NOVA 3: The New iPad's first app hiccup

[jabingla2810]

DoF is basically selective blurring. So what was your point?

My point is that depth of field is a really advanced cool looking effect, and while it's included in the iPad 2 version, it's not in the latest iPad version.

it's not simply "selective blurring", it's a technique developers use to enhance the experience.

It adds scale, it helps provide focus to the player and it adds a movie like quality to the visuals. It's not just blurring bits of the screen, it's calculating what should be in focus and out of focus, and by exactly how much, against a variety of different criteria for a variety of different reasons.

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Of course, for most high end games (or certain high end effects) the iPad 3's SGX543MP4 won't be enough to run it at the same frame rate at 2048x1536 as the iPad 2's MP2 at 1024x768. But it does pretty well. They have had to make a few sacrifices but still the game looks great and imo the crispness outweighs the lack of effects.

See for me, the effects outweigh the higher resolution. So I'm happy they are giving us a choice.

 

[Tinmania]

Unfortunately, to those of you asking for the ability to switch between retina graphics and lower res graphics, first of all it isn't possible. It's either all retina for the iPad 3 or all low res, unless they release an entire separate app called like "NOVA 3 SD"

Second of all, it wouldn't make a difference. The iPad 3 is always running the retina display, the processor is always running every pixel, so even if the resolution of the textures was reduced, it would still be the same amount of pixels, and therefore the same amount of processor power would be required (maybe slight less, but not enough to make it worth sacrificing retina graphics)

This is the number one reason I hesitated on buying the iPad 3, and i would have waited for the 4 if I wasn't stuck with the first gen, which was all but unusable.

Thought the above would look good compared to this:

Gameloft have confirmed, via CNET, that the upcoming update to NOVA 3 will give new iPad owners the option to play the game at iPad 2 resolution with all effects, or at Retina Display resolution, but not both at the same time (obviously).

"In a statement, Gameloft said it plans to add an option in an upcoming update that lets users pick whether they want to use the third-generation iPad's resolution, or switch down to a lower resolution to view the extra effects.

"Those who play N.O.V.A. 3 Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance on the newest iPad will be able to choose between the Retina resolution or Motion Blur and Particles effects in the next update," the company told CNET. "Both options can unfortunately not run together."

In the meantime, game enthusiasts are unlikely to care too much about missing these bits of eye candy, considering the core gameplay is the same. However, this does illustrate one of the potential drawbacks of running games at these resolutions. PC gamers have run into similar trade-offs for years, but those games often offer the option to toggle various processing effects, and pick different resolutions, to find a happy medium. In the iPad's case, there's simplicity in that end users don't have to make those kind of choices."

Full comparison and confirmation of the update by GameLoft can be found here, if people really want a link as proof.

Michael

 

[dancj]

My point is that depth of field is a really advanced cool looking effect, and while it's included in the iPad 2 version, it's not in the latest iPad version.

it's not simply "selective blurring", it's a technique developers use to enhance the experience.

It adds scale, it helps provide focus to the player and it adds a movie like quality to the visuals. It's not just blurring bits of the screen, it's calculating what should be in focus and out of focus, and by exactly how much, against a variety of different criteria for a variety of different reasons.

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See for me, the effects outweigh the higher resolution. So I'm happy they are giving us a choice.

I've got nothing against depth of field, but you just described selective blurring. Sure it's clever selective blurring done in a way that enhances gameplay, but it's still selective blurring.

 

[newone757]

I've got nothing against depth of field, but you just described selective blurring. Sure it's clever selective blurring done in a way that enhances gameplay, but it's still selective blurring.

Lol thank you . I'm not trying to downplay DoF. But essentially it is selective blurry. Oversimplified, I know, but still.

Anyways I still say they can keep the DoF. It is unrealistic in NOVA 3. Instead of foreground or background being focused they use it like a vignette, blurring only the edges (in some scenes), regardless of foreground/background composition. I don't know about your eyes, but that has never happened to me. That type of effect is typically seen through a camera lens, not regular human eyes, and looks more like motion blurring (like tunnel vision) than DoF when applied like that

 

[heavensblade23]

I wouldn't say the iPad's GPU is underpowered for the new resolution. It's more that games like this are the slimmest of edge cases. 99.999999% of the apps on the store will run at the higher resolution without compromises because they weren't that graphically demanding to begin with.

 

[jonnyb098]

Is this really that surprising to everyone? The minute they announced the A5X chip it was obvious that it was just about the chip being able to push 3 million pixels around.

This is already hard enough to do on modern desktop computers let alone a mobile device. The doubling of graphics power for 4x the amount of pixels was a bit laughable. But I'm sure since only a handful of games are actually "hardcore" games Apple didn't care about a performance hit on a couple of games.

As usual , smart marketing!

 

[Skika]

I am not that tech wise, but shouldn't the new iPad give even better graphics when running in non-retina mode?

 

[gorskiegangsta]

lol And we got the so-called A5X (better graphics than A5?) in our iPad 3’s. This blows.

You can't compare performance of GPUs at vastly different rendering resolutions. It's like saying that a V4 engine strapped to a small car is more powerful than a V12 strapped to a tank because the car moves faster than the tank.

i hope so! that really blows.


and the a5x is better than the tegra! pshhh

The A5X is more powerful than Tegra 3. I'd like to see Tegra 3 so much as power the likes of iPad's retina display, much less be able to run full 3d games on it.

 

[Hemlock.47]

A resolution like 2048x1536 is not a matter of joke to propel. It 's high time you iPad2 users who are making themselves feel better by saying things like 'Thank God i stuck to my Ipad 2' or 'My iPad2 is better' realize that.

Even the top Desktop GPUs get scared speaking of that resolution, let alone the A5x. It was always obvious that what the A5 can propel in the 4S's 960*640 / iPad 2 's mere 1024*768 display can 't be pulled off by the A5x in 2048*1536, you would need a far more powerful GPU for that.

Smooth gameplay at 1024*768 requires a 8800 in the desktop, whereas similar eyecandy and framerates at 1920*1080 brings a GTX580 to it 's knees. Got that? It 's not like, dumping a GPU twice as powerful at the heart of the core will do away with resolutions twice as big. They had to give in the best they had at present, which they did. And even with this insufficient horsepower, the battery falls short even after making it 3x as big in terms of capacity.

 

[iEvolution]

Well in theory, the A5X processor should blow the ipad 2 away at the same resolution, so really the ipad 3 is still the more powerful ipad.

Besides ipad 3 is in its infancy, Apple can still improve upon it with firmware/software updates.

 

[elmz]

Welp! I downloaded the updated NOVA 3 and it was not noticeably faster in lower resolution. I was expecting it to run much more smoothly, but I was wrong. But man, what a difference in picture quality, lower resolution looks like poop. Either this updated version needs to be optimized or maybe I downloaded a bad copy. Either way, the slight bump in fps is not worth the loss in picture quality.

 

[mouthster]

Welp! I downloaded the updated NOVA 3 and it was not noticeably faster in lower resolution. I was expecting it to run much more smoothly, but I was wrong. But man, what a difference in picture quality, lower resolution looks like poop. Either this updated version needs to be optimized or maybe I downloaded a bad copy. Either way, the slight bump in fps is not worth the loss in picture quality.

how would that even happen?