New Pre Classic emulator video shows off 3D gaming prowess
By Ross Miller 
posted Apr 19th 2009 4:01AM
posted Apr 19th 2009 4:01AM
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I've noticed that quite a lot on the Pre, where people touch the screen and they don't touch had enough and have to retouch.
But oh well, can they please just announce a price?
I noticed that too.... I hope it's not going to be an issue when they release it!
So she had to touch the screen a few times to get any response. It's a Palm Pre, what do you expect. Well, now the Pre is going to challenge the iPhone/iPod Touch for gaming prowess. In emulator mode, nonetheless. There'll be about 60,000 apps by the time we get to WWDC and about a third of those will be games. On the other hand. I don't think there's 60,000 apps for the Palm platform after it's been in existence for umpteen years.
The walled garden approach is fine enough for me and the millions of iPhone users. I still don't see the point of digging through a hundred sites to find applications. One spot is really more convenient. To me, that's like going to hundred mom and pop stores when I can easily go to one department store. Besides it focuses all the cash flow to one place. Apple. And it makes them highly profitable. Which is the half the purpose for running a business. The other is satisfying customers. You do know that Palm was on the verge of bankruptcy and maybe still is. If their business model was so good, they wouldn't have that problem.
Palm is going to have to try hard to steal developers from the Apple platform. Apple has a large budget for advertising and support. Palm does not. I agree that anything is possible and Palm might do well, but I'm only pointing out that it is at a huge disadvantage. If there's nothing special about the iPhone, then there's nothing special about the Pre. In all fairness, the Pre doesn't yet exist and it's too early to say who's going to come out on top. Time will tell.
It seems to be a calibration and accuracy issue rather than it not registering the touch. If you pause it when she tries to add a task you see a dot ABOVE the word "new" for a second indicating that is where the device registered the touch, not on the button she tried to hit. And when she's in the game she kept missing the word "accept" as that little indication circle was a few pixels above.
It might be that it's TOO accurate, if I'm making myself clear.
iPhone isn't exactly perfect in that regard either. You know that little free/buy/download button in the appstore? I often have to hit it 2 or 3 times before it registers, and then add to that the fact that after you click it as a free/buy button it turns into a download button and requires another click, well, it can become pretty damn frustrating.
Touchscreen phones will always have such issues because sometimes the button just isn't big enough for our fingers to accurately land on it from the first try.
Well, capacitive screens are pretty accurate, it's just that when you are using such a big input device (your finger) it can be hard to notice that accuracy. Obviously, the software has to accept the input from the screen and translate it to an action. Ive found that the iPhone takes an average of an input, and the "click" is then that average. This makes it so that we have the possibility of clicking extremely small links in Safari, or the download button, but you just have to be a little bit more conscious about it.
I have the same issue, though :P
If you watch the video again you can see a little white halo where she touches each time. She just can't demo the hardware. Which could or could not be bad news for us :)
Does anybody remember this? http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/21/palms-ed-colligan-laughs-off-iphone/
@JerJer
Actually, that white dot is always there on the pre when you touch the screen. ALWAYS. it's powerful enough to render the white dot under your finger every time you touch.
You know, the iPhone also glitches out all the time for me, and some apps don't run as smoothly as they should. I've been an Apple computer user since the company has started, I am rooting for the Pre and I plan on getting one the day it comes out. Apple products are great, sure. But they are not the only ones out there.
Open up, jeez. If there is one thing I hate most is stuck-up Apple fan boys, and same goes with Windows fan boys... Every system has it's flaws and it's perfections.
I'd love to suck on those fingers.
Nice.
Anyone knows if this would allow GarminXT or other GPS apps to run on Pre?
I dunno if you'd really want to, since it already includes a navigation app for free.
Nice? When? Which part of the classic 3D racing game that runs at 15 fps is nice?
Oh, wait, its the video, not the inability to play 3D games on crappish hardware...
I don't know if its crappish. But if it can't run something that looks crappish in 30fps, while playing 720p video in the background, its crappish hardware. Nvidia Tegra isn't crappish, but, as far as I know, Pre doesn't have Nvidia Tegra CPU. And thats the reason it will have unreal price tag of $699 unlocked (wild guess, low rank me if its $199 with a contract).
The Classic emulator will not be able to access the GPS radio or any radio; phone, internet or otherwise.
Eh? I've never heard anything about it not being able to access the internet.
Wow I'm truly blown away.....
