iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

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BigDave2001
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iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by BigDave2001 »

Hi,

When (when!) then iPad3 comes out I'll be making use of it fairly quickly. Assuming the rumours are correct and the display will be double the res of the iPad / iPad 2, will there be much of a modification required to the source? Or will the source (assuming nothing untoward...) detect the higher resolution and adapt to that?

Of course, I understand it's hard to answer this question without knowing how Apple are going to implement the display, but taking the Retina iPhone into account - I wondered whether an educated guess might be reasonable at this stage?

Thanks
JDX_John
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by JDX_John »

Well it is now official - double the dimensions to 2048x1536. Apple say apps should 'just work' since dimensions are exactly double but how... will iPad1/2 apps simply be given a 1024x768 render-buffer which iPad3 then upscales?

Since there are 4X as many pixels, I assume most of us won't want to render full-resolution anyway? Does Ogre iOS make it easy to render at a resolution of your choice, and if so - a quick straw poll: what resolution do YOU use on iPad?
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Brocan
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by Brocan »

2048x1536 is a very high resolution. I'm concerned about the app performance, i think that apps in iPad 2 are going to run faster than apps in iPad3 (using native resolutions)...
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by masterfalcon »

Yes, you can set the content scaling factor to any value that you want to limit the resolution. right now I think I've just put a handful in there like 2, 1.5, 1.33.
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by Wolfmanfx »

Try using a content scaling factor 2 on the ipad 1 - i got 2 fps but it oddly it renders something
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by JDX_John »

I'm going to wait until someone here can actually test Ogre on iPad2 Vs iPad3 before deciding which version to get hold of...


On that subject, has anyone ever posted benchmarks for running Ogre on different mobile devices compared to each other, and to a PC? Either on their own code, or using the sample browser? Actually it'd be pretty cool to have a benchmark mode on the samples browser... hit "go" and it runs every sample in sequence and records the results. I don't suppose anything like that has been done already?
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by Zonder »

JDX_John wrote: On that subject, has anyone ever posted benchmarks for running Ogre on different mobile devices compared to each other, and to a PC? Either on their own code, or using the sample browser? Actually it'd be pretty cool to have a benchmark mode on the samples browser... hit "go" and it runs every sample in sequence and records the results. I don't suppose anything like that has been done already?
That sounds like a GSoC project to me :)
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by SufferinPup »

I'd like to run in a lower resolution on iPad1, is it possible to use values smaller than 1.0, and if so is it possible to set those without changing the Ogre codebase?

Our game looks incredible on the iPad3 display but runs at 15fps of course, so we'll probably be sticking to 1.0 or maybe 1.333. ;)
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by masterfalcon »

No, 1.0 represents the normal resolution of the screen, 1024x768.
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by JDX_John »

masterfalcon wrote:Yes, you can set the content scaling factor to any value that you want to limit the resolution. right now I think I've just put a handful in there like 2, 1.5, 1.33.
To someone not using Ogre iOS yet, can someone explain what this value means? Scaling compared to what... isn't iPad3 native resolution 2048x1536, or is it set up so you have to enable this if you want it?

SufferinPup wrote:I'd like to run in a lower resolution on iPad1, is it possible to use values smaller than 1.0, and if so is it possible to set those without changing the Ogre codebase?
If you want to render below 1024x768, can you simply render to a separate render-texture at say 512x384? I remember reading RTT was a bit crappy on iOS but that might have been the old Ogre iOS/GLES support?
Our game looks incredible on the iPad3 display but runs at 15fps of course, so we'll probably be sticking to 1.0 or maybe 1.333. ;)
Have you got an iPad2... if so could you post any comparison stats for your game?
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by masterfalcon »

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios ... reens.html
If you want to render below 1024x768, can you simply render to a separate render-texture at say 512x384? I remember reading RTT was a bit crappy on iOS but that might have been the old Ogre iOS/GLES support?
You could do that but then you'd have to blow that up to the native resolution. iOS devices don't allow you to change the resolution of the screen like on a desktop.
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by SufferinPup »

Amazingly a content scaling factor of 0.5 totally worked! For once, masterfalcon was wrong. :P It renders to a 512x384 buffer, blowing it up to fullscreen. The speed boost is incredible. I doubt we'll go as low as 0.5, but having the ability to tweak this is going to be great once we start optimizing for iPad1.

