Comments on: Tapwave Zodiac Now Available for Pre-order
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Online only?
So, anyone know when they hit the physical stores? (I'm planning on getting one, but I'd like to check it out firsthand before I plunk anything down for it.)
Also, anyone know of any reviews?
cool! games for geeks
I suppose it would be this one?
http://www.infinitysw.com/products/poweronegraph.html
NO 3D graphics acceleration
It's just as fast as your ordinary Palm/Clie in that respect.
It DOES however has a 3D software engine built in that developers can use. It also has a 2D accelerator from ATI.
Just wanted to point that out :)
Ivo Jager
D3D/MT3D lead developer
www.mobilewizardry.com
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
Scott
http://goodthatway.com
- featuring PDA/smartphone news and FREE MONEY!!! -
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
from handheld perspective it's a powerful chip but it shold have at least double memery in order to fit 480x320 resolution
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
Unfortunately 3D games do no benefit much from enhanced RAM speeds, as 3D operations mostly concern artithmetic and lookup-table address calculation. Furthermore, the ARM processor already has a significant amount of code and data cache on-chip.
Only operations such as screen blitting (i.e. transfering large amounts of data) would possibly benefit from the 2D accelerator, but 3D games mostly require small sporadic read/write operations.
Ivo Jager
D3D/MT3D lead developer
www.mobilewizardry.com
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
Ivo Jager
D3D/MT3D lead developer
www.mobilewizardry.com
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
"The ATI® Imageon™ graphics accelerator delivers advanced 2D hardware graphics performance. And the FatHammer X-Forge™ 3D graphics engine expands on that performance to deliver advanced console-quality 3D games and other rich 3D content."
-painted dog
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
Ivo Jager
D3D/MT3D lead developer
www.mobilewizardry.com
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
I assume when tapwave becomes a success, PalmSource may start putting their API as part of the Palm OS standard API.
--
With great power comes great responsiblity.
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
The 3D API that they're providing is VERY VERY good. While it's not accelerated, it is certainly quick and does a great job with what it has.
The ATI chip does help quite a bit when it comes to fill. The 3D rendering process consists of two phases (I'm simplifying:) ), transformation and rendering.
Transforms are all of the arithmetic referred to earlier that take a object in 3D space and translate it into a 2D representation. This is completely unhelped by the Zodiac architecture.
Rendering is the actual drawing of that data. Older 3D accelerators on the PC hooked into the rendering process, allowing you to pass a set of transformed triangles to them for drawing. This helped quite a bit as it streamlined the actual rendering process in hardware (freeing up the processor for other tasks).
A 2D accelerator can help, albeit later in the process. Instead of handing triangles to the accelerator, now the programmer has to do the rendering setup himself.. but the actual drawing of the lines and shading is accelerated by the accelerator. This is still a good gain, as the ability to fill is greatly increased.
So the included hardware does provide some advantange and you'll see the best games on the Palm OS platform on the Zodiac.
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
While this might be true for old flatshaded polygon stuff (i.e. each polygon has a single color) which were very popular in the late '80s, this not of any benefit to texturemapped polygons we like to see today in for example the X-Forge engine.
There are no contiguous regions to be drawn (which a 2D accelerator likes to do most) as every source pixel can have an arbitrary position and an arbitrary color that are unknown without the proper arithmetic for every destination pixel. Hence the 2D accelerator is useless :(
Ivo Jager
D3D/MT3D lead developer
www.mobilewizardry.com
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
Secondly the Imageon has 8mb of DEDICATED memory for it.
Third, The Imageon 3200 supported gouraud shading, now im not a 3d person, but isnt gouraud shading used for 3d games, err psx ones?
