Our New Machine, Pandora

[quartercast]

Just put a cloth between the two halfs before you close them

Cloth won't protect from stylus scratches matey

 

[Squidge]

Cloth won't protect from stylus scratches matey

There won't be any stylus scratches as the end of the stylus will have cloth over it too

 

[Yrx]

Cloth won't protect from stylus scratches matey

There won't be any stylus scratches as the end of the stylus will have cloth over it too

lol, When DS was announced, Shigeru Miyamoto was talking about how he preferred using a Q-tip for a stylus.

 

[quartercast]

:lol: :lol: I stand, corrected!!

 

[Shiny]

Which brings up a good point: I hope the unit ships with screen protectors! It might be a bitch trying to find protectors to fit this thing.

Pre-applied I hope. Those things can be really hard to apply without any bubbles >.>

Special care should be taken to ensure that the screen never comes in contact with anything while closed.
This thing is pocketable, so it should be able to take some shifting around and bumps without anything coming in contact with the screen.

 

[grasshoppir]

just build a freakin mame cabinet screwboy

 

[atomicthumbs]

just build a freakin mame cabinet screwboy

Go away.

 

[Arsenè]

How match is it in euro?

 

[Pirotic]

Just seen/read about the specifications and thought i'd give my 2c.

I really quite dig the specifications, but so many details are missing - does the gpu share the system ram? if so DDR is going to seriously cripple the fill rates, how quick is the pipeline between the cpu and gpu? and cpu/gpu to ram etc.

my other concern is the price, using off the shelf parts costs, and in small quantities is going to make it quite expensive from a price/performance standpoint, the estimated £199.99 GBP sounds a bit too cheap considering the parts involved. I can't quite see how they are going to manufacture them for that amount unless they really crank up the quanitites - maybe im under estimating demand for it, or maybe they hope to sell for cost (as is the open source way).

So I was quite excited, until I saw the thing. the 3D renders are quite simply horrible and in the first few seconds I had serious doubts over the ability of whoever is designing this.

first of all, the screen is at the top, yet it's a touch screen. touch screens need to be laid flat or held else they have too much movement when pressed, so you'd need to lay it on or against something. which will be very difficult as the bottom half will be sticking out towards you and getting in the way. secondly it looks about as ergonomic as an iron maiden, I imagine my thumbs on the sticks, and then wonder where the fuck the rest of my fingers are supposed to be resting. brings flashbacks of chinese women having toes hammered off so they could fit into tiny shoes.

I know it's a draft render. but if they are planning on getting this thing released in March/April they should have the design pretty much final by now, and sending prototypes out to developers etc. so I assume some aspects of the mock up are going to make it into the final design, which would be a shame because it really needs a complete redesign imo, and a nice flashy mock up rather than something which looks like somebody downloaded the 3D studio max trial and hacked it together on there first time using it

So thats my view, I'm sure they know how poor the mock up design is, in which case I suspect they also know that March/April is never going to happen.

I wish the team all the best tho, it's a really great concept and has some strong specifications behind it. I'll certainly be buying on in support and making a couple of bits and bobs so long as they can design it to look a bit better than childrens toy laptop.

 

[javaJake]

the 3D renders are quite simply horrible and in the first few seconds I had serious doubts over the ability of whoever is designing this.

Ssh, the gods won't like that.

 

[Pirotic]

the 3D renders are quite simply horrible and in the first few seconds I had serious doubts over the ability of whoever is designing this.

Ssh, the gods won't like that.


the PSP and DS are pure sex in terms of design and looks, I'm not expecting it to be up to that standard but I'd at least like something I could look at and imagine playing without having to wear lots of pads or remove my fingers. I would imagine trying to have a long gaming session on that thing would be quite similar to trying to have sex with a tank. The render doesn't really do it any favours either, a few nurbs and mesh smooths would go along way to making it look like a feasable handheld rather than a really bad mock up.

Again, have to put this in context - the few specifications which are released, are very good. so as long as they can nail the design it could be a winner.

 

[icurafu]

Hopefully it will be a bit more attractive than the original DS.


My only concerns will be the ammount of memory. If 3D games are to be ported without the use of virtual mem. For even the 2nd Generation Voodoo 2 graphics you expect 12MB allocated to graphics and 64MB allocated to the Phycical. Once you get to the TNT generation of games, the 128MB will not be enough for video + CPU ram. I'd love to see ram prices fall enough to make it 256 or even 192MB before the release of the device.

Add the to the fact that most opensource games don't consider memory management too greatly because of the high end speced PCs these days.

 

[Peter R]

*Pirotic speaks*

You haven't been on in a while. Nice to see you .

Edit: I am also hoping that the GPU has some of its own dedicated RAM.

 

[icurafu]

I don't think you can have dedicated video ram on the omap3430, but I know that it supposed to have a great efficient system for using the CPU/system ram.

I'd love 32MB of video ram if it was possible.

 

[White Demon]

So I was quite excited, until I saw the thing. the 3D renders are quite simply horrible and in the first few seconds I had serious doubts over the ability of whoever is designing this.

first of all, the screen is at the top, yet it's a touch screen. touch screens need to be laid flat or held else they have too much movement when pressed, so you'd need to lay it on or against something. which will be very difficult as the bottom half will be sticking out towards you and getting in the way. secondly it looks about as ergonomic as an iron maiden, I imagine my thumbs on the sticks, and then wonder where the fuck the rest of my fingers are supposed to be resting. brings flashbacks of chinese women having toes hammered off so they could fit into tiny shoes.

