Pandora Potential?

[TonyMontana702`]

Not really too savvy yet as far as developing and programming hoping this device will be able to help me with that. But I mostly want to know how much potential is there still left in the Pandora as far as the hardware, are they already pushing it to the limits or like game consoles nowadays has the whole potential not yet been realized? Thought while we were waiting it might be a good topic to discuss.

 

[elinscheid]

What can you do with any computer? It's a full fledged computer.

If you're asking how much power someone can squeeze out of it, I don't think we will know until all those crazy coders actually get one so they can mess around with it.

 

[kagato]

We haven't even seen the potential of the Pandora yet.
There's only a few "early-access" developers writing software on pre-release units or Beagle boards at this stage.

What little original, only-on-Pandora software there is at present barely scratches the surface of the hardware's capability. Most of the graphics- or CPU-intensive software so far has been straight ports of existing open-source code, and most of that has not actually been optimised for the hardware yet.

At this stage, statements about the Pandora's potential are limited to broad estimates about the class of games and graphics it will be capable of, or the level of games that can be ported as-is (eg. "Doom 3 like"); or the likelihood of squeezing enough out of the CPU to emulate a certain level of system (N64, possibly PSP, maybe Dreamcast to some degree), which only test its ability to match another system's potential.

To talk about pushing the limits of its potential as a games machine, first you'll need some games written for the hardware that even reach the limits. I think it'll be quite a while before you see any dedicated games fully utilising the Pandora's power.

 

[kingoddball]

Everything so far has been tested and made on a few developer boards or beagle boards..


Doom3 does not seem like it will run... Quake 3 on high(est) specs is only 13FPS... Doom3 is far better than Quake3.

 

[gruso]

As you say, commercial consoles tend to peak late in the hardware life cycle. Fair to say this is reliant on several things, like high volume sales & the resulting cash flow, and a lot of time spent by game studios releasing titles and learning the hardware. These circumstances don't really apply to open handhelds. The GP2X probably peaked with Payback, but that was basically a one-off, as opposed to an evolution.

I don't think the Pandora will fit either of these scenarios exactly. It's not a Sony or Nintendo as you know. But it's not totally obscure either, sharing close ties with the Palm Pre, N900, 3GS, and other devices. Some boundaries are already being pushed on this family of processors. But I don't think they're being pushed on those platforms like they will be on a dedicated gaming device like Pandora.

So I think Pandora's evolution is going to be closer to that of a commercial console than the GP2X - just on a more modest scale. We'll have some reasonably demanding software available pretty early on (mostly ports, as Kagato says), but as time goes on there will be more and more squeezed out of it. As long as it holds the attention of developers of course.

You have to ask yourself if you're new to developing though - do the hardware limitations really affect your plans right now?

Disclaimer: I'm not a coder, just an ubiquitous commenter.

 

[hch]

i hope the peak is still ahead

 

[spaceballs3000]

i hope the peak is still ahead

I believe better products like http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra_250.html will be out by the time Pandora ships all it's units.

 

[gruso]

Better SoCs are out already. But they're still a long time off their peak

What's the best thing we've seen Pandora do so far? A port of a desktop FPS (Quake III)? No, I don't think it's peaked.

 

[Prometheus]

That one's no good for me - it doesn't have any game controls.

 

[spaceballs3000]

That one's no good for me - it doesn't have any game controls.

LOL yeah meant to say new devices that have that SoC in it

 

[mali]

Gruso makes a _very_ good point. The similarity to N900, Droid, Pre, Archos 5, etc. makes it possible to harvest software from those platforms. Android has already got a rough port and ED said on the German boards that Cpasjuste is working on a Maemo port. Looking good

 

[kingoddball]

The SnapDragon SoC is better, isn't it? - Available in mobiles (HTC - Google).. Will probably come out in a beagle clone one day.

 

[mali]

^ It's different and not easy to compare. You always have to keep in mind that our SoC has more to offer than just a CPU. The DSP does some nice video acceleration for example. The Qualcomm SoCs don't have DSPs, afaik.

 

[juniorm33]

^ It's different and not easy to compare. You always have to keep in mind that our SoC has more to offer than just a CPU. The DSP does some nice video acceleration for example. The Qualcomm SoCs don't have DSPs, afaik.