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
Wow! You're not a 3-D person!?!?! Where are you from, Flatland? ;)
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
tapwave have done what everyone has been wanting over the years - to develop a device specific for gaming purposes; and, this is what they have done. by all means, no-one should say that their approach has been wrong or failed; this unit is going to make some serious head waves in the market. it already is :)
we (MobileWizardry) have been working with tapwave - unfortunately not developing games at this point :) and, we've seen the hardware, know the specifications in detail, and, what the device can and cannot do. we are soon developing some tapwave specific applications; however, we wont be using the 3rd party rendering engines (as, we already have our own).
they went out, licensed a 3D rendering engine - now, while it doesn't render 3D in hardware, the 3D rendering is good - and, will work for most games. it is a polygon based rendering engine, so the games you'll see are more PS1 style - this will be enough for most users to keep them happy.
the device itself has chosen hardware which will work best with games, this includes the choice of CPU MX1 (fastest memory-memory copy), ATI graphics chip (screen blitting) and the key controllers.
now, the x-forge engine renders pixel by pixel to an offscreen window; and, without a 3D accellerator - this takes CPU cycles = processing power. now, the benefit of the ATI graphics chip? when the rendering is done, the offscreen window is copied to the real display. the difference here? since the ATI chip exists, there is no CPU cycles used in the copying process. at 480x320, thats 153600 pixels it needs to copy, or 38400 d-words. moving that amount of memory can take time.
right now, the only difference between x-forge and an engine like deity 3d (our 3d engine) is that they render different environments (polygon vs raycasting). speed wise? deity 3d is customized, and is faster. deity 3d is limited at the same time however.
the good thing about x-forge is that developers can write to that API. when tapwave releases a unit with a 3D accelleration chip - the developers dont change anything, and, the x-forge library is tweaked to use the 3D accellerator for ultra-performance.
when the 3D accellerator exists, x-forge will walk all over deity 3D :) until then, its just a software renderer = no different from anything that everyone else does custom for existing Palm OS devices.
// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/
http://www.mobilewizardry.com/
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
I'm basing it on the 3200 info and the fact that it is a 2D accelerator.
"Secondly the Imageon has 8mb of DEDICATED memory for it."
Memory access speed isn't the bottleneck in software 3d rendering.
"Third, The Imageon 3200 supported gouraud shading, now im not a 3d person, but isnt gouraud shading used for 3d games, err psx ones?"
Yep, you're right :)
Gouraud shading comes down to interpolating between two or more shades of colors. Alas, again with arbitrary angled polygons (be it triangles or quads or any n-gon) there is no fixed area you know you can fill on forehand. Only during scanline conversion (i.e. building up the polygon by drawing horizontal or vertical lines) could you make use of the 2D acceleration (you know on forehand you will draw a vertical or horizontal line, you know where it will start and you know where it will end)
One purpose i can think of for gouraud shading (or bilinear filtering) in a 2D accelerator, is smoothening blocks in lossy compressed images so they look more natural. You can observe how this is done in heavily compressed video footage.
Now once this baby gets common place
http://www.acceleon.com/html/g30.html
We can start doing VERY cool things... :)
Ivo Jager
D3D/MT3D lead developer
www.mobilewizardry.com
RE: NO 3D graphics acceleration
hehe, this whole 3D area for PDAs reminds me of the first 3D accelerators for the PC... can't wait to be able to code 3D games using pure OpenGL and PS/VS 3.0 or whatever they'll come up with next. ;)
just imagine, in a few years u'll be able to play Doom 3 on a PDA. :D progress is so sweet.
thanks,
shurcooL
15-20 Tapwave-optimized games?
Scott
http://goodthatway.com
- featuring PDA/smartphone news and FREE MONEY!!! -
RE: 15-20 Tapwave-optimized games?
Yes
Having a device with a 480x320 screen and 128MB or RAM selling for $400 is just astounding, and will HAVE to make Palm and Sony get more aggressive on their prices.
Sony has been sitting too long at the top of the gadget food chain, charging $800 for new devices.
Web store disappointing
Scott
RE: Web store disappointing (somewhat)
Scott
RE: Web store disappointing
RE: Web store disappointing
SDIO
from the Tapwave website product specs:
"Dual expansion slots for MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital (SD) cards
and SDIO cards, including digital cameras and more.*
Zodiac Connector for additional peripherals.
* Slot #1: supports MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital Cards (SD).
Slot #2: supports MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital Cards (SD), and
SDIO cards."
