What good is the 3D accelerator chip doing the Droid?

[DurangoJim]

Not trying to be a troll, because I've had my Droid from Day one (actually before day one since I bought it at Wal-Mart) and I really like it. Yesterday I was able to play with a ipod touch (my nephew's) and I was really amazed at the quality of games and 3d graphics on that thing, specifically a racing game. It was incredibly smooth and responsive. I know the Droid is higher res but so far the textures and the frame rate don't seem to be as impressive, to my eyes at least. So I'm wondering if the ipod touch can look that good with inferior hardware, why aren't we seeing some really amazing stuff on the droid with it's two different chips?

 

[Samstag]

For the same reason that you won't find a lot of Linux games as good as what's available from Windows even if you run the same PC hardware. There isn't as large a market for games on the Droid as there is on the iphone. For now.

When there are enough Android mobile users and enough demand for games, you'll see improvements.

 

[Grey Hawk]

For the same reason that you won't find a lot of Linux games as good as what's available from Windows even if you run the same PC hardware. There isn't as large a market for games on the Droid as there is on the iphone. For now.

When there are enough Android mobile users and enough demand for games, you'll see improvements.

Which means you wont be seeing these games on the Droid. By then we will be on Droid II.

 

[adrynalyne]

Not trying to be a troll, because I've had my Droid from Day one (actually before day one since I bought it at Wal-Mart) and I really like it. Yesterday I was able to play with a ipod touch (my nephew's) and I was really amazed at the quality of games and 3d graphics on that thing, specifically a racing game. It was incredibly smooth and responsive. I know the Droid is higher res but so far the textures and the frame rate don't seem to be as impressive, to my eyes at least. So I'm wondering if the ipod touch can look that good with inferior hardware, why aren't we seeing some really amazing stuff on the droid with it's two different chips?

Inferior resolution, not inferior hardware.

 

[cereal killer]

No good looking games? : )

Here's 50 of them

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-news/18934-no-good-games-android-think-again.html

 

[nphil]

*cough cough*

The droid's chipset (OMAP 3430) is capable of supporting openGL ES 2.0 based games, the same sort you see on the iPhone 3GS.

The problem is that most dev's are still only utilizing openGL ES 1.0, because the hero, G1, and almost every other android phone out there can only support that at a hardware level. So, like someone stated above, it's really upto the DEV'S to make a good game, the hardware is there and the software is there (2.0 supports the latest openGL). The iPhone has an incredibly optimized OS for a very specific piece of hardware, a dev knows EXACTLY what he can do and can't do with a game.

Whereas with android, you have to deal with 1.5, 1.6, 2.0 and 2.1 based phones, different screen sizes and different hardware configurations (msm 7201 vs OMAP vs Snapdragon vs whatever the hell they're using to make android phones today). There's also the problem with dev's not making enough applications using the NDK, and instead relying on the crappy JVM that android has.

Regardless, even if someone managed to code a game optimized for openGL ES 2.0, it would still run a little slower on the droid considering that the droid has TWICE the resolution of the iPhone.

 

[solorca]

The BIGGEST problem with the games on the Droid is the amount of space they take up. The IPhone can use all of it's available space for a game, while the Droid is limited to the 256MB that come with the phone. Until the Droid is able to run apps off of the SD card, we're not going to see as many of the in depth games that the iPhone can run.

There are a few out there though. A game like Homerun 3D battle takes up almost a tenth of the overall space that the phone can handle.

 

[nphil]

The BIGGEST problem with the games on the Droid is the amount of space they take up. The IPhone can use all of it's available space for a game, while the Droid is limited to the 256MB that come with the phone. Until the Droid is able to run apps off of the SD card, we're not going to see as many of the in depth games that the iPhone can run.

There are a few out there though. A game like Homerun 3D battle takes up almost a tenth of the overall space that the phone can handle.

Misinformation - data intensive games can use the SD card for this purpose. Try downloading ExZeus, amazing looking 3D game that stores all its data on the SD Card (about 57 mb).

The quake2 and quake3 ports both store data on the SD Card.

All you need to have on your device memory is the .apk file, which is pretty small. The sweet thing with android is that applications have full access to your memory card to use data as it see's fit.