I'm torn between a Pre (perfect form factor) and an Android Tegra (Media powerhorse, most potential)
tegra got delayed until 2nd half this year, i was waiting upon it too
Hopefully manufacturers already have designs involving Tegra lying around as the reference hardware/software has been available for a while. So fingers crossed we should start to see Tegra devices very soon after it becomes available (Here's hoping as I've really been looking forward to it too, hardware with real mobile gaming/software/media potential in a very small size)
That was so wrong.
What i really like about the iphone, which i just found out a few months ago is the App store, and the potential it has. i dont know much about other smartphones today, but is this the iphone the first one to have a number of developers making third-party applications for it? I only discovered the apps while playing with a friends iphone and loved this idea. but i still dont want to get one because they say, bad connection problems blah blah, everything about it is good except for using it as a phone.
so i hope that the pre will grow like the iphone and have third parties create apps for it.
@Mike: Seriously?
People have been making apps for Palm for like 15 years. Same with Windows Mobile. Same with any smartphone and even java-based phones.
Apple is great and all, but they didn't invent mobile applications.
@sam
Hate to be a stickler for what could be passed off as a grammar mistake, but since Palm wasn't even founded until 1992, and Apple introduced their first mobile computer in 1991, doesn't that make you... umm... wrong? *hears Beethoven's fifth symphony begin to play*
Of course, if you just meant hand held devices then you can just disregard that little technical impossibility above.
iphone has much better graphics/resolution and fps regarding games. Not to mention the bigger screen and sensitive accelerometer.
I'm so sorry Pre... You've lost in this round (games)
This HAS an accelerometer. have you SEEN how incredibly smooth and fast the screen switching is?
Oh, and don't disregard it now. You haven't seen it running 3D games written for it's hardware. It may well happen some day. The iPhone had no games at launch.
Compare like to like.
You can't know that until you see some native games, as the Palm Pre's screen may be smaller but has a higher PPI count, and the hardware is much more powerful and based on well known and common standards.
@gnormie
Shoulda mentioned the PPI, good point. Glad to know some sensible people agree with me :P
how is the pre going to compete with the iphone and the app store? will palm have an equivalent app store or have free apps altogether?
Going off your avatar I assume you don't care either way. Hold the facetious next time.
When the iPhone Launched did it have an App Store? Im sure Palm has something in the works. The iPhone is the Best phone out right now until the Pre launches.
And Im Not bashing Apple. In Fact I owned the iPhone longer than any phone before it. Just ready for something New!
Palm has not needed a dedicated app store for any of their other handhelds.
There is no software needed on your computer, the Pre shows up as a Mass Storage device... So that means that Windows, Linux, and even MAC users can copy software, games, and music to it.
I suspect that there will be an app store available for the Pre. (Sprint's online store will probably work just fine with it) However you will also be able to intall your own software as well.
In order to do that on an iPhone, you have to JailBreak it.
Who cares if it has an app store, it had a calendar AND a 5 year old racing game.
Kidding aside, the pre looks like a fucking champ
i dont get why my comment is low ranked as i was asking a question on how pre is going to be successful. it just shows how immature tech/nerds/loners/fanboys really are around here, for just assuming i have an avatar of an 'apple' logo that i am one of these so-called 'apple fanboys' and all those against apple MUST neg rep. 'oh which allegiance must i choose in these great almighty technology battles?'
i dont even own an iphone (im quite happy with my retro SE k320i) but i know its a success and its keeping its customers with things like the app store, pretty much developing a monopoly of an iphone communitiy just like osx or windows community. and im just wondering how the pre will compete as so far it looks comparable with functions as an iphone. as i do not like this monopoly apple is creating. will developers of iphones app store also make a pre version of their app too? because im sure like the iphone and g1(?) that you can customize it with adding applications/functions etc. unlike my current phone.
I think Mike's question was perfectly valid...
god, come on both fanbois, yes im talking to both sides..
People see it as nothing more than another Shank or Paul A. Chapel trying to pour Applesauce on an competitor to an Apple product.
Thank those trolls for people not taking Mike's comment seriously, if he was being serious.
Apple fans really need to start cleaning up their own house if they want their "questions" to ever be taken as more than troll attempts.
I'm fairly certain they said they'd have an app store.
Mike, I'm not sure how cross-platform apps would work. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they use two entirely different programming languages. I'm not sure if you could possibly make an emulator or not, but if so I'm sure apple would jump down the throat of whoever made it, haha.
The mistake being made in many comments of iPhone vs. Pre is the belief that one must steal end users or developers from the other in order to be successful.
From a sales perspective, the market of users who have a "standard" phone who will be purchasing a "smart phone" is increasing, and there is no need for one to steal customers from the other.
