Switching to OpenGL ES 3.0

hgy29

FYI: http://cache.freescale.com/files/training/doc/ftf/2014/FTF-SDS-F0045.pdf

Not sure yet how gideros will benefit from all of these beside the few ideas I exposed earlier, but generally speaking I think it is better to move on than trying to support hard really old and almost no longer used devices.

I really feel sorry for you @oleg, obviously one will still be able to use a previous Gideros pervious to target older devices, but at some point in the future Gideros will require ES 3.0 for more and more things and it will be difficult to maintain fallback mechanisms .

Whatever the way we look at it, android tools will end up dropping support for oldest devices too.

SinisterSoft

@Apollo, it's not that - it's the options you pick in the requires plugin that will have the biggest effect. That will let google know what your app requires (or doesn't require) that's not the 'norm'. The resolution of the game doesn't really matter (you are not deciding the hardware resolution at all - it's scaled by the rendering system).

oleg

hgy29 said:

Whatever the way we look at it, android tools will end up dropping support for oldest devices too.

We will all die, but that does not mean that it must be accelerated ..

antix

All my projects are 960x640 and they look fine, even on big devices like my Pixel-C

I think some people just go overboard on high fidelity graphics LOL

MoKaLux

@antix in an other post you mentioned you use 940 * 640!
Are you using 960*640?
I am copying your settings
PS: letterbox or stretched or ???

oleg

antix said:

All my projects are 960x640 and they look fine, even on big devices like my Pixel-C

I think some people just go overboard on high fidelity graphics LOL

I use 1200 * 1920
This is the graphic size for a 7 inch tablet

And yet, to my games, Google adds the note: 'The game is NOT tablet-optimized' and lowers the tablet game rating in the store.

Apollo14

antix said:

All my projects are 960x640 and they look fine, even on big devices like my Pixel-C

I think some people just go overboard on high fidelity graphics LOL

I should give a try to 960x640.

Before that, I tested 480x854, it looked OK on big smartphones, but sometimes a little blurry. So I moved straight to 720p

MoKaLux

I am using 540*960! For android and windows.

oleg

MoKaLux said:

I am using 540*960! For android and windows.

Your phone needs at least 720 × 1339

https://developer.android.com/images/screens_support/layout-adaptive-breakpoints_2x.png

Apollo14

Guys! @hgy29
Google officially says that ~20% of android devices are only OpenGL 2.0.
https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/

hgy29

@Apollo14, see below:

hgy29 said:

to make it clear the idea is to link gideros with GLESv3 lib instead of GLESv2. That lib is available starting from API 18 (Android 4.3), but current minimum API for Gideros is 14. So yes if we do that, we won't support anymore pre 4.3 android. But we will still (hopefully) be able to restrict ourself to call GL ES 2.0 calls from 3.0 lib if the device isn't 3.0 compliant.

So for the figures, you should look at devices with API level lower than 14 (ie jellybean or lower). I didn't find a ES 2.0 only device even in my oldest ones, but I am confident that calling functions of v3 lib on a ES 2.0 device will still work as long as we try to do something ES 2 could do already. I'd be glad if someone in you guys had such a device, to ensure I am right, though.

oleg

hgy29 said:

@Apollo14, see below:

hgy29 said:

to make it clear the idea is to link gideros with GLESv3 lib instead of GLESv2. That lib is available starting from API 18 (Android 4.3), but current minimum API for Gideros is 14. So yes if we do that, we won't support anymore pre 4.3 android. But we will still (hopefully) be able to restrict ourself to call GL ES 2.0 calls from 3.0 lib if the device isn't 3.0 compliant.

So for the figures, you should look at devices with API level lower than 14 (ie jellybean or lower). I didn't find a ES 2.0 only device even in my oldest ones, but I am confident that calling functions of v3 lib on a ES 2.0 device will still work as long as we try to do something ES 2 could do already. I'd be glad if someone in you guys had such a device, to ensure I am right, though.

One of my devices does not support new versions of gideros
I had to keep the old versions of the program to support it

Google doesn't allow new apps to be downloaded for these devices right now, but Google does allow you to maintain device support if you already have an application that supported these devices.

hgy29

This is different, ES 2.0 wasn't backward compatible with ES 1.1. ES 3.0 is backward compatible, so Gideros can still claim to support ES 2.0 devices while enabling ES 3 if present