Friday 5 October 2012

Can you play Console Quality games on iPhone 5?

If you're a gamer or game developer you'll want to know if the IPhone 5 is powerful enough to play console quality games.
We've used the opinions of Firemonkey the devs behind Real Racing 3 to write this article. The original article was featured in Pocketgamer.
As for the third Real Racing itself; it has already gained fame due to its featuring in Apple's Keynote IPhone 5 debut speech.
Here is what Firemonkey has to say about bridging the console gap and making the IPhone 5 a video game graphics big hitter.

In what ways are you using the latest iPhone and iPad hardware to improve Real Racing 3 v graphically?
We use the latest iPhone to implement visual effects that we may not be able to achieve on other systems.As you upgrade to the latest devices you will see better dynamic reflections, a lot more per pixel lighting, more normal maps, higher level of detail on the cars, higher texture resolution and a higher quality implementation of features like the rear view mirror. A lot of subtle things add up to make the game look more real.However a large number of our visual improvements apply across all the platforms that we support, because one of the most significant improvements arises from changes in our art direction

If you put Real Racing 3 on an iPhone 4, it looks better than Real Racing 2 on an iPhone 4 because we have improved our quality across the board.
Are there any rule of thumb numbers you can give out in terms of polygon or shader complexity of Real Racing 3 over Real Racing 2?
I would love to give you some really clear numbers, but that stuff gets kind of complex when you dig into it.We have a lot more polygons, a lot more textures, a lot more unique shaders, more complex shaders, more per-pixel shaders, more special effects, more texture layers, an advanced new lighting system, an expanded architecture and a whole new art pipeline…Pretty much everything has improved dramatically!It looks like the iPhone 5 might be about 10 times the power of the iPhone 4, and we are pushing that to the limit, just as we were pushing the iPhone 4 to the limit when we released Real Racing 2.The one very noticeable thing that I would say now about Real Racing 3 over Real Racing 2 is that I think we have managed to step over our own sort of 'uncanny valley', so the sum of all these improvements in our engine and art pipeline has delivered a real stepwise jump in visual quality.It has that real look that we were only dreaming of when we first started this project. We think we have jumped a whole generation here in terms of quality.

It would be easy for people to dismiss these claims of a massive mobile generational jump as sheer hype. But the undisputed credentials of Firemonkey; formed from a partnership between Firemint; responsible for the previous games editions and Spymouse; and Ironmonkey who brought us the graphically superb DeadSpace is a mobile gaming pedigree that shouldn't be ignored. In our opinion any new mobile game is a good thing and if it can compete with its console counterparts than its definitely a game we want to play.

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