GLBenchmark has published OpenGL ES benchmarks on the iPhone in a variety of conditions. The results show a throughput of 243,000 triangles per second, with a variability of about 7.7%. I loaded molecules of varying complexity (and thus, different numbers of triangles required to render) and measured the time it took to render 100 consecutive frames of rotation for these molecules. I used the current version of Molecules that's in the App Store (with a few small tweaks) to perform these tests. Specifically, I wanted to see how many triangles per second the iPhone is capable of pushing, to give an idea as to the kind of complex 3-D geometry and frame rates it can support. This has been the cause of some debate lately, so I wanted to gather some hard numbers of my own and compare them with other benchmarks out there.

'Under the Hood: The iPhone’s Gaming Mettle' - Touch Arcadeīefore we get into the software side of 3-D rendering on the iPhone, it helps to know what we can expect from the platform. This fourth-generation PowerVR chipset is basically an evolution of the second-generation graphics hardware used in the Sega Dreamcast. The Samsung SoC also features an implementation of Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR MBX Lite 3D accelerator. Molecules is nominally open source, but I cannot share the source code publicly until the NDA is lifted.Īlso, I will refer to the iPhone throughout this post, but the iPod Touch has the same graphical hardware within it, so all lessons here will apply to that class of device as well. OpenGL ES is an open standard, all benchmarks that I point to are either publicly available or were generated by an application that is currently in the App Store, and I will not make any reference to Apple's specific APIs.

It was well-received, so I figured that I should create a written guide based on my talk.įirst, before I get into the details of the post, I'd like to indicate that nothing I say here should be in violation of the still-in-place NDA that Apple has required iPhone developers to sign. We certainly had better shirts (courtesy of Stand Alone).Īnyway, I was allowed to give a talk on some of the lessons that I'd learned in implementing the 3-D graphics in Molecules using OpenGL ES. Although the San Francisco outpost may have had more attendees, I'd argue that we had as good a technical and business discussion going. I had a great time at the satellite iPhoneDevCamp in Chicago, where I was surprised with the number of well-known (to me, at least) developers who are located in the area.

Hello triangle in opengl es 2.0 example