I'm a bit disappointed that both slots are not SDIO, but thinking on it, initially i'm not sure i'd have call for 2 SDIO slots..
Now if someone would start selling a WiFi SD card !
-painted dog
RE: SDIO
RE: SDIO
RE: SDIO
-painted dog
Shipping?
RE: Shipping?
-painted dog
RE: Shipping?
I emailed Tapwave to find out more precisely when the Zodiacs will ship & this is what i got....
"Reference to your question the Consoles are scheduled to start shipping in the last week of October."
[.... arghhh ! i'll be away on business when it arrives :( . ]
... but thought that people would like to know when its supposed to ship.
-painted dog
Lets see if it survives
Very nice machine, although its a big longer and thicker than some PDAs.
Its great for gaming, but not sure if you can really bring that into a business boardroom. With not cover to hide that "joystick", you look like you're bringing in an old GameBoy into your meeting.
Lets see if this survives. It sort of sounds like the ole Handspring Modules, that no one really bought because of the high prices. Now they just do TREOs.
I think I'd just get the GameBoy Advance instead.
PDAs rules the world !
RE: Lets see if it survives
RE: Lets see if it survives
They are now treading on the multi-billion dollar industry of Gaming.....
================================
PDAs rule the world !
RE: Lets see if it survives
RE: Lets see if it survives
I really can't imagine Working folks getting this. Realistically, I can't go into a meeting with this thing, looks like a big screen, sideways, with a joystick. Hmm.. .what could it be?
Sony will look at it a little, but they will probably respond with dropped prices and such. I wouldn't say suffer.
This thing will probably need WiFi or Bluetooth later to link for multi-player games, which Sony UX-50 already has built in.
They still have tons of money, hence they can come up with revolutionary stuff that no one really needs. Like that TV/Video Recorder --> Memory sticks. It is a great gadget, but I doubt they will sell too many.
But compared to any other company, Sony has a giant bank account.
================================
PDAs rule the world !
RE: Lets see if it survives
"I really can't imagine Working folks getting this. Realistically, I can't go into a meeting with this thing, looks like a big screen, sideways, with a joystick. Hmm.. .what could it be?"
Well, I can easily imagine going into a meeting with this device. Turn it sideways (portrait) with the joystick at the bottom and it looks a lot like a generic PDA. To be honest, tho, most people don't even have *any* PDA, so whatever you have will be beyond their comprehension and/or appreciation.
RE: Lets see if it survives
Haha... agreed!!! Very true indeed!
================================
PDAs rule the world !
RE: Lets see if it survives
Well, a pda device color that goes well with a 'suit' is generaly black, most PPC look novadays like laser sabers from Starwars. I think that dark and dark metalic colours are well suited for any kind of user including EO's.
RE: Lets see if it survives
http://goodthatway.com/news_arc/?id=72
The Zodiac is pretty much the same size as the naked HP iPaq 3000/5000-series.
Scott
http://goodthatway.com
- featuring PDA/smartphone news and FREE MONEY!!! -
RE: Lets see if it survives
Integrated WiFi would be great, too, and may well be planned for a future unit (i.e. Bt + WiFi); with both Sony's UX-50 and some Pocket PCs already having both, that seems a no-brainer.
I definitely want to get one, for the same sort of reasons other people have said (i.e. not being a gamer but wanting the memory, dual expansion, Bt and screen)...
RE: Lets see if it survives
ok we've heard this all before "oh why does Palm need color? 8 megs is a lot-how many addresses do you need,blabla" Yes *that* crowd is the same crowd that won't be too happy with the zodiac. Let them stick with their low res palms while the real smart users work with 480x320 spreadsheets on the zodiac. The fact is that Palm and Sony blew a great opportunity and you'd have to be a sucker to spend $800 for a clie that doesn't deliver
RE: Lets see if it survives
I'm a working folk & i'm going to use mine for work (& play) & i have no worries a/b the form or looks. that's one reason i want a Wi-Fi SD card so i can get my email & notification while in meetings, in the lab & around the office. & that's why i like having the 128MB too. Plus the 480x320 screen will be nice. & the play part will kick while i'm stuck on an airplane traveling. to me its close to the palm many have pined for but no one has delivered [yet] hopefully it'll meet my expectations otherwise its going back.
