Guest midnight Posted January 9, 2004 Report Posted January 9, 2004 Competition in the Mobile 3D Market is hotting up: 2004 will see the first handheld devices using the same 3D technology that powered the Dreamcast gaming console The first portable products using Imagination Technologies' PowerVR MBX 3D graphics technology will ship this year, and will represent a "significant step ahead" from products such as Nintendo's GameBoy Advance and Nokia's N-Gage, Imagination said on Thursday. Imagination is showing off PowerVR-based products at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and later on Thursday will announce support for the OpenGL ES programming interface in PowerVR MBX products. OpenGL ES, based on the OpenGL interface used for desktop 3D development, allows programmers to create 3D code that is usable on different hardware platforms. Imagination on Thursday will announce OpenGL ES support in PowerVR MBX and MBX Lite for any Symbian OS or Linux device, and Imagination is also supporting OpenGL on Windows CE for a specific, unnamed customer. Windows CE -- the basis for Pocket PC, Windows for Smartphones and other Microsoft portable devices -- could get generic support later on, Harold said. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Imagination is demonstrating a development processor from UK chip designer ARM designed to show off the PowerVR MBX's capabilities. The PrimeXsys Versatile Platform, based on a single chip combining ARM9 and MBX cores, is running a Quake 2-style game. Read more here.
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