Epic game developer calls iPad 2 graphics leap "astonishing," doubts Android can compete
Sweeney, a key developer of Epic's Unreal Engine used in a series of 3D games over the past decade from the first "Unreal" in 1998 through such popular titles as "BioShock" and "Batman: Arkham Asylum," noted in an interview with Gizmodo that mobile devices are improving much faster than consoles historically have.
The 9x iPad 2 graphics leap
Sweeney described conventional game consoles as seeing "a 10-20x leap in performance every 7-8 years," compared to the 9x leap Apple claimed for the iPad 2 in just one annual refresh. Asked whether iPad 2 can really deliver a 9x improvement in graphics performance, Sweeny said, "I certainly believe 9x," although his group hasn't benchmarked the device's core chips yet.
Last year's A4 CPU used in the iPhone 4 and iPad is roughly "comparable to a single Xbox 360 core" Sweeney estimated. The new A5 used in iPad 2 holds the potential for "far, far more potential in that platform than we're exploiting today," he added.
Sweeney said iPad 2 delivers enough shader performance that "you can use the high-detail shaders we did during Gears of War." The interview noted that "more complex shaders and post-processing effects are going to remain the visual differentiators between high-end mobile devices and consoles for the time being, though we could 'see more of that with more time with the iPad 2.'"
Limitations of mobile devices
The biggest limitation for game development on mobile devices is OpenGL ES graphic drivers Sweeney said, which currently have "fairly high overhead" and are "not nearly as optimized as we'd like."
Optimizations could provide "a factor of 4 driver overhead reduction," he estimated, noting that the current software allows mobile games to look great but restricts them from rendering "a whole lot of objects" on the screen at once.
The result are games like Epic's "Infinity Blade" for iPhone and iPad, which focuses on one-to-one combat. Epic delivered a special version of the title for the new iPad 2 to take advantage of its greater graphics capacity (contrasted with the original iPad graphics below).
Another limitation is available memory, Sweeney said, although he was described as being "totally happy" with the iPad 2's 512MB of RAM, noting that "it's as much as the Xbox 360." The biggest issue with RAM is having a known amount available to work with he said.
Android hardware fragmentation a problem for high end games
Uncertainty about the hardware available across a given platform is a particular problem for higher end gaming developers. Sweeney explained, "when a consumer gets the phone and they want to play a game that uses our technology, it's got to be a consistent experience, and we can't guarantee that [on Android]. That's what held us off of Android."
Contrasted against a gaming platform where hardware aspects don't vary between models and makers, an "open" platform like Android becomes a difficult beast to target. "If you took the underlying [Sony] NGP hardware and shipped Android on it, you'd find far far less performance on Android," Sweeney said.
"Let's say you took an NGP phone and made four versions of it. Each one would give you a different amount of memory and performance based on the crap [the carriers] put on their phone," he added, alluding to the additional layers of software fragmentation that affect Android devices.
Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs described Android's software fragmentation as a growing problem for developers last fall, and a recent survey indicates that 87 percent of Android developers see fragmentation as being a problem for the platform.
For Epic to do the kinds of things they do on iOS, Sweeney said that "Google needs to be a little more evil. They need to be far more controlling." At the same time, he also said the main reason Epic has focused on Apple's iOS was because "it's really the best place to make money."
That observation underlines the the reality that despite shipping on lots of phone handsets (much as JavaME or Flash Lite did before it), Android isn't creating a viable development platform that is resulting in either web apps or native development that can rival Apple's iOS platform in smartphones, let alone other devices such as media players like iPod touch or tablets like iPad.
A report from February indicated that Apple continues to own 82.7 percent of all mobile software sales with its iOS App Store.
68 Comments
I agree with the guy. I've only owned my iPad2 for less than a week and I'm not really a gamer, but I've been playing more games than I thought with it. Everything is pretty smooth on the iPad2.
At the moment, I'm liking War Pinball HD. I think we'll be seeing a lot more great games coming out soon for the iPad. I want to see more big name companies start to make games and port their old catalogues over to the iPad.
I still think that a physical d-pad of some sort is needed for it to really take off.....FPS type game wise. However some people have done some very innovative touch control games. Sliced HD comes to mind...
An ARM Cortex A8 at 1GHz equivalent to a single 360 processor core? I'm giving that a [citation needed]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruc...ons_per_second
The whole tri-core processor outputs 19,200 MIPS. An A8 like the iPad 1 outputs 2,000 MIPS at peak. And its 6 instructions per cycle vs 2. Even if you divide the former score by three, your nowhere close.
And yes, I do know MIPS aren't a perfect indicator of performance, but they should give you a general sense of where things are.
I think Epic has benefitted pretty handsomely from Apple featuring their games, so they're probably not really unbiased. I'm not saying there's any kind of quid pro quo going on - the Epic games are clearly head and shoulders above the mass of games out there, so of course Apple featured them - but just that it would be great for them if iOS devices really did beat out Android across the board. I for one don't think people are really going to see a 9x speed boost (5-7x? Yes. 9x? No.), and I doubt the Epic folks really believe that either.
Also, I see the Tegras and the Adrenos coming down the line being quite competitive. By the 2011 holidays competing products will be as fast or even faster than the iPad 2, and probably have other buzzwords as well. Sure, it's 9 months after the iPad 2 we're talking about, and the iPad 3 will be around the corner, but I'm just saying that the hardware gulf is unlikely to persist through all release cycles.
The more important that the details of what the developer is claiming, however, is *that* the developer is claiming it. That iOS is sticky for customers is well-established - see the AI article on "very satisfied" customers in the user polls today - but this shows the tendency for iOS to be sticky for developers as well. Lots of developers have at least dabbled in Android under the idea that someday it'll get better and/or become dominant, but if iOS continues to deliver the goods for developers while Android doesn't, developer experiments with Android may start to wane.
Again, why even talk about those Android tablets when very few people are actually buying them? It doesn't matter if iPad2 has better graphics than the Xoom etc. or not, you won't find games for Android 3.0 because there's no market for it and nobody can make money if there's no market. The kind of attention these Android tablets are getting is so over the top.