-painted dog
RE: Lets see if it survives
RE: Lets see if it survives
Just put a huge Excel or PowerPoint native file (thanks to Docs2Go for that) and move around it in a very confortable way with the great looking stick and who cares?
Technology moves faster than you can afford... at least for me.
RE: Lets see if it survives
RE: Lets see if it survives
I have no interest in the Z, other than to see it succeed and expand the borders of the PalmOS universe.
Mac OSX compatibility?
-jcm
RE: Mac OSX compatibility?
RE: Mac OSX compatibility?
As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with Palm OS 6 itself, but is just a matter of timelines. Each release of Palm Desktop typically only supports handhelds that have been released up until that point. Whether the current release can be hacked in some way to work with the Zodiac (as I understand may be possible for some unsupported Sony devices) remains to be seen.
Anyway, for us Mac users it looks like a bummer at this point.
RE: Mac OSX compatibility?
--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com
bogus software strategy
Microsoft, of course, has been getting away with that for a while. But the last new company for which that worked was Palm, and even for Palm, it's unclear whether it's a long-term survival strategy.
This is nice hardware at a decent price, but as long as it requires lots of work to port to a proprietary operating system and game software architecture, I'm not interested. A company like Sony is perhaps big enough to pull this off, but TapWave--I don't think so.
RE: bogus software strategy
> "create proprietary platform, get it out cheap initially,
> get lots of developers and users to get stuck on it, then make
> profits by charging high prices for hardware and operating system upgrades".
to clear this up, the Tapwave device will run existing PalmOS applications. there is nothing "proprietary" about this system - unless you want to do something specific to the device.
while at the current point, they are the only ones doing it - most tapwave applications may actually run on other devices if compatibilities layers are written (ie: x-forge is ported, and the controls can be remapped/configured). the applications themselves are not doing anything specific with hardware, with the exception of the 2D accellerator chip, and the analogue controls.
there is nothing "proprietary" about this system.
the SDK is free, you can download it. you dont have to use the libraries, but, if you want to (and, dont have your own) you can. simple. x-forge is available on a number of other platforms - so, your applications are portable to the n-gage etc (with some extra work)
// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/
http://www.mobilewizardry.com/
NO INFRA RED CONNECTION
RE: NO INFRA RED CONNECTION
http://store.tapwave.com/product.asp?sku=2353518
RE: NO INFRA RED CONNECTION
RE: NO INFRA RED CONNECTION
Someone had to do it: Site devoted to Zodiac just launched
http://goodthatway.com
- featuring PDA/smartphone news and FREE MONEY!!! -
RE: Someone had to do it: Site devoted to Zodiac just launched
http://www.pdagames.com
also been up for a while, just had the 'coming soon' messages - so, this isn't the first :)
// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/
http://www.mobilewizardry.com/
RE: Someone had to do it: Site devoted to Zodiac just launched
Scott
http://goodthatway.com
- featuring PDA/smartphone news and FREE MONEY!!! -
RE: Someone had to do it: Site devoted to Zodiac just launched
RE: No Mac Support
--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com
RE: No Mac Support
RE: No Mac Support
I'm not sure what dead-ends I'll find out when I actually speak to a real human in their Sales or Development group, but I'll try to follow up here and let everyone know how that progresses.
Incidentally, if anyone has one of these devices, feel free to join me on irc (irc.pilot-link.org in #pilot-link) and we can try to work on getting it working. If it doesn't work, we can get enough debug logging to find out why.
If TapWave followed the Palm HotSync API, and did not deviate with any custom hooks, it should be fairly straightforward to be able to sync the data on the device with Linux, Unix, and OSX machines.
RE: No Mac Support
TapWave Corporate Headquarters
1-650-960-1817
Let us know what results you have, if you call or contact them to lobby for support on YOUR platform.
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took long enough..
Been waiting for ages for them to release this AND for you all to announce that they are taking preorders.. :)
I cant wait till I can get one.