News Windows Phone 7 Series supports DirectX 9 and SM3

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/03/15/windows-phone-7-series-supports-directx-9/1

 

Let's just hope they don't get too focused and exclude us non-xbox360-owners.

 

I'm willing to bet that they will. After all, they have a bit more interest in the xbox 360. Only makes sense to push people in that direction.

 

Wouldn't that imply a recompilation of DX9 for the ARM microarchitecture? I think we're likely to see some kind of DirectX 9 offshoot with a subset of the full DX9 features as opposed to 'real' DX9.

The proposed 800x480 WVGA resolution is already in use on some smartphones such as Sony Ericsson's Xperia series and in the case of the X1 and X2 the 528MHz ARM CPU of the device barely has the grunt to drive the WinMo 6.5 desktop at that resolution or play back the device's own recorded videos, nevermind render games with DX9 features!

I think Microsoft may be making devices for Phone 7 prohibitively expensive to both manufacture and buy to capture the kind of pricepoint they'll need to compete with Android and the iPhone.

All these efforts to tidy up the WinMo platform for this iteration of the OS are a step in the right direction, but I can't help but think that the decisions have been heavyhanded in places and 'too little, too late' overall.

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Ooh! 1000th post!

 

i want to know what GPU are they going to be using. is it going to be from Imagine Technologies? didn't see any DirectX based demonstration on Imagine's stand during career's fair.

looks like my personal career target will be ARM or Imagine tech.

 

Nokia Ngage anyone?

 

It could be an nvidia chip, i know nvidia have made ultra mobile chips for phones and PDA's.
Ah yes, i see it now " NVIDIA, the Way it's Meant to be Text"

Right, i shall get my coat....

Sam

 

The goal is probably to push phone users to the 360. Well if it works all that will happen is perhaps some opengl support on future android and then we will have some really interesting action in the phone market that I am sure will put a big grin on nvidia.

 

I like everything so far, except xbox LIVE. Never cared about it never will, but I guess thats what people will have to put up with if they want some decent gaming on their phone.

 

lol.

the nVidia chip you speak of is Tegra, i don't believe it supports DirectX, only OpenGL ES.

 

Given how many people bought the original iPhone, this could be priced at $500 and still sell decently.

A cell phone with absolutely no lag in the interface and functions would be amazing, and I'm sure it'll be flashy etc.

I'd be down if someone released one with a hardware keyboard..

 

I can understand why they would use the Tegra. As it currently powers the Zune. Or maybe the tegra 2 as it will be out later this year if I recall correctly.

 

Why DX9 hardware? It's less efficient than DX10 as the pixel and vertex pipelines are fixed. DX10 hardware can run DX9 code, so why not make it DX10 hardware and release DX9 games for it?

 

doesn't the HTC HD2 use this res of 800 X 480? I don't have one but I've seen the size of the screen and if I was really bored I suppose I could play a game on a screen that size. If only my life wasn't this interesting.

Kudos to Microsoft for pushing the envelope yet again which I'm sure the rest will follow as always.

 

Maybe I'm just getting old, but why would I want Dx9 on my mobile phone? I appreciate nice simple popcap style games on a mobile device, but I can't ever see me wanted to play doom on it...

 

steam app much? would be great to chat to steam friends on your phone

 

I've got a port of the original doom on my n900. I never play it as the controls are horrific. Games like that are good ideas, poorly executed.

 

Yup and with the 1ghz Snapdragon it's damn snappy and fine on winmo 6.5. Lovely phone, shame most likely it won't run WP7 as that needs dx9 graphics accelleration.

 

Looking forward to some 'proper' mobile gaming on a WP7 handset

 

But can it play Crysis?