I always wonder about this. Yea the dsp allows us to offload the video decoding, so may get better battery life.
But how big a deal is that if the cpu can do the decoding. May get slightly less battery life but may not be hugely less, do we have any ballpark figures?

So better cpu may give, same level of decoding as dsp or maybe even better....
If your watching something you probably wont need to be doing anything else on the cpu, so it's not like your missing out all that much not having a dsp.

As for using the dsp in other app's e.g. games, guess it depends how easy/hard it is to make use of it.

As for pushing the hardware, I think we'll only really see it pushed to any great extent is in emulation. Or if some dev's start to use one of the engines that may work on it. The cost (time, money, resources,man power) to develop something that will really push the hardware is pretty high, even for something of the level of the Pandora. But that doesn't mean we wont get great games!

 

[kikeminchas]

In terms of Flash video (flv), are some of the players included able to reproduce flv videos?. I plan to use it as a tool to learn guitar and being able to play most of the tutorials in the web directly would be of great help.

FLV video player
Metronome
Guitar Tab reader
Small size
======================
Definitive tool to learn guitar!!!

 

[mali]

@Na-Noo
I did a quick search and apparently Snapdragon has got an 720p decoder inside.
Unfortunately video decoding is totally not in my field of interest/knowledge. I stumbled upon some threads on Archosfans a while ago comparing the Archos' OMAP to the Snapdragon of a device I forgot and the Snapdragon was crap at video playback. It might be a driver issue though, dunno.

 

[cobaltage]

I don't worry very much about about whether newer hardware will somehow displace the Pandora. In my mind, the problem with portable devices like the Pandora isn't hardware, it's whether there is software that's optimized to the hardware. I often use the iPhone/iPod Touch as an example of this -- it isn't lightyears ahead in hardware, but rather excels in UI design, optimization of the OS, selection of certain basic functions (e.g., supporting only certain software codecs for audio and video), and efficiency of software delivery.

The Pandora obviously represents a different scenario, but the work of the developers already shows their sensitivity and ability in the required areas.

 

[Kangal]

Just to stay on topic, what do you guys think?

Could we get full speed Q3 with highest details?

All refer to ingame situations, so dont embarass yourself by commenting (you know Q3 does that in a tiny map with 1 character)
I'm mean everything after it has some optimization. fingers Xsed!

Offtopic:
Could we get full speed UT04 with highest details if source is released?
Could we get low (<10fps) speed Doom3/Q4 working once (due '10) the source is released?
Could we get full speed N64 without overclocking?
Could we get decent (~23fps) Dreamcast emulation with sound?

 

[skeezix]

Also to wit, the units floating around (bare pcbs or a few rev3 cased units) are in the hands of people mostly working on the _firmware_; most of the ports and such are relatively quick on the sides, cause one can only focus on firmware for so long at a time (That said, a lot of the ports are very good and solid, and pickle for instance is a porting machine.) Hatari runs great, and I've Pandora'fied it a little (nubs for mouse, Start button to bring up the UI, made a .pnd file out of it, etc ..) but I could do a lot more (use Pandora GPU for acceleration, make the d-pads work on the UI so its not so touchscreen centric), etc. I think most ports are in similar state -- running well, but our real priority is the firmware.

The SDL lib port coudl use some love; ie": All SDL using apps will get significant speedups when the SDL layer gets improved, and its already a solid performer. The hw side is not being used much (ie: no video decodeer accel for sure, but not much hw usage in the GPU at all). Heck, you coudl boot off SD with a custom mini distro with a stripped down kernel and single tasking mini-OS to get as much performance as you can (been there

So we're no where near peek.

But that said, remember, not peek and peek .. theres only so much you can squeeze out of an orange

Quake3 has all the multiplayer built in. I really need to fire it up.

jeff

 

[Aninhumer]

The community is much more important than the hardware for an open source device, and the gp32x community is one of the strongest I've ever seen.
It kind of built up my expectations too high for the N770. I was expecting loads of awesome custom software, but it was pretty much a few ports and maemo mapper.

The GP2X on the other hand I enjoyed completely right up until the day I "fixed" it with super glue.
Sonic helps of course