| Q&A |
 Petri
Talala
Vice President, Mobile Business Futuremark Corporation
August 2007 |
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 "
Our new offering related to content creation in embedded base
opens new era for Futuremark in a sense that we have started
to offer great tool to SW companies, game studios and content
developers.I[...]
Currently most of the embedded devices
are offering poor 3D performance. But this will change very
soon. Even today some of the high-end phones such as Nokia
N95 and iPhone include HW based GPU for mobile 3D and this
allows very high-quality graphics capabilities. There is more
and more mobile phones out there that supports even SW or
HW based OpenGL ES API "
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| Q1 |
Futuremark
is well known for benchmark products. Is offering creation tools
a new positioning of Futuremark? |
| A1 |
Futuremark
has been around now 10 years and we started with PC benchmarks
then and expanded to mobile benchmarks. Certainly the benchmarks
continue to be Futuremark’s focus area where we are well
known and where our main customer base still is including many
leading and global PC and embedded devices vendors. Our new
offering related to content creation in embedded base opens
new era for Futuremark in a sense that we have started to offer
great tool to SW* companies, game studios and content developers.
This is a new target customer base for us and we are very serious
of entering this new space with committed investments, resources
and strong
roadmap for near future.
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| Q2 |
What
kind of tools do you provide for mobile phones? |
| A2 |
At
benchmarking site we have tools to measure and analyze OS, Mobile
Java, 3D/2D and system specific performance and usability of
mobile phones or embedded devices. The new Content Creation
Tool Chain (CCTC) for OpenGL ES 2.0 provides customized content
creation tools to content developer plus SW-based engine that
is capable of running OpenGL ES 2.0 content and it is easy to
port target HW platform and mobile phone. |
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| Q3 |
What
are the users you are targeting for? |
| A3 |
Our
primary target customers for CCTC solution are:
• Hardware vendors developing OpenGL ES 2.0 HW. To this
target group we can offer optimized content creation tools
against their OpenGL ES 2.0 HW so that vendor can share our
tools as part of their HW SDK for the purpose of activation
of their developer community.
• Game and content developers who have noticed that
existing tools (XSI, 3DSMax, Maya) supports more and more
only DirectX and therefore it is challenge for them to create
content for embedded devices supporting other standards as
OpenGL ES. Futuremark CCTC bring tools for this need and game
companies can continue to use XSI or Maya and instead of creation
of DirectX content and make conversions, Futuremark CCTC is
the real-time content pipeline supporting standards and APIs
in embedded world.
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| Q4 |
Are
3D Games on mobile phone a reality? Most of embedded devices
provide poor 3D performances? |
| A4 |
I
fully agree that currently most of the embedded devices are
offering poor 3D performance. But this will change very soon.
Even today some of the high-end phones such as Nokia N95 and
iPhone include HW based GPU for mobile 3D and this allows
very high-quality graphics capabilities. There is more and
more mobile phones out there that supports even SW or HW based
OpenGL ES API and this allows around 10 times better performance
with same power consumption compared to Mobile Java 3D (JSR184).
So Futuremark strongly sees that 3D mobile games will be leading
edge media applications during years 2008-2009. New 3D games
with high-quality graphics can offer 50-100% increased revenue
/ title and the rapid growth of devices in the market that
can support new 3D games will change the market so that 3D
mobile games in phones becomes a reality. |
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| Q5 |
Developers
often use Java for gaming title on mobile market? Is it also
the approach of Futuremark for this market? |
| A5 |
Java
will exist there and new mobile Java 3D API standards will
provide better performance and higher 3D graphics quality.
Anyhow Futuremark’s approach will be to focus on native
and open C++ APIs such as OpenGL ES and OpenVG defined by
Khronos Group. These are the interfaces that 3D mobile game
companies should support and where the big money will exist.
One of the clearest advances of OpenGL ES against mobile Java
3D is much faster performance and better quality with lower
power consumption. And power consumption is one the most critical
factor to take in consideration always in mobile devices and
mobile application/game development. |
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| Q6 |
What
are the benefits of using OpenGL ES 2.0? Is there any device
supporting this API? |
| A6 |
OpenGL ES 2.0 specification
was published around 6 months ago. Therefore it takes some
time before the 1st mobile phones and devices will be available
for end-users. The 1st devices should be available in the
market at latter half of 2008. Anyhow all of the leading mobile
device vendors are already working in this area and it would
be good time to start to develop content and games for OpenGL
ES 2.0 also.
Benefits of using OpenGL ES
2.0 are:
• Fully programmable shaders with very realistic 3D
effects related to
materials, shadows, lighting, etc…
• Significant reduction of in 3D engine cost and driver
complexity
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| Q7 |
Your
solution support 3D assets in Collada format. Collada is not
a compressed file, are you also using M3G? |
| A7 |
Our content creation tool
chain does not currently support M3G, but this can change
in the near future. In addition to Collada format we provide
our proprietary file format that is streamlined 3D content
file format and especially optimized against our own OpenGL
ES 2.0 engine. This file format can be also compressed using
ETC or other texture compression methods.
In overall we see more
and more large vendors to support or require the support for
Collada, so it is one large benefit in our CCTC solution to
support Collada.
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| Q8 |
Futuremark
announce a good integration with DCC software such as Softimage
XSI? How do you help 3D artist for publishing 3D content in
your tool chain? |
| A8 |
Futuremark
CCTC provides custom plug-ins to familiar DCC software that
allows the creation of 3D content for embedded devices supporting
OpenGL ES 2.0. The biggest benefit of CCTC includes real-time
content creation and tracking due to fact that we can bring
our 3D engine inside of DCC. The end result is that content
developer sees new or updated content in custom engine view
real-time when he or she is tuning shader parameters and it
looks exactly to same way as it will look in embedded device
also. There is no needs for additional compilation rounds a
la try, compile, see, try again, compile again and see…
So Futuremark CCTC provides efficient tools for content creation. |
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| Q9 |
What are the main differences
between mobile games dev and PC games dev?
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| A9 |
Money:)
It is still much harder to make money of developing mobile game
title than PC game title. From development point of view the
biggest difference still is that on PC site developer can focus
on DirectX and Microsoft OS. In mobile world there still is
large platform fragmentation and every mobile phone is unique
from developer’s point of view. This affects on huge porting
need for different platforms. Fortunately mobile space is moving
to right direction with increased support of open and native
media acceleration APIs that reduce the fragmentation significantly.
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*SW
= Software, HW = Hardware |
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