At its World Wide Developer Conference event in San Francisco, California on Monday, 2 June 2014, Apple officially announced the new version of its mobile operating system, iOS 8.<\/p>\n
The updated mobile operating system boasts a number of new features for gamers and developers alike.<\/p>\n
An interesting announcement was slipped in – Apple is eschewing the OpenGL application programming interface (API) in favour of its own API named Metal.<\/p>\n
In its press material, Apple says that Metal “maximizes the performance of the A7 chip and Swift, a powerful new programming language.” They add, perhaps somewhat hyperbolically, that “Metal enables leading game providers for the first time to bring console-class 3D games to mobile devices.”<\/p>\n
The Metal API ties in neatly with the rest of Apple’s game development ecosystem.<\/p>\n
iOS 8 now features SceneKit, which is basically Apple’s 3D engine, allowing developers to interact with device hardware through the Metal API for rendering 3D.<\/p>\n
SceneKit was first put to use on Apple’s desktop OS X operating system, and so having it on mobile devices means easy porting of 3D games between the two.<\/p>\n
On the 2D engine front, Apple already added their SpriteKit back in iOS 7, and iOS 8 now boasts improvements to SpriteKit, including field forces, per-pixel physics, and inverse kinematics.<\/p>\n
This means Apple can now offer developers a full toolset in order to create games (and apps) for their ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Under the hood powering all these potential Apple-ecosystem games: the Apple-designed 64-bit ARM “A7” CPU a dual-core running at 1.3 – 1.4GHz, and a PowerVR G6430. The A7 also supports the OpenGL ES version 3.0 graphics standard.<\/p>\n
Apple devices currently using the A7 chipset are iPhone 5S, iPad Air, and iPad Mini (2nd generation).<\/p>\n
For an overview of the new iOS 8 features, visit MyBroadband: iOS 8 boasts new features, better graphics<\/a><\/p>\n Mortal Kombat 10 announced, trailer revealed<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nMore gaming news<\/h3>\n