Palm Pre Touch Phone » OpenGL

Playable Quake, OpenGL Demo and Native SDK Possibilities: Busy Day for webOS Internals

Jonathan I Ezor — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:05:13 +0000

What a difference a day makes. As of yesterday, the biggest recent news from the webOS Internals global team was the launch of Doom and a video of a non-playable version of Quake. Today, there are three new announcements from webOS Internals:

First, Quake is now playable, with keymaps developed with help from user Jack87. As with the updated Doom, Quake launches through an icon rather than needing any typed commands in Terminal. The more complicated movements make Quake a bit more challenging to maneuver, but movement and sound work quite well. Both Quake and Doom are available via Preware.

Second, on the webOSInternals YouTube channel, the team has posted a video of a demo OpenGL application (a triangle containing moving concentric circles) by bpadalino, further proof that Palm has enabled this graphic functionality in webOS 1.3.5, and hinting at upcoming gaming possibilities that are even further confirmed by…

The third announcement, via Rod Whitby’s PreCentral forum post this morning where he details his discovery of a method for installing and running native Linux applications without the need for add-on services like webOSInternals’ own Upstart Manager Service. Rod points out that the ability to launch native Linux apps within webOS has implications well beyond gaming, in terms of advanced homebrew application development beyond that enabled by Palm’s current SDK. (PalmInfocenter posted a simpler explanation of what Rod and his colleagues discovered here.)

Palm’s CES 2010 event is scheduled for this coming Thursday, and based on what the webOSInternals folks are discovering literally every day, 2010 looks to be a very exciting time both for webOS developers and for the users who have benefitted from their innovation.

Hardware Accelerated DOOM on webOS, for Real! [Updated with Video!]

Jason Robitaille — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:33:35 +0000

Before you ask, no, those screenshots aren't photoshopped. DOOM has returned to the webOS center stage and bringing along with it many future possibilities.

Many will remember how back in June we covered the story of how it was possible to, with a bit work, get DOOM working on the Pre. Well, the webOS has come a long way since then. In webOS 1.3.5, we all learned of the existence of base OpenGL ES files, but it turns out much more was added.

3D JavaScript Demo Works In webOS 1.3.5, A Sign Of Things To Come?

Robert Werlinger — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:02:25 +0000

The webOS 1.3.5 update is a gift that just keeps on giving. In addition to a rather lengthy changelog that lists the removal of the app limit and the ability to download updates over a 2G connection amongst other notable improvements, folks are finding a slew of undocumented changes.

The latest discovery, a playable 3D Demo utilizing JavaScript and the HTML5 Canvas tag that hadn't worked on webOS until after the 1.3.5 update, comes from Zoen22 in our forums. While the framerate isn't great and you have to turn your phone sideways while navigating with the keyboard, it's a playable 3D level taking place entirely in the phone's browser, and that's pretty slick.

It looks like Palm is brewing a perfect storm (hello, OpenGL) for an announcement on expanded gaming capabilities for webOS at their CES presentation in a little over a week. It's starting to look like I may very well be eating crow come January 7th.

Thanks to windzilla for the tip!

Video: Palm’s Presentation at the 2009 Sprint Open Developers Conference

Robert Werlinger — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:20:41 +0000

There's more video being officially released by Sprint of it's 2009 Open Developers Conference. We've already seen a video of Rick Boatright from the webOS Internals group presenting on the second day of the event, and now the entirety of Palm's presentation on the first day is available online. A word of caution: the following is likely to put some to sleep, but I don't think that I'm alone in thinking that it's pretty damn cool to see some of the core people from Palm its webOS development team really drill down into what makes their product tick.

webOS is no good for gaming, says an iPhone developer

WebOsArena — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:51:58 +0000

Although we knew that games are in development for the Pre, it seems the webOS platform still has a long way to go until it is ready to support high-quality graphics and complex gameplay elements, such as the ones found in certain games for the iPhone (let alone the 3GS). The main reason for this, as iPhone dev Craig A. Hunter states, is the web-oriented environment provided by the current webOS SDK beta, which got available some days ago. Actually, the biggest problem is that as of now, developers do not have access to OpenGL, although the Pre supports it. In addition, the current 4 Hz sampling of raw accelerometer data seem to be pretty insufficient, compared to the required minimum of 20 Hz for accelerometer-controled apps.

Have no fear though, as PreCentral has got a Palm job listing unearthed, revealing that the company is seeking for a Game Frameworks Engineer that would help improve the platform’s gaming capabilities. With that said, we should also point out that Apple also didn’t have the breathtaking visual up and running right from the start.

source: here and here

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