How Long Can The Specs Stay Competitive?


mali said:
Hotcooler said:
Correction - 640х240 resolution. And I found this projector. Not cheap... and accept only HDMI input.. meh.. But there's a lot this pico DLP's anounced, so I beleve there will be some interesting ones xD


http://dominion.thruhere.net/koen/cms/pico-dlp-arrived
Ok, the output is 640x240 but the Beagle Board is running at 640x480 :)


For the ones that are interested in tiny projectors for use with Pandora, I've found this:
http://www.microvision.com/showwx/specs.html
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?...&ID=1241920

Seems that the development of the Microvision pico projector is going very well. You can signup on the mailing list for news. I think it's gonna be the projector with the best specs of all. It's perfect for pandora: 848x480 resolution, user replaceable battery, composite video in, auto-focus even on curved surfaces, recharges via micro-usb, from 6 to 100 inches projected image, 60fps...

Here is a demo in flash:
EDIT: typo
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Elanzer said:
Also, even doubling the Pandora's specs wouldn't really help it emulate much more than it's already capable of. Stepping up to the next generation of consoles (ie: Gamecube/Wii, PS2) requires a ridiculous amount of CPU power. PS2 emulation on PC still doesn't run 60fps all the time even with a 4.5ghz core 2 duo CPU for many games, no handheld for many years will be able to handle something like that.
So dreamcast wasnt next gen? it was the earlier of the consoles but it was still next gen, and i think the ps2 emulators cant be that well coded because its only a bit more powerful spec wise than the dreamcast.. hence very little difference in graphics.

^^ Btw that projector looks interesting, but maybe the picture will be craptastic.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
joseluisjazz Looks cool andreally powerfull spec wise... but.. the only problem like with our Beloved Pandora... No one have seen one working xD And you cant buy it. But I'll look into it. I definately want a small projector. Plus Laser tech is kinda cutting edge and probably cost an awfull lot.. but anyway, I believe picture will be good if it ever get released..
 
Shadow of Chaos said:
I know the Pandora isnt meant to be competitive with whatever handheld Sony or Nintendo bring out next, but at a guess its probably not more than a year from now until we see new ones.

Do people feel a little sad knowing there are no commercial games for Pandora?

IMHO, while Sony might go all out with a handheld in terms of performance and graphics (at time of development), anything Nintendo releases into the handheld market will always be underpowered compared to what is technically possible - they make up for it with unique features and games.

But no, I don't feel sad about the Pandora not having commercial games - I already have a DS for that and am very pleased with the games available for it. I prefer to think of the Pandora as a sub-netbook with gaming controls, rather than a handheld gaming console with a keyboard. Either way, there are no competing devices with similar features, and there won't be for a long time, so no need to worry about specs falling behind, since the Pandora will (for the foreseeable future) be the only, and thus best, device of it's kind.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It's not just about raw technical power.
For example, my Zodiac is old (for a gadget). Yet, it's still the best pocketable gaming multimedia PDA out there (as far as I know)...

Why ? It's not because of its technical power. It sure was pretty powerful when it came out, but now it's nothing extraordinary. It's because of two things:
* A unique design/idea: it's pretty much the only PDA with gaming controls.
* Good choices: the 2D accelerator chip let it play movies and games as well as today's more powerful devices. And the whole thing is well-built so that it still runs flawlessly today.

Even if companies will probably release devices with better specs, I still haven't seen any device that plays in the same field as the Pandora (or the Zod). Some are bigger and defintely not pocketable (netbooks), others lack the physical controls (keyboard and gaming controls) (MID or smartphones), and the rest lack the versatility (PMP or gaming devices).
These devices could be ten times more powerful than the Pandora, if they don't address the same needs, they can't compete with it.
 
This discussion has got me wondering, though... Once a jailbroken/hacked closed hardware system is broken into, how easy or capable is homebrew development compared to open systems?

Like, assume that for some reason or another Sony decided their next handheld should have a touchscreen, keypad, and a usb port. For sake of argument, everything under the hood is pretty close to the current PSP, only with much more power.

How could such a thing compare to the Pandora? Once its running custom firmware, what things could the Pandora do that the theoretical PSP2 couldn't? Would it be possible to see a functional linux distro on it? Functioning USB devices? How about utilization of its power? Would homebrew devs be able to utilize as much of the theoretical PSP2's power as commercial devs?

I don't know much about close system homebrew, so I find it an interesting topic to discuss.
 