I don't have any specific timing stuff set up, but with our current demo scene that we're showing to publishers we get 11fps on iPad1, 34fps on iPad2 and 55fpds on iPad3 when sitting still at the start point of the game. So Apple's claims of 2x speed on iPad3 seem pretty much dead on. Sadly there are 4x more pixels, so I don't see 3d games with any kind of visual complexity running at the native resolution.

Good news all around!
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by masterfalcon »

That's interesting, I thought I'd read that the only valid range was 1.0-2.0. Oh well, that's good to know!
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by JDX_John »

SufferinPup wrote:I don't have any specific timing stuff set up, but with our current demo scene that we're showing to publishers we get 11fps on iPad1, 34fps on iPad2 and 55fpds on iPad3 when sitting still at the start point of the game. So Apple's claims of 2x speed on iPad3 seem pretty much dead on. Sadly there are 4x more pixels, so I don't see 3d games with any kind of visual complexity running at the native resolution.
Thanks for the info! I was hoping for better news - that when Apple said it's a "graphical powerhouse" they meant it could keep up with iPad2 in HD mode - on the other hand I suppose it depends what your 3D app is doing in terms of pixel shader complexity and so on.

With the pixels being so darn small, does that mean using a scaling factor of like 1.5 would work well (1536*1152) or would you get the old issues of running an LCD screen at non-native resolutions?
masterfalcon wrote:
If you want to render below 1024x768, can you simply render to a separate render-texture at say 512x384? I remember reading RTT was a bit crappy on iOS but that might have been the old Ogre iOS/GLES support?
You could do that but then you'd have to blow that up to the native resolution. iOS devices don't allow you to change the resolution of the screen like on a desktop.
Yep that's what I meant. Would I be right you could even avoid having to manually render the RTT to a quad by using a 'dummy compositor' scaled to 0.5... or would that be a dumb way to achieve the same thing?

With the scaling factor... presumably it would always be much better to use that rather than RTT if both are available?
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by masterfalcon »

Yeah, using the scaling factor is the preferred and faster way to go. And you won't see any strange issues either. It's hard to describe, the render buffer may be huge and you get the quality benefits but the actual resolution of the display remains the same.
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by SufferinPup »

A lot of games updated with "iPad3 Retina Graphics" at the launch of the iPad3, and it looks like all they did was change their content scaling factor to 1.333 or 1.5. But really, bumping the scaling factor didn't improve the look all that much, I had to look at Infinity Blade 2 running on both devices side by side and pick out an especially aliased bit of geometry to even notice the pixels were smaller.

As was said above, it really depends on the game and the shader complexity/overdraw. If your game has fillrate to spare, trying to shoot for native res seems to be the way to go - Galaxy on Fire 2 HD seems to run in the native res and looks incredible. They couldn't achieve native res in Infinity Blade 2 due to fillrate, so they sort of cheesed out and didn't see much improvement. While it is more effort, I think they would have gotten more bang for the buck by leaving the res at 1024 and putting on a higher quality bloom/tone mapping filter. With a res of 1024 the scaling is less blurry (due to an exact 2x scale factor) and you have more fillrate for other eye candy tricks.

I may eat my words down the road and choose to go with a scaling factor higher than 1 for our game, but we'll see. I'd like to see if I can use that fillrate for more interesting compositors or more complex shaders. :)
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Re: iPad 3 (iPad Retina)

Post by simedj »

I decided to use the iPad3's release as a further reason to get a discounted iPad2... Just ordered, now I need to get my Mac working again and figure out Ogre iOS to launch some commerical apps. Anyone interested in helping out, I posted in the Recruitment forum :)

Looking forward to playing with it. If anyone's got Ogre iOS apps on the AppStore, why not post them here - I'd love to see what you've got out of the hardware.
Looking to find experienced Ogre & shader developers/artists. PM me with a contact email address if interested.
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