From a software perspective, development houses with a good idea will make software for any phone provided there is a big enough base, as they are in the business to make money. Any small apps developed by a one or two man team (that are a hit) will quickly be copied and made on the other platform, either by a fanboy who really wants it or someone looking to make some $.
To specifically address your question of "how will the pre compete?"
It will be from Palm's knowledge of the market. They have had many successful smartphones and have been in the business for quite a while. From what we've seen the Pre has many things right, and without a doubt it will sell.
The biggest hurdle both phones have to jump in my opinion is being locked into a network. My brother-in-law loves the iPhone, but he will be switching to the Pre once it comes out. Why? Because AT&T has horrible service in Brooklyn (where we live), and only decent service in Manhattan (where he works). And what good is a phone if you cant talk on it? Sprint on the other hand has amazing service here, can roam on Verizon's network (for free), and has cheaper plans.
First, WHY the hell is your avatar an apple logo? Really, why?
Second, if you would have read some of the palm pre articles around here and everywhere around the net, you would have seen that there will be an apps store. Like the iphone, it may not be available at the pre's release but there will be one. And, meanwhile, you will be able to download apps from the internet and just drag and drop them on your pre to install them.
but will it run Pole Position?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om84Zc4-KcQ
in order to be considered iphonekiller
U must have over 34,000 apps ,. N a ton of games.
Did the iPhone have 34,000 applications when it came out?
No.
In order to be considered literate,
you must be capable of writing comprehensible text.
Technically,
The Pre will have over 50,000 apps on launch day. So yes, more than the iphone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS#Third-party_applications
i ,.;' agree.''
iphone,. has ,.,,,.. app///store,,, is,. best,. phone';;'; in,. universe ,.,.,.,
um... this doesn't need a HW 3D accelerator. It runs on all OS 5 palms, including the ones with grappy GPU's (or downclocked ones like my T3). Not really impressive.
Yeah but the point is that its emulating an os thats running a 3d game (notice they never said HARDWARE 3D ACCELERATED), you try that with any other OS with a modern 3d game and watch the slideshow.
I was just gonna add a correction: It runs on Palm OS 4 as well. And Palm's OS 4 devices used 68k 33 MHz CPU's. Most of them anyways.
@ArcticFox: this is not a "True 3D" game, so to speak. The iphone ones are. And they can probably make an emulation layer that works well. They did when going from 68k to ARM (OS 4 to OS 5). That time, the CPU architecture was changed. Now it's the same, just a lot more powerful.
It's weird, the very few videos i've seen with the missed touches, it's women showing it off? Is it a nail thing?
It's the emulator, the older software was designed for use with a stylus so the buttons are all just small enough that you have to take care where you're pressing. Though fortunately it looks like the major buttons were designed for the Pre and should be perfectly usable.
My sister has trouble using the iPhone with her nails, so maybe they just aren't compatible with capacitive touch screens.
Of course they aren't, capacitive touch technology works off the skin's capacity to hold electrical charge, something keratin can't do.
Monster Cable still sucks.
Why is everyone copying Saad Rabia's comment now?
We're not copying his comment. It was the idea of many commenters on a post (http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/17/engadget-endorses-monster-cable-uh-hell-no/).
mgsrocks1: because Monster Cable sucks.
EPIC FAIL!
So... I have to emulate the old palm for a 3d game... using "virtual" keys on a touch device? they are out of mind???
Umm no, this is just to show that you can emulate the old Palm Pre games, no doubt the Palm Pre will have many of it's own being based on some of the commonest web standards.
It emulates the interface of old Palm OS devices... what _should_ it use?
Unless you want to reprogram every application to work with the Pre interface?
I wonder if this is the same lady in those crazy women drivers video on YouTube
Phones should get a dedicated Joystick like a psp kind if thy really wanna attract gamers to there phones. No way you can play games touchin screens with your fingers all cramped like that. I say it should be like the PSP one and appear like a speaker.
They tried this. It was called the Nokia N-Gage, and it failed miserably.
This sucks and looks like absolute shit compared to the games that the app store offers to the iphone/ipod touch. I can't wait for this over hyped "iphone killer' to fade away and be done with (like the android platform). As for me, I think I'll be happy with my iphone 3g, and the 34,000 apps that are just a few multi-touch swipes away. Palm Pre = ultimate fail.
You do know the game was made for the old Palm OS, and was being emulated, right?
You did actually pay attention to the video?
As much as I dont care what your personal preference in tech is, part of me, because of their trolls, really hope for an Apple collapse this year.
