Quake shown by ATI for new mobile 2300 graphics

[relapse808]

movie is at this url
http://www.hardocp.com/files/q1onphone.zip
looks good and moves quickly for a phone
I hope a PDA gets the ATI 2300 chip

[sponge]

Interesting. It's running a lot better than the video shows, the game and video seem tos hare the same FPS judging by the choppiness. Also noticed they added 240x320 (or something with the same aspect ratio) resolution.

[James S]

It also appears to have GL particle effects and texture smoothing, but the latter could just be a trick of my eye with the WMV quality.

[sponge]

I'm definitely seeing circular particles, which would evidence GL in that sense.

Seems to be a custom port; there's no icon on the programs screen afterward. Also seems to be running CE.Net

[relapse808]

it definitly looked like open gl to me. I know the ati card supports the open gl ES, but im not sure what this exactly means. I currently own a audiovox maestro and I can tell you this phone is running quake a lot better than my PDA. I just hope PDA gets this chip and pushes PDA gaming to a new level

[sponge]

We definitely need a cleaner video in order to detemrine if it's truly running a port of glQuake or not.

[Dan East]

Let's see if I can help you guys out a bit.

It runs around 30 FPS. It would be much, much faster except that the Quake core is still filled with floating point math, so the software-side is the limiting factor. It would require a virtual rewrite of Quake to remove all the floating point math. Only engines designed from the ground-up for the platform can begin to push the Imageon 2300 to near its potential. Even then, at this point, the current XScale devices cannot send data to the 2300 as fast as it can consume it.

Yes, it is a Windows CE port of GL Quake, with many modifications and optimizations to make it OpenGL ES compliant, as well as fixed point conversions for various items, such as frustum plane clipping, particle physics, etc.

Even GLQuake uses nearly square particles. I increased the quality of the particles further (doubling their resolution and blending in the edges). So those particles are unique to ES Quake.

The prototype machine you see in those screenshots is running Windows CE 4.0, and is powered by an XScale @ 400 MHz.

It is using full bilinear filtering, and uses a custom 240x320 mode I implemented. The FOV has been adjusted to maintain the proper aspect ratio, so the image is not distorted.

Dan East

[James S]

Very nifty, Dan. Can you reveal when this technology will make it into the mainstream PocketPC devices? A year? yeah... that's what they always say.

[sponge]

Dan: is it possible to see that display mode make it into the software PocketQuake?

The particles in GLQuake are most definitely circular (I'm running the original glQuake, and fuhQuake, a good source port) so what do you mean by the nearly square (unless you mean how the graphics card handles them - when they're on the screen, they're quite circular)

How close is that device to being an actual PDA, in terms of the size of parts, batteries, etc?

Also, when you say that it can't send data to the 2300 fast enough, is that referring to Quake and it's current limitations on WinCE, or to the XScale 400MHz? Will developers basically have to sacrifice game logic in order for better graphics, due to the limited processing power?

What do you think of the API, and the card in general from the developer side?

Thanks for clearing things up, sorry about the bombardment of questions. I'm sure you can understand the excitement, as this is finally the first working 3D accelerator that has been actually seen running on WinCE.

[Dan East]

Dan: is it possible to see that display mode make it into the software PocketQuake?

I won't be making that modification in the near future. I don't have time to spare.

The particles in GLQuake are most definitely circular (I'm running the original glQuake, and fuhQuake, a good source port) so what do you mean by the nearly square (unless you mean how the graphics card handles them - when they're on the screen, they're quite circular)

0110
1111
1111
0110

00011000
00122100
01233210
12344331
12344321
01233210
00122100
00011000

Those are the exact textures used for the particles in both GLQuake (top) and ESQuake (bottom). You can see why I say the GLQuake particle is "more square". Also you can see the different alpha levels used in ESQuake to smoothly blend the particle.

How close is that device to being an actual PDA, in terms of the size of parts, batteries, etc?

Those screenshots don't show much, and I'm not sure exactly what they were demonstrating on at CES, but it appears to be an XScale Lubbock, which is basically everything that an XScale Pocket PC is, except everything is mounted to very large boards with tons of LED indicators, DIP switches, dials and ports for engineers to attach all kinds of diagnostic instruments to. So as far as from the software point of view, it is identical to any modern XScale PPC in performance and memory, except it runs CE 4.0 and has a Imageon 2300 GPU.

Also, when you say that it can't send data to the 2300 fast enough, is that referring to Quake and it's current limitations on WinCE, or to the XScale 400MHz? Will developers basically have to sacrifice game logic in order for better graphics, due to the limited processing power?

Quake has the floating point math issue that really limits it. However even with a perfectly optimized engine there are several hardware issues, including everything from the bus / memory speed of the device, the small cache sizeof the XScale, the (relatively) low speed of the processor, etc. There are ways of compensating. Most specifically that is to cache as much static geometry in the 2300's memory as possible, and then basically say "draw mesh 54 now". I don't see developers having to sacrifice game logic, as much as not be able to keep the 2300 maxed out rendering polys. IE the software and platform will limit the number of polys rendered per second, not the 2300. However, it won't be long before the CPU and supporting hardware "grows into" the 2300.

What do you think of the API, and the card in general from the developer side?

Both are excellent. The engineer working on both the chip and the driver has listened to my suggestions and requests, and implemented changes to the driver to make it more conducive to work around platform limitations. Those suggestions stemmed from real-world coding issues I've encountered, which is a big difference from trying to predict everything that will be needed before the hardware exists, and then setting those limitations in stone. I don't know how driver development normally procedes, but from my standpoint ATI has done everything right with the 2300 and OpenGL ES (but of course I would have to say that - they decided to involve me in the process ). Extensions to OpenGL ES are already completed, again, to further tune the driver for the resource-restricted environment it runs in. So I think ATI is extremely in-touch with the developers that will be coding for this chip, unlike various other hardware fiascos that we've seen in the past (Axim Basic, iPaq 36xx single button press, etc).

Thanks for clearing things up, sorry about the bombardment of questions. I'm sure you can understand the excitement, as this is finally the first working 3D accelerator that has been actually seen running on WinCE.

Yeah, it's definitely exciting. Even more so to actually see it running.

Dan East

[sponge]

Thought of a couple more questions when you have the time :P

In order to use the 3D functions, you'd need drivers for the card, like with desktop 3D cards, right? Does it look like ATI are going to be updating their drivers with performance increases, fixes, and options, ie the desktop Catalysts, or will it be pretty much updated only when the vendor decides to release an update?

Is that 30FPS pretty much constant, or does it jump around below that number? I've noticed on my old 233 a while ago that I could raise/lower details from highest to lowest in many games, and have the same framerates - ie the signs of a CPU bottleneck.

Judging by your last response, I'm guessing the NDA is mostly gone now ;)

[Guest]

My question is why does the pone have a mouse/cursor?

[Dan East]

Because it's not a phone. It's an XScale Lubbock development platform. It has a touchscreen LCD in addition to an external mouse and external keyboard.

Dan East

[relapse808]

can this new technology and graphics chip help with pocket quake 2?? That would be nice :D

[sponge]

Probably, but since PQ2 is more CPU intensive, don't expect any miracles.