At its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple unveiled Metal, an API designed to improve game performance on iOS. Epic Games took the stage during the event to show off Epic Zen Garden, a game built using the Unreal 4 Engine and the Metal API.
The game, which was designed to show off the impressive graphic enhancement features possible with Metal, demonstrated an expansive world with a fully interactive environment. Users could touch a tree to send a cascade of leaves and cherry blossoms swirling to the ground or interact with a group of koi fish.
As of today, Epic Zen Garden is available for download, letting users see some of the things that will be possible in iOS games in the near future. The game supports a resolution of 1440 x 1080 at 30fps, and can display 3,500 butterflies at once. One of the major features of Metal is that it allows for more draw calls, letting a huge number of objects be displayed on the screen.
Epic Zen Garden is a beautiful graphical environment showcasing the power of iOS 8, developed by Epic Games with Unreal Engine 4. Tap to navigate this interactive oasis brimming unmatched detail on mobile. Swipe the Sakura tree to make thousands of cherry blossoms swirl in the air, graze the koi pond to summon leagues of fish, and rake the sand with your finger to create subtle designs. Touch the well to bring throngs of butterflies out of hiding.
More information on how Metal works, Epic Zen Garden and the Unreal Engine 4 can be seen in the video below.
Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
Monday December 16, 2024 4:17 pm PST by Juli Clover
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro.
The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup.
The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...
Friday December 20, 2024 2:22 pm PST by Juli Clover
It's looking like 2025 is going to be an important year for Apple, with the company planning to revamp the iPhone, push further into smart home products, and improve Apple Intelligence. There are tons of new products rumored for 2025, including new iPhones, M4 Macs, a smart home command center, and much more.
We've highlighted the top five Apple products that will have the biggest impact in...
Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by Joe Rossignol
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year.
Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by Juli Clover
Elevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag.
Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in the...
Compatibility:
Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad Air Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad mini with Retina display, and iPad mini with Retina display Wi-Fi + Cellular. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.
so which is it?
It requires the A7, so it's iPhone 5s and up. "optimized for iPhone 5" was introduced to indicate that the App is optimized for a 4" screen during the iPhone 4s to 5 transition. I think this information will be removed soon, and the wording is really misleading.
I've love to know, just what spec of 'PC' this graphical power is equal to.
The PowerVR G6430 is shipping in the A7. It has a peak output of about 115 GFLOPS. For comparison, the original Xbox GPU is about 6 GFLOPS, the Xbox 360 GPU is about 240 GFLOPS, and the Xbox One is around 1300 GFLOPS. The A8 was stated to be 50% faster, so we're talking around 170 GFLOPS, which is about 70% the speed of an Xbox 360. This is why they still have to fake a lot to get things running up to par visually. That all being said, I hope they limit 3D games on the iPhone Plus to 720p and crank up other things like the lighting effects, etc. The iPhone has twice the RAM of the Xbox 360, so you might be able squeak out some last gen games that look decent running at 720p. A fast motion game isn't going to look vastly different in your hand at 720p vs. native 1080p. Those differences are more noticeable on a larger TV. What is really interesting is the 6S. Assuming a similar 50% bump in GPU performance, it will slightly surpass last-gen consoles and will likely ship with 2GB of ram (well we also said that about the 6 so who knows). But still, 3D gaming on the iPhone is really going to come into it's own. And with Metal, we might be able to get more performance out of them by comparison to consoles.
