Fast questions about GTA03

[Yuval Levy]

arne anka wrote:
> to be honest -- i never really could figure out what's the diff between 2d  
> and 3d acceleration.
> so, what limitations does it impose?

in a nutshell: 3D acceleration builds quickly 3D models on the display. 
Displaying a 3D application on non-accelerated video is slow and CPU 
(i.e. battery) intensive. 3D applications include games but not only.

my personal interest for the OpenMoko is as a device to display Virtual 
Reality (VR). That's a 3D application where a picture is mapped on a 
sphere or cube and rotated by the user. 3D-accelerated displays have a 
much higher frame per second (FPS) resulting in smoother viewing or 
faster panning.

You can see an example of such a VR at 
<http://www.photopla.net/080302dufferin/> - click on the thumbnail to 
enter the VR in one of the four main technologies available:
- QuickTime
- Java
- Flash
- Shockwave

If you are on Windows or on Mac, Shockwave is the only 3D accelerated 
viewer and you will see how much smoother it is than the rest of the 
pack (click on the help link to change viewer).

If you are on Linux, <http://freepv.sf.net/> can display QuickTime VR 
with 3d acceleration. In SVN there is even a version that will deal with 
the Shockwave format as well.

I recently displayed a VR panorama with Java on a Nokia cell phone 
<http://panospace.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/vr-panorama-on-a-nokia-cell-phone/> 
the viewer makes use of Java's 3D engine, though I am not sure if it 
uses a 3D accelerator on my specific phone (or on any phone). Java and 
Flash are just introducing 3D acceleration (for PCs) in their upcoming 
versions.

Yuv