan, No you're not making sense. It's a consumption device the games are designed to run on everything from the A7 and on.. nothing is available to run only the on the A10X... Decent graphic cards have more DRAM than the iPad has RAM in total. The mac is not capable of running decent games so its still a pointless call out to the iris card.

This is just pointless and boring, if you want to believe the IPP is a top of the line graphics engine, youre welcome to.

No, you are not making sense, there are plenty of games that do not run decently on the a7. I just gave 2 examples. In fact, when going from a8x to a9x there is an appreciable increase in graphics quality and frame rates in these games. You seem to have lots of iPads, just install and run need for speed no limits on an iPad Air - it runs miserably.

I still have no idea why you believe the iPad Pro throttles heavily. Test have shown that it doesn't even running graphically intensive benchmarks.

Also I never said it had top of the range graphics, I just said its graphics was better than most currently selling laptops. Looking at your impressive list of machines - your a10x beats all of your laptops. Btw there is no 2011 retina MacBook Pro - they were introduced in late 2012.