Just how good is the iPad’s pixel upscaling, the trick that makes it possible to run iPhone apps full-screen on the new magical wonder-pad? Not very, it seems.
IPhone (and now iPad) developer Kevin Ng took his game, WordCrasher, and fired it up in the new iPad software development kit (SDK). Using the iPad simulator, he hit the 2x button (actually more like 4x, as the pixels are doubled in two directions) and, well, pixelarity ensued, with jaggies spoiling the clean lines of his pastel-colored letter-tiles (WordCrasher is a kind of stressful, Tetris-inspired Scrabble game).
Next, Ng reworked the graphics for the full-screen of the iPad, and the results look lovely. Of course, the full effect can’t really be seen on your computer, as the screen resolution of the iPad is higher. What you can see, though, is the result of “bump maps and other shader techniques” which are available thanks to OpenGL ES 2.0. You’ll need to click through to Ng’s site to see the full-sized images.
One comment from Ng caught our eye: “Apple is keen for us developers to create strong real world metaphors by simulating real world materials, objects and their behaviors.” You know what Steve Jobs said about having “the internet in your hand”? It seems that Apple is pretty serious about that, rather than it being just a throw-away line. In fact, Andy Ihnatko* of the Chicago Sun Times said on MacBreak Weekly this week that the screen is so fast and responsive it feels like you are moving physical objects around the screen.
All this bodes well for the “Giant iPhone”. And remember, thanks to the lack of multitasking and the closed App Store, your iPad will still run this quick after a year, something we can’t say about our Macs and PCs.
What does a game running natively on the iPad look like? [Kevin Ng Games]
*Ihnatko’s name is actually built-in to the OS X spell-check. Pretty awesome.
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