Gilrad said:
This discussion has got me wondering, though... Once a jailbroken/hacked closed hardware system is broken into, how easy or capable is homebrew development compared to open systems?
Depends on what you're trying. If you're gunning for things like OpenGL, etc. you can forget being able to do them on any of the hardware you jailbreak. There's other things. In the end, if you're going to homebrew for homebrew's sake (instead of doing the gamedev equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest- because you can... ;) ) then it's going to largely always be easier on the open system. The tools are completely in place. The hardware doesn't fight you like the Wii, PS3, and X-Box 360 does. Just because they bring out a "more powerful" unit (Keep in mind, they're going to have to field significantly more GPU, DSP, and/or CPU to do so- something that's not available for many months yet to come- and doing one in the same class won't buy them anything other than AAA titles on their platform.)

QUOTE

Like, assume that for some reason or another Sony decided their next handheld should have a touchscreen, keypad, and a usb port. For sake of argument, everything under the hood is pretty close to the current PSP, only with much more power.



It would be more difficult because you'd have to build the infrastructure the people working on the OS pieces are doing to make it viable to do anything on.

QUOTE

How could such a thing compare to the Pandora? Once its running custom firmware, what things could the Pandora do that the theoretical PSP2 couldn't? Would it be possible to see a functional linux distro on it? Functioning USB devices? How about utilization of its power? Would homebrew devs be able to utilize as much of the theoretical PSP2's power as commercial devs?



If you're talking about something in the class of what we're doing here, you will NOT be doing close system homebrew work unless you're working on firmware pieces. Moreover, you'd have to come up with a BSP like ours to actually DRIVE most of that hardware.


Shadow of Chaos said:
Now that i come to think of it, if they chose a faster processor say clocked to 900mhz by default.. although decreasing battery life, it could overclock past 1ghz and letting dreamcast emulation pretty much fully playable.

That or 2 versions of the pandora, one with the 600 mhz cpu and another with 600+

:p
You won't need to do anything "fancy" like an alternate firmware or a new version of the machine. You can change the clock speed on the fly.

I'm going to be blunt, here, though. For pretty much all of the stuff we're going to see on the Pandora, we're not going to need more than 550-600MHz. We're already so far above anything else in the handheld space with the stock settings, that I can't see WHY someone, past a "because I can", would need or want the extra speed. Code within what you've got as stock if you can at all help it. the extra 300MHz actually only buys about a 40-50% boost in speed anyhow. I have to wonder what in the heck you're trying to do to need more than roughly a Piii 600 in the palm of your hand for games.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm kind of curious if anyone here or anyone knows if any PSP homebrew devs are planning to switch* over to Pandora when they get their hands on one. It will certainly be more powerful in just about every respect and offer up lots of extra features to utilize (second analog stick, touch screen, keyboard etc). I could see why people wouldn't switch from PSP to GP2X since it was kind of going backwards when it came to potential but there isn't really many reasons to not upgrade to Pandora. I'm just wondering if one of the things that excite people about doing homebrew on the PSP is the fact that Sony doesn't want you to do it.



* I know that if devs do "make the switch" that they'll likely still do work for the PSP as well and that it won't be quite as cut and dry like I made it sound. I'm mainly referring to making Pandora their primary platform to develop homebrew on instead of the PSP.
 
Svartalf said:
I'm going to be blunt, here, though. For pretty much all of the stuff we're going to see on the Pandora, we're not going to need more than 550-600MHz. We're already so far above anything else in the handheld space with the stock settings, that I can't see WHY someone, past a "because I can", would need or want the extra speed. Code within what you've got as stock if you can at all help it. the extra 300MHz actually only buys about a 40-50% boost in speed anyhow. I have to wonder what in the heck you're trying to do to need more than roughly a Piii 600 in the palm of your hand for games.
Doom 3? ;)

QUOTE
I'm kind of curious if anyone here or anyone knows if any PSP homebrew devs are planning to switch* over to Pandora when they get their hands on one.


I'm one, and I'm going to switch over. PSP is just too damn limited (in various ways) for what I want these days.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Benjiro said:
One simple answer: Bragging rights ;)
I believe I DID mention the "because I can" aspect. The only thing is that you shouldn't NEED it and it's there if you want it.


MDave said:
I could see us possibly getting away with it on the current settings, but it'd be one of the main ones I'd say, "Yeah, kick it up to the fastest we can go" that we'd have less issues with and believe that we might just need that extra drop of speed.

QUOTE
I'm one, and I'm going to switch over. PSP is just too damn limited (in various ways) for what I want these days.


Heh... I'm trying to come from the desktop space down into the handheld one.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It's been said before that with a GOOD optimization and texture reduction doom 3 could perfectly run on the Pandora's hardware. The screen resolution being drastically smaller than your average PC Lends well to this. With regard to Dreamcast Emulation I remember watching a video where Evildragon remarked that a few people believed that it was quite possible assuming a someone wrote a good dynarec recompliler that could run more processes simultaneously. People thought N64 couldn't be achieved on the PSP and Daedalus proved that wrong. Have faith :)
 
Back
Top