Id Tech 4, Other Related Games.

[Speculant]

When the id Tech 4 engine goes open-source (expected this year), do you think that the Pandora will be able to handle it (i.e. Doom 3 graphics in all their glory and maybe even better)?

Somewhat unrelated, could the game Nexuiz be ported? Could the Pandora handle it?

Also, Sauerbraten will NEED to be ported.

God, I hope I get my Pandora before July.

 

[lulzfish]

These all depend largely on how difficult it is to translate OpenGL code into OpenGL ES code.
I hope Sauerbraten is possible to port, but the Pandora probably won't have the GPU to handle some of the details like grass, parallax mapping, or the really huge levels like skycastle.

Might be hard to play Sauer on a Wi-Fi connection, too... Dunno.

For Doom 3, it might need to be scaled down... I can't say. I don't know how good the SGX is, and Doom 3 might require more CPU than the Pandora has anyway.

 

[Speculant]

I don't see how it would be hard to play Sauer on a Wi-Fi connection, it would probably be fast enough. I'm on a 512kb connection right now, and it's plenty fast. I have even played it on a 256kb connection, and there was no lag. Maybe the ping would be an issue, though, on Wi-Fi.

A quick totally unrelated question:

How long would the battery last if I played DVD-quality video off a 500mA external USB hard drive?

 

[lulzfish]

How long would the battery last if I played DVD-quality video off a 500mA external USB hard drive?

Not long.
The HDD would consume 2.5 watts.
If we take a liberal estimate that video playing needs a full 1 A from the Pandora's 3.6 v, 14.4 watt-hour battery, then:

Pandora = 3.6 watts
HDD = 2.5 watts
Total = 6.1 watts
14.4 / 6.1 = 2.36 hours

You could probably watch one movie from the HDD.

If you can transfer the movies to SD card ahead of time:

Pandora = 3.7 watts (say the SD uses another 100 mA)
14.4 / 3.7 = 3.9 hours

You could watch two movies from the SD card.

Hopefully these are worst-case estimates, but I haven't seen power numbers for the Pandora playing ripped DVDs yet, so it might be much worse or a little better or not even possible.

 

[zacaj]

Ive played Sauerbraten on 26.4Kbs dialup fine before. (Thats 3.2KBs, not 26.4KBs)

 

[paulguy]

Sauerbraten is made to be very low bandwidth. I too would like to see it. It's fun just for the editor IMO.

 

[Kramy]

I thought the Pandora consumed closer to 1 watt? Not 3.6?

 

[craigix]

How long would the battery last if I played DVD-quality video off a 500mA external USB hard drive?

Not long.
The HDD would consume 2.5 watts.
If we take a liberal estimate that video playing needs a full 1 A from the Pandora's 3.6 v, 14.4 watt-hour battery, then:

Pandora = 3.6 watts
HDD = 2.5 watts
Total = 6.1 watts
14.4 / 6.1 = 2.36 hours

You could probably watch one movie from the HDD.

If you can transfer the movies to SD card ahead of time:

Pandora = 3.7 watts (say the SD uses another 100 mA)
14.4 / 3.7 = 3.9 hours

You could watch two movies from the SD card.

Hopefully these are worst-case estimates, but I haven't seen power numbers for the Pandora playing ripped DVDs yet, so it might be much worse or a little better or not even possible.

I fail to follow anything here, what are you saying? It looks like you are saying the Pandora can only play a movie for 3.9 hours?

The Pandora can play movies for about 14 hours on one charge.

 

[greendots]

He just means running the pandora along with an external harddrive that is powered by pandora's USB port.

 

[rabidpoobear]

He just means running the pandora along with an external harddrive that is powered by pandora's USB port.

Craig was referring to his calculations for watching a video off of SD, he said it would take 3.9 hours.

Obviously he just pulled these numbers out of his ass. Typical lulzfish!

