QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

Ben Burdette bburdette at comcast.net
Fri Jun 13 21:22:12 CEST 2008


What hasn't been entirely clear to me in this discussion is whether, 
with the current VGA screen, we are able to enter a QVGA mode and run as 
quickly as with a true QVGA screen.

If that is the case, then why not use the QVGA for some things, like 
application selection, the phone dialer, or games, and then use VGA for 
things like terminals, email, web browsing?  It would require a seamless 
transition on a per-application basis.  Perhaps you could specify 
whether a given app runs in VGA or QVGA on a configuration screen 
someplace.  You get the benefit here of apps being QVGA-ready for a time 
when openmoko is installed on a QGA-only phone. 

One complication would arise with applications that require different 
modes sharing the same screen.  If our interface is purely one app at a 
time using the whole screen, then its not really a problem. 

Another difficulty would be transitioning between modes in a seamless 
way.  If there are compute intensive effects present in QVGA mode, then 
those would have to be deactivated in VGA, then reactivated on the way 
back.  There may be significant technical barriers to this approach, 
don't know. 

Also, transitioning between flashy QVGA and stolid VGA might be kind of 
jarring to the user.  Maybe QVGA would be the default, and users that 
want to make the tradeoff can go in and reconfigure.  Certain apps might 
be VGA by default, like a photo viewer. 

What would be cool would be a QVGA-to-VGA transition effect where a 
'blurry' QVGA app comes into focus as you transition to VGA mode.  So 
suppose you are in an application selection screen, you select an 
application and it 'zooms' to the app window - in QVGA mode.  But the 
app you selected is marked as a VGA app, so after the zooming happens, 
there is a fade from the QVGA appearance of the app (actually drawn in 
VGA now) to the VGA appearance. 






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