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Game developers looking at iPad 2's speedier A5

by Steven Sande Mar 7th 2011 at 6:30PM

The iPad 2's Apple A5 processor may not be listed as faster than the existing A4 -- it's running at the same 1 GHz speed -- but the dual core architecture will be able to accomplish a lot more number crunching while still providing great battery life. Now game developers are getting excited about the possibilities for the new processor.

MacNN is reporting that Unity's Chief Creative Officer, Nicholas Francis, has said that his company will use the A5 to "really fine tune and really optimize it to run fantastic on the iPad." The Unity game engine already runs on multi-core processors like the A5, and now Unity developers can start adding effects to iOS games that previously took a dedicated gaming console or powerful PC. Francis noted that some upgrades could include real-time shadows and shafts of light, effects not previously available on the iPad.

Infinity Blade developer Epic Games comments that their gaming engine -- Unreal Engine 3 -- can already take advantage of the iPad 2's A5 dual-core processor. When PC games are moved to a more powerful PC with multiple cores, "you can ... turn up all the dials in your game to get more details, more textures, more shaders," says Epic's Mark Rein. He also noted that more CPUs brings up the possibility of more complicated physics or more enemies on the screen at once, or perhaps expanding the view of an environment.

Firemint, developers of Real Racing HD, anticipates that the next version of the game will take advantage of another new feature of the iPad 2 as well -- the built-in gyroscope. The company is hoping that they'll be able to improve steering through use of the gyro, as well as kick the graphics of the racing game up a notch.

There is a potential downside for developers: unless apps are coded to take best advantage of the hardware that they're running on, the new apps might need to be marketed for a specific iPad version or they might run slower on the original iPad. From the comments made by these top iOS game developers, it's apparent that they're doing their best to give all iPad users the best possible gaming experience.



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The iPad 2's Apple A5 processor may not be listed as faster than the existing A4 -- it's running at the same 1 GHz speed -- but the...
 

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ACEY RIOT

if they were even a little smart they would make all new apps fully compatible with the previous ipad first and foremost. the a5 chip is nice and everything but all the grumblings i have heard have pointed too only the super diehards snatching up an ipad 2, everyone else (myself included) are going to wait for the next one but even then i dont see a firestorm of sales coming ipad2's way just because they decided to 'smoosh it a tiny bit and add two crappy cameras' to quote a conan sketch.

March 08 2011 at 11:41 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Frantz

[quote]

Dave said 2:36AM on 3-08-2011

Ars thinks it's two A8s:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/03/cpu-performance-data-costs-remain-largely-unchanged-for-ipad-2.ars

Hmm, that would be sad :(
[/quote]

Very sad indeed if true.

The problem is that is the worst article I've ever read on ARS. Seriously if his conclusions where based on the confused data he presented the CPU in the new iPad appears to be very impressive. Considering the quality of the article though I'm going to eliminate it from my mind until some more ethical reporting happens.

For one thing you need to test a variety of apps to get a clear picture of performance that a user would experience. Synthetic benchmarks have their place too, but Sunspider is a very poor one to be testing CPU performance with. Beyond all of that one thing is obvious, iPad 2 is going to be snappy. Sorry but I just had to say that. The good thing here is that all of this will be cleared up in a day or two after iPad 2 hits the street, I would expect testing from everybody and their brother.

March 08 2011 at 8:21 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Frantz

If the A5 does have a Cortex A9 there will be a single core speed up even at the same clock rate. IPad 2 is going to be very impressive for tablet like devices.

As for iPad 1 expect a rapid abandonment of this device by developers. It is simply to limiting for developers to focus on.

March 07 2011 at 10:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to David Frantz's comment
HektikLyfe

What this means to me is that original iPad apps will run better but the new ones will run just as crappy as the old ones used to.

I'm all for pushing the envelope but only when it doesn't sacrifice performance. Unfortunately most iPad game developers don't understand this.

March 07 2011 at 8:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
gu3st

Why would they need to be slower? Its not like a PC with a hundred combos, you have 3 or 4 hardware combinations (on iOS right now you have 3G, 3GS, iPhone 4 and now iPad 2) combinations of hardware. Code in a way to allow graceful feature degradation between versions. iPhone 4 can cope with cool reflections but 3GS can't? [engine reflections:false];

Check what platform its on at launch and toggle engine features accordingly. Not rocket science.

March 07 2011 at 6:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to gu3st's comment
Dorje

And then get blasted in the App Store reviews when iPad 1 users complain about "missing" featured or false advertising.

March 07 2011 at 7:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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