I just saw the renders of this today and I must say that I agree with the above. The renders of the unit look butt ugly (and the white and red renders only make it worse).

The unit seems small enough, so the dpad and analog pads look like they should be easy enough to reach, but it looks as if there will be no comfortable way to hold the system to use any of those controls. And when using the analog controller(s), it looks as if part of my palm(s) will be resting over the keyboard, which is the worst design I could think of - imagine, you're playing a game that had some of the controls assigned to the keyboard, and in the middle of an intense gaming moment your palm accidentally mashes the button that is assigned to load a quick game save state, and before you know what the hell has happened you've lost the last hour of gameplay because an old save sate has loaded in. Or worse, the quit button (or similar) is assigned to a key. Also, I can't see the shoulder buttons being able to be accessed easily while using the analog sticks - that in itself looks like it's going to be rather painful.

Also, the unit is touchscreen. Now unless the hinge and casing surrounding the screen are made from something stronger than adamantium (or similar) I don't see how this is going to work properly. As pirotic said above, every time you touch the screen, the whole top section of the unit is going to move back against your press. I really can't see the touchscreen being usable unless you are holding the part of the unit where the screen is, which is obviously not where the system is meant to be held.

Think about it - the DS may have a touchscreen, but why do you think they put it on the bottom screen and not the top? That's right, because the bottom screen is the part of the unit that you actually hold.

What about all the mock-up renders much earlier in this thread that showed the unit with the controls on either side of the screen ala the GP2X that also suggested a slideout keyboard? All of those mock-up designs look far superior to the renders on the official Pandora page but it would seem that no-one n charge of the design of the unit was taking any notice of them.

(personally I can't see the point of a keyboard on a touchscreen unit myself, but everyone else wanted one, so it was going to go in regardless. I don't want to argue the inclusion of a keyboard itself any further)

(edit) I personally can't see what all the hoo-haa over clamshell designs is about either. Sure, they may be all the rage right now, but a system like this really shouldn't have been clamshell, it should have been an all-in one unit with a slideout keyboard (as suggested by all the mock-ups earlier in the thread), especailly when a touchscreen is involved. Or, if it really had to be a clamshell, the keyboard should have been on a swivel hinge so that it could be turned over (much like a tablet PC) and tucked up underneath the top of the unit while just playing games, which would necessitate the dpad, analog and buttons etc being on the top part of the unit anyway (I really cant see the keyboard and joy controls being used at the same time). Although after quickly thinking about it, that could look awful too. It really should have been all-in-one with slideout keyboard. (end edit)

I've been reading this thread since the beginning, just taking in everything else has had to say. I've loved the inane banter that went on at times (although some of the flaming was unwarranted), and was totally overjoyed when MWeston came in and said he could get TI involved in supplying the SoC for the system, making the power on this thing unbelievable. But if the design of the finished product looks anything like those renders, then I'm going to be doing much investigating after it comes out before I decide whether I want one or not.

You have lost the concept of a design for a handheld machine, this is why you should get professionals in to do the job.

Y'know, I'm so sick of handhelds that sacrifice functionality for looks and design. I couldn't give a flying you-know-what for how it looks, as long as it PLAYS well.

Besides, this is no uglier than the DS (in fact, it is very very similar), which is the best-selling and best-playing handheld avilable.


I find it hard to believe you could think this looks no worse than a DS.

Wasn't the idea of this to have the best hand-held homebrew/gaming unit ever made? At the moment it looks like just another one of those mini-laptop wannabes, not any gaming device.

A agree partially in the functionality thing, but if you want to sell to anyone else but the hardcore geeks on this and similar forums (ie if you want the general public's interest), it has to look appealing enough to get them interested in it. As it looks at the moment, all people are going to see is another palm-top style PC and are going to ignore it, no matter how awesome and easy-to-use it may turn out to be, and will just go for an iPhone instead.

Basically, to sell to the masses, it's got to LOOK good as well as be functional. And quite frankly, this unit looks awful.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Slide-out keyboads are expensive and patented.

 

[White Demon]

If that's the case, then ditch the keyboard altogether.

After all, that's one of (if not the) reasons that touchscreens were made in the first place.

 

[Yuglooc]

If that's the case, then ditch the keyboard altogether.

After all, that's one of (if not the) reasons that touchscreens were made in the first place.

You know, you should really read into the subject before posting things about it, a LOT of your points have been discussed and some approved and yet again some denied. Anyhow, the new renders should arrive around new years eve.

 

[lubidog]

If that's the case, then ditch the keyboard altogether.

After all, that's one of (if not the) reasons that touchscreens were made in the first place.

But the overwhelming majority of us want a keyboard. See the thread with the poll about it.

 

[Alex.]

If that's the case, then ditch the keyboard altogether.

After all, that's one of (if not the) reasons that touchscreens were made in the first place.

But the overwhelming majority of us want a keyboard. See the thread with the poll about it.

We don't matter, didn't you hear? Pandora should take after the PSP and DS instead, because their market really digs opensauce Linux portables.