An insider deep inside the WWDC has just informed us about Apple’s 3D/mobile gaming plans – here is what he reports:
Another step forward in the libraries department is the adoption of
OpenGL ES 2.0 (http://www.khronos.org/opengles/). OpenGL ES is the API
for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems and Apple has
just added support for that in the new iPhone 3GS.
OpenGL ES 2.0 is defined relative to the OpenGL 2.0 specification and
emphasizes a programmable 3D graphics pipeline with the ability to
create shader and program objects and the ability to write vertex and
fragment shaders in the OpenGL ES Shading Language.
This means that the iPhone 3GS will have vastly improved 3G graphics
capabilities and that we might expect games that will only run on
those devices. There is also a possibility that we will se games that
will run on all devices (those will OpenGL ES 1.1) but where the
graphics will be so much better on a newer device. The two standars
are not mutually exclusive and it is quite possible to create an
application with support for both standars built-in in the same way
that it is possible to create a Mac application with support both for
PPC and Intel (only with the difference that in the first case has the
developer to detect the correct environment, whereas in the latter it
is the OS that handles the selection of the proper code.
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