Nokia talks 3D hardware (finally!)

Published by Tzer2 at 11:14 GMT, February 19th 2008

Nokia has finally given a clear statement that there WILL be enhanced versions of N-Gage games for phones with 3D acceleration chips. Phones without the chips will get the same games, but because they use software to generate 3D their graphics will be less snazzy-looking.

No 3D-enhanced games have been released on N-Gage so far, though the original 2006 demo of System Rush Evolution did use the N93 and N95 3D accelerator.

Nokia haven't said which games will receive chip-enhanced versions, or when, but this is the first time they have said directly that there will be two versions of some games. Previously they'd umm-ed and ahh-ed on the topic, possibly concerned about alienating owners of phones without the chip, but it seems they've now made up their minds to go down the two version route.

As older readers may remember, this dual-version approach is how 3D acceleration hardware was first introduced on the PC, with games using the hardware if it was present but managing to do without it if necessary. The N-Gage platform is arguably much closer in spirit to the PC than consoles, because new phone models are being released on a constant basis rather than generational basis. It therefore makes sense to use the PC model when introducing new hardware technology to N-Gage games.

Which N-Gage phones have a 3D accelerator chip?

The following N-Gage phones DO have 3D accelerator chips: Nokia N82, N93, N93i, N95 and N95 8GB.

The following N-Gage phones DO NOT have the chips: Nokia N73, N81 and N81 8GB.

The following N-Gage phones, we're not sure about: Nokia N96.

Some other Nokia S60 phones do have 3D chips (such as the E90), but they haven't yet been added to the N-Gage platform so we haven't listed them.

Categories: Hardware, Developer, Industry, Editorial Thoughts, Games
Platforms: N-Gage

Quote:

Originally Posted by TomJ The E90 has 3d acceleration, but not TV out...

E90 is not N-Series...

Quote:

Originally Posted by bartmanekul Im getting 404 errors on some links your posting today. Is it true the N96 and other upcoming phones dont have these 3d chips the N95/N81 etc has?

I've interviewed the PowerVR folks at MWC (see my related, cross-posted article in the N95 forum here). They stated they consider the N96 just a niche device purely for DVB-H fans (and not current owners of the N95 (8GB) or the N82), and, in their opinion, several future Nokia devices WILL have 3D acceleration.

Quote:

Originally Posted by krisse AFAIK the mere presence of 3D hardware wouldn't reduce battery life. It would only reduce battery life if you actually used the chip in an application (and at the moment no apps do this).

Furthermore, using dedicated 3D (or, for that matter, for example video decoding) acceleration hardware may even result in a FAR lower CPU usage, meaning definitely lower overall power consumption. (This has also been stated by the Imagination folks and has also been the case on, say, the 2700G-based Dell Axim x50v/x51v.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by krisse The TV Out chip and 3D chip are the same thing, so if you want to know which S60 phones have a 3D chip, just look for ones that have TV Out support.

Sorry Krisse, but that's not quite how it goes.

TV-Out requires a mechanism for converting progressive scan RGB to interlaced YUV and usually also resolution scaling. Ideally this is handled by dedicated hw. 3D hw on the other hand handles above all rasterization of a virtual 3D world view onto a 2D frame, like a projection. Some 3D hw additionally handles the transformation and lighting of the vertices in 3D space, and thereby offloads the CPU even more. (and yes, OpenGL ES 2.0 hw execute shader programs for both vertices and fragments, but let's not go there yet)

The OMAP2420 chip used in N95 for example does both TV-Out and 3D acceleration + a bunch of other useful stuff, but that doesn't mean that those two functionalities would always be tied together. There should be platforms in Nokia's hw roadmaps that do just one of these two functionalities, so don't expect that one of these features always also means the other.

Quote:

Originally Posted by krisse It is weird that the N81 doesn't have a 3D chip, like you say Nokia advertised it as having a lot of gaming capability.

Sorry Krisse for correcting you again,

N81 is quite a capable gaming phone despite the lack of 3D hw. As 3D hw support was only recently announced for the N-Gage platform, all N-Gage games so far are software rendering, and thereby don't utilize the 3D hw even in phones that have such. I could write a novel about this subject, but won't bug you now more than this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tetlee Both happy & relieved to hear this news, came very close to purchasing the Nokia N81 mainly as a gaming device, held off though as I didn't like the sound of the lacking 3d accelerator chip present in the N95 etc.) There's an interesting comparison video on youtube showing the difference the accelerator chip makes to 3d games(on Global Race), look here The difference is certainly significant. Just recently decided to purchase a Nokia N93 as it looks like a good all rounder for phone and gaming purposes, just checked and I see it does have the chip, phew:cool:

As earlier said, N81 is quite a capable gaming device, starting from the N-Gage game support. Even though there is no 3D accelerator, there is the ARM11 core with the VFP, if your game supports acceleration using that.

That Global Race example does not reflect real game performance difference using hw/sw rendering. For real gaming quality comparison, there should be a propriatery rasterizer optimized for that particular game for sw rendering, including artwork optimization for that particular hw. That is in the end how real game developers handle these things. The frame rates would then be far closer to similar between to two versions, and the remaining differences would be texture filtering and possibly Anti-Aliasing on hw. Neither of these would be visible on such video quality, so even the rendering quality difference would be fairly subtle. In that video the N81 obviously runs OpenGL ES in software for rasterization, and that's not how pros make their games.

If you can live with the size of the N93, you've done a great choice. N93 was in my personal use for a year and a half, which is an eternity for a Nokia employee. Only the 8GB N95 managed to make me give up my beloved N93, and I still miss its optical zoom. Then again, I'm very picky in these things, and it is very possible I'll spend the next year and a half with this N95 8GB, until a IMHO superior device hits the market :)

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