What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

Hej,

now that we have seen the swedish n900 hands-on video with the "Bounce" game part, we have proof that the n900 is able to do stunning 3d graphics. But if you search the forum for up-to-date 3d app development, there's virtually nothing there!

I had preordered a Pandora in March but canceled it a few days ago in order to get a n900 in october. I've been watching progress on the pandora project closely. As you might know, they have been quite successful in porting OpenGL games to the platform, most importantly Quake3.
Since the basic hardware of the pandora and the n900 is nearly the same, i've been wondering when the first news of opengl apps ported to the n900 would pop up. But up to now, there doesn't seem to be any port started.

It leaves me a bit worried why there ain't any effort to port high-end opengl software to the n900, despite the platform being so powerful and open to develop for.

There has been some discussion on the opengl vs. opengl-ES porting problem in this thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=29085
but the gist of the thread was "let's wait for this guy to improve opengl integration with Hildon desktop".

Please excuse my impatience. I'm just worried that people seem to care a lot more about keyboard layout or frequency bands than the beautiful processing power that this little gem has under the hood, and what could be done with it.

When will we see the new generation of games for Maemo?

Re: What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

Wouldn't the Pandora version also run on the N900? Also since know one outside of Nokia and the NDA people have had them I imagine you're not going to see ports like that until they're in peoples hands.

Pandora has it because they are trying to make a gaming machine. I think the bigger question "Is Pandora going to get support like Maemo?" Nokia has already shown some good 3rd party integration.

Re: What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

Search in Twitter for "N900 Quake".

Re: What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

The problem is twofold. First, you don't have shipping devices. There won't be any games until the devices land. Second, serious 3D games require serious effort, very often manageable only in commercial products, and Maemo devices are not (yet!) ready for large scale introduction commercial products (this is where qgil bites my head off, but that's how the commercial SW developer part of me feels :) ). With N900 selling like hotcakes and an efficient and functioning Ovi store for it, the picture might change, but until then, don't expect (too) much (just ports basically).

Re: What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

Thanks a ton.

I'm still too much adjusted to the small pandora community. They have one blog, one forum and a few dozen active developers. A few clicks and you are up to date.

n900 community is growing so enormously fast and huge that i'm having trouble keeping up on the interesting stuff. Is there a blog that focuses on n900 games and app development?

Re: What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

I feel very much the same way. Consider this: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=31304 as a potential method to kickstart development in a major way.

}:^|~

Re: What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

The problem, as attila77 says, is the lack of real hardware. The SDK doesn't emulate Open GL-ES, so you get the full Open GL of the host computer available. This isn't particularly helpful.

There are also outstanding questions, raised on maemo-developers, about whether you have to stop hildon-desktop, go through hildon-desktop (and suffer a speed penalty) or use something else which will play nicely with Clutter.

Nokia have this information (they must have shared it with Rovio - the developers of Bounce Evolution), but it's not been well communicated to the community yet. Hopefully it will be, and we won't have to waste time re-discovering stuff which is already known.

Re: What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

Where are pandora developers keeping their source code for open source software? For example I haven't seen anything but a youtube video of quake3 running on pandora.

Re: What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

It does. The current FREMANTLE_X86 SDK target contains the official TI OGLESv2 "simulator", and in fact I've got it to run some book examples.
It seems to be a bit outdated, but if you can get an app to work there, supposedly it should work in the real device with minor modifications.

/me waits for the updated version of the Fremantle SDK, though.

Re: What's the latest on OpenGL(ES) on Maemo5?
 

Fancy publishing them and what you had to do to play nicely with whatever cut-down hildon-desktop is in the SDK?

I was going off the info here: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...velopers/46442