According to craig's numbers, the pandora only pulls 1 watt an hour when watching movies. This seems really low to me, at least without DSP. But only lasting 3.9 hours seems contradictory to all the other numbers we've been getting (eg. quake 3 is probably more intense than watching a video, and that runs for at least twice as long as that.)

 

[PhillipJ]

1 watt an hour

gah, accelerating energy consumption!

 

[aranson]

How long would the battery last if I played DVD-quality video off a 500mA external USB hard drive?

We've seen a what, with wifi and super-bright screen a draw of about 400 mA?
Add the 500 mA for the HDD and you get about 4 hours on a 4000 mAH battery.

That's obviously a very rough calculation, but still Gawd-Damn impressive.

 

[greendots]

Yea, its going to be far closer to 3.9 hours then 14 with an external HDD powered by pandora. You would be better off copying the video to ram if its small enough.

Lulz did actually do the math, and with conservative values like 4AH rather then 4.2

 

[rabidpoobear]

Yea, its going to be far closer to 3.9 hours then 14 with an external HDD powered by pandora. You would be better off copying the video to ram if its small enough.

Lulz did actually do the math, and with conservative values like 4AH rather then 4.2

HE SAID 3.9 FOR RUNNING OFF SD
did you even frickin' read his post or just assume I was talking shit for no reason?
gawd.
cmon man.
Here, i'll inline it for you.

If you can transfer the movies to SD card ahead of time:
Pandora = 3.7 watts (say the SD uses another 100 mA)
14.4 / 3.7 = 3.9 hours

That's why craig's shitting bricks. because 3.9 hrs off SD is way too low. That was lulzfish's estimate WITHOUT the HDD involved.

@Timmy, unfortunately it's not that simple, 500mA for the hard drive is at 5v, not 3.6v of the battery. And there's only about an 85% efficiency or so (MW gave more exact numbers before.)
So 500mA starts to look like a lot more.

[edit] lulz has been known to make shit up in the past. He has admitted it himself on numerous occasions. He never claimed these numbers were more than speculation. [/edit]

 

[aranson]

@Timmy, unfortunately it's not that simple, 500mA for the hard drive is at 5v, not 3.6v of the battery. And there's only about an 85% efficiency or so (MW gave more exact numbers before.)
So 500mA starts to look like a lot more.

Wholeheartedly agreed sir! However perhaps I should put more emphasis on "rough".

Let's just say that I can't wait to personally collect data to see how close I was

 

[1magus]

I know they got Doom 3 to run on a GeForce 256. They had to scale everything down to below lowest settings by modding it. It looks horrible but it was running

 

[kikeminchas]

They got Doom3 to run on Voodoo 2 (couple of them in SLI if I'm not mistaken...) looked like sh*t but still pretty impressive, made me very nostalgic about my Voodoo2.. However (and this is a big However) I think the processor was a high-end P3 or even an AthlonXP, can't remember... I don't think A8 compares favorably to that...

 

[ldesnogu]

I think this was an Athlon XP @ 2GHz: http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1462
That CPU certainly is more powerful than Cortex-A8.

 

[Speculant]

How long would the battery last if I played DVD-quality video off a 500mA external USB hard drive?

We've seen a what, with wifi and super-bright screen a draw of about 400 mA?
Add the 500 mA for the HDD and you get about 4 hours on a 4000 mAH battery.

That's obviously a very rough calculation, but still Gawd-Damn impressive.

Sorry for bumping this thread...but I just had to ask how low the processor could be clocked and still watch a full screen movie...because that would obviously save on battery if the clock speed was lower. Also, wifi would be off, but the screen would still probably be pretty bright.

Also, on the original topic, someone should start on porting Sauerbraten cause I want to play it on the go when I get my Pandora I would start on it myself but I don't know anything about porting or coding.

 

[Shaun]

Remember, the 2GHz machine had less graphical capability than the Pandora, and was running Windows. Also remember that Doom looked sexy on an Xbox at 733MHz, with much less RAM than a Panda.

Doom 3 is definitely doable, I'm sure.