But then again, where are your cool apps? The best games for iphone? They're casual games like you'd find on any other mobile OS like Bejeweled.
I'll give you ones like the Kindle one. I'm not saying the iphone doesn't have anything worthwhile. Just nothing mindblowing.
We're still waiting for COOL USEFUL apps like Slingbox, Docs to go, Hulu, etc. What's that? A crippled Skype app? Will Apple ever approve Slingbox? Will anyone else ever waste time to develop an iphone app that may rely on a 3G connection?
What's that saying about having 500 channels and nothing on? Here's the thing with apps. Apple may have 30k apps. But I use a handful at most. The usual casual game wasters, a few freebie apps like WSJ, Facebook, Kindle, Pandora, and maybe 1-3 other apps.
If i went to a Pre, I'd still use..guess what..a handful of apps. And I wouldn't have to worry about Slingbox, Hulu, etc being approved or not when they easily develop them for the Pre. In addition, the Pre is multitasking. Will come with Sprint Navigation. Has a real KB. Has much cheaper plans on Sprint and a faster network that won't cry about apps like Slingbox.
@ Cmil1212
and one thing to add, the nature of the OS means that you don't require Sprints/Palms go ahead on what to install, so even if Sprint doesn't like it and expels it from the App store or whatever, it will still be somewhere on the internet and available for downloading + installing.
... I don't get it, I really don't. You iPhone zealots regularly talk about how incredibly awesome your closed-garden app store is, while I sit here with my former Palm OS devices and current Windows Mobile device, go online, and find applications everywhere, to include even beta stuff or old prototypes that will never be finished yet are awesome in their current state. Furthermore, I can then make my own while being able to test them on my own device (and, at least in the case of my old PalmOS stuff, on a free emulator using the ROM files downloaded from my device. Haven't tried it for my Treo though) ...
Is the convenience of 'a few multi-touch swipes' inside a walled garden better than being able to get on any website from any Internet connection to download and install any application I want without having to run anything first while examining a large bevy of supporting materials for each application?
I sure hope Sprint and Palm go all out in approving all of the apps that were thrown by the waste side with the iPhone application dictatorship.
@ Look_Around_You
Keep dreaming of Apple's downfall you idiotic fanboy!
It's hilarious that people think the Pre can't compete with the iphone or the app store. The app store only came out in july last year, so it's up to 34000 in about 9 months. Why is it so hard to imagine that the palm store wouldn't be as big in 6 months with a huge catalog by the end of the year?
How many apps for the iphone are actually specific for the iphone? The Pre hardware matches anything the iphone has, so almost every app available for the iphone could be ported to the Pre. Touchscreen UI, accelerometer, gps, internet connectivity, etc. Pretty much every requirement for iphone apps are also on the Pre.
It will be interesting to see how quickly webOS version are developed. The emulator looks amazing and really sets up the Pre to have access to an already huge catalog of old palmOS apps. They may be dated but there are some incredibly useful ones already available.
Yeah, the same thing happens to me with the iPhone sometimes.
Shit, this was a reply for MrRoboto1990.
I am curious about the hack/homebrew efforts that will be put into the Pre at launch. After all, its linux. it shouldn't be hard to get some native c apps running on that thing. Some console emulators would quench the Pre gaming thirst. How can you do anything 3D with just CCS, HTML, and Javascript?
HTML5's tag can do it.
I'm not looking forward to HTML5 being common place on the internet. Hardware accelerated 3D in browsers, ugh.
When she presses 'accept' you can see that it changes colour every time. So it's not that she's touching it with her nail, the phone is actually registering the touch, the application isn't responding. Maybe it's a speacial feature of the phone. It wants to make sure you REALLY want to play the game before it lets you.
I love it how all the apple fanbois are treating iphone as if it was a gaming platform. Just 4-6 months ago, before all the games started showing, it was just a software platform, but fast forward to today and several apple commercials later and suddenly iphone is threatening the psp and nintendo ds. As long as iphone doesn't have dedicated controls it will *never* be a proper gaming platform. All the monkey balls in the world will not change that fact.
And I don't think that Pre can be considered a gaming platform either. What I do find impressive about the video above is the fact that an emulator is capable of running a 3D game. That tells me two things about the pre - 1) It's powerful hardware. I don't know if it's more powerful than iphone, but at the very least it's on the same level. 2) It's well written, efficient and powerful os. And given the fact that it has multitasking, and at least so far from what we've seen, the browser experience on the pre is actually superior the iphone, all this tells me that as long as the developers embrace the webos platform it has enormous potential - far more than current iphone os can ever hope for.
@wrabbit, I think the Pre has better hardware -- mainly due to the videos of the web loading content that were up a few weeks ago. They had both the Pre and the iPhone on Wifi loading a graphically intensive webpage... The pre loaded in 7 seconds while the iPhone took over 20 seconds to render everything.
I know it's not the end-all, be-all for performance, but in terms of web surfing and rendering graphics the Pre wins hands down.
Nothing brings out the iPhone fanboys like something on the Palm Pre.
Honestly, you guys seem very, very scared.
is it being scared? or is it the possibility that when they whip out their iphone and someone gets out their Pre, that they get shown up like a fat kid in a dance off...
The only thing that Irks me is they pussyfoot with all the videos. I understand its not out yet, but if they want people to buy it quit showin the "Card" Feature every single time and only 5 seconds of anything. Havent seen anything about the Camera,Texting, Recieving a Call, anything like that only shit like the browser. Look, the phone isnt out for sale yet, so why are they scared to show all the features on a video, not just the things they "feel safe" showing you
Wait and see, there will be an iPhone emulator for the Pre as well.
VERY unlikely. MotionApps, who developed the Classic emulator, got special access to the inner workings of the Linux OS, much more, we're led to believe, than the advanced Javascript calls, however deep they go, do.
As long as I can do SlingPlayer in either WebOS or Classic i'll be happy
The emulator can't access the internet or any other radio from what I've heard. So it'll have to be via WebOS and unlikely to be available at launch.
Oops, I got that wrong. Apps within the Classic emulator CAN access the internet.
Check out Motion Apps blog for the info.
I hate to be the one to point it out, but that's a very old game that's rendered in multi angle sprites. It used to run just as fine on my Palm Zire 72, a palm that's quite a few years old, it's just a bit of creative graphical trickery, not really high end hardware accelerated 3D graphics.
Yes, but this is emulation.
The Pre can't natively run 68K code written for old Palms. Every machine code instruction has to be translated for the new CPU first. The fact that Classic can run some PalmOS apps as fast as a Centro (and some will be faster) is amazing. Emulation is difficult. To put this in perspective, it took 20 years for PC emulation of the Commodore Amiga to reach full speed. The Amiga came out in 1984 and ran at 7.14Mhz. Recent Treos ran an Arm architecture at, what, 312Mhz or something?
The Pre is boasting some very capable hardware. I hope that it gets a native SDK some time soon. It's clearly possible for native apps to be written as Classic MUST be native, but I'm guessing it was authored only under tight supervision and approval from Palm to ensure that it doesn't make the platform unstable. It's the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps Palm can encourage a handful of top tier trusted developers and give them full native access? We'd get some kick-ass games then.
As a Blackberry and iPod touch user with previous ownership of Windows Mobile, PalmOS and Symbian devices, I must say that the Pre is the most exciting device I've seen in years.
All of the people that keep saying, "How is the Pre going to pull developers away from the iPhone", really crack me up.
It is not like you can only develop for one platform. There is no contract you have to sign that says, "If you develop for the iPhone, you cannot develop for the Palm Pre." Most independent developers that try to develop apps for a career or at least some source of income will probably port many games over to the Pre to make more money.
I currently develop apps for the iPhone, and I don't even own an iPhone. To be honest, if Verizon had an iPhone, I probably would not buy it (I need a physical keyboard). I develop apps because a.) I like developing software, b.) It's fun working on small projects with some friends, and c.) You make money.
If all I have to do is learn a new API, and re-write the code using this new API and programming language, it won't take very long to port over the applications.
@krische
I'm not an American citizen, so Sprint GPS app very likely won't have maps that Garmin already has. That's why I'm asking. It's questionable if emulator would get direct access to gps hardware of the Pre.
The problem being that the PalmOS emulator will probably be faster for games than the actual WebOS because of the javascript dev limitation..
I love everything I've seen about the Pre, and plan on getting one when it's released. Yet, I don't see how this shows it gaming potential, I use to have this exact game on my Zire 72.
Well this is very interesting - you cannot be bringing out devices these days with just a webOS, you need proper real games (and all the other apps that require proper SDK access). So it is good to see that the Pre will have them, otherwise it's ability to claim "contender" status would need to be reviewed.
But I hope for Pre owners that GTS World Racing turns out to be a much better game than it was on the iPhone - the App Store version was extremely boring, the graphics were ho-hum, you would rarely see any other racers, and the impression of speed was sorely lacking.
you know what i learned from this video.... girls cant drive
jk.