Ideaworks3D Announces Airplay(TM) 3.5 to Bring Console Developers to Mobile

SAN FRANCISCO, February 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Ideaworks3D, a leading developer of native mobile technology and applications, today announced that the release of Airplay 3.5 - the world's most advanced tools and middleware for native mobile game development - will revolutionise the way console and handheld developers look at mobile gaming.

Ideaworks3D recognises that the development and deployment landscape for mobile Java games today is unattractive to developers of high quality handheld and console content. Performance restrictions of the Java platform, together with poor tools and the enormous manual effort required to port Java games across hundreds of different handsets, does not add up to a compelling proposition. This is a huge frustration to handheld and console developers who can see the rising processing and graphics horsepower of mobile devices, and are tempted by the enormous distribution and revenue opportunities.

Airplay 3.5 unlocks both the power of the mobile handset, and the ability to distribute widely across any native mobile operating system, irrespective of chipset or form factor. The developer builds a single native application binary once only, then deploys that binary unmodified to all handsets. Thus the promise of true native performance, with zero fragmentation, is uniquely realised.

Airplay has already been used to bring the industry's most valuable franchises to mobile, in games such as 'Metal Gear Solid Mobile(TM)', 'Need For Speed(TM) Underground 2', 'The Sims 2(TM) Mobile', 'Dirge Of Cerberus(TM) Lost Episode Final Fantasy VII(R)', 'Tomb Raider', 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater' and 'Project Gotham Racing(TM) Mobile'.

Airplay 3.5 provides a complete C++ development and debugging environment that will be familiar to existing handheld and console developers. Full desktop debugging of the ARM binary is enabled through a unique integration with ARM's RTSM simulator. Additionally, Airplay 3.5 integrates with industry-standard art tools such as Autodesk Maya and 3DS Max, enabling best-practice art pipelines necessary for efficient high-quality native game development.

Airplay includes the world's fastest mobile software renderer, empowering rich 2D and 3D graphics on ARM9 and ARM11 handsets without hardware graphics acceleration. However, Airplay 3.5 also seamlessly supports OpenGL ES 1.x, allowing developers to exploit the power of any hardware graphics acceleration on the handset.

Airplay's scalable graphics technology is optimised for all the major GPU designs, including Imagination Technologies POWERVR, AMD Imageon and ARM Mali, with full support for NVIDIA's new APX 2500 applications processor coming very soon. Developers can choose to build a platform-agnostic data set that will run on any handset, or can build a data set optimised for any GPU architecture. Building an optimised data set requires only a single line within the developer's build script. Tools, documentation and examples from the GPU vendors are also bundled within the Airplay SDK installer.

Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination Technologies, notes: "Airplay has already enabled fantastic games like 'System Rush: Evolution' to exploit the full benefits of graphics acceleration on Nokia's N-Series handsets, which use our POWERVR technology. POWERVR's wide deployment worldwide from leading manufacturers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, together with its unrivalled developer and tools support from our extensive POWERVR Insider programme, made us an obvious choice as a strategic partner. We're delighted that Ideaworks3D has worked closely with Imagination to ensure the Airplay platform delivers outstanding performance for handsets shipping now and in the future with POWERVR MBX and SGX GPUs."

"We are pleased to see Airplay leverage the powerful capabilities of our AMD Imageon(TM) products," said Neal Robison, director, Global Software Vendor Relations, AMD (NYSE: AMD). "Fostering a solid gaming ecosystem that drives the creation of compelling content for next-generation handsets is a key growth factor of the mobile gaming industry. With Airplay, content developers will have access to tools already tuned to hardware-accelerated platforms based on AMD Imageon processors."

"Through the ARM partnership with Ideaworks3D, we ensure that game developers can reduce their development cycle by taking advantage of pre-integrated support for ARM Mali GPUs in Airplay 3.5", said Michael Dimelow, director of marketing, Media Processing Division. "Developers can now take full advantage of the underlying high performance Mali graphics architecture, enabling a more compelling, near console-quality 3D gaming experience".

"The new NVIDIA APX 2500 includes a complete OpenKODE implementation with high-performance accelerated OpenGL ES, so Airplay 3.5 is a great fit with our new applications processor," said Neil Trevett, Vice President of Mobile Content at NVIDIA. "Airplay 3.5 is a highly innovative development and deployment environment and NVIDIA will be providing close support to Ideaworks3D to ensure Airplay and APX 2500 are seamlessly integrated and optimized to create a truly compelling gaming platform."

Airplay 3.5 provides full support for OpenKODE, the emerging industry standard for mobile operating system abstraction. The Khronos group has ratified Airplay as being compliant on far more platforms than any other provider.

The Airplay 3.5 SDK is available for commercial licensing today from Ideaworks3D Ltd.

About Ideaworks3D

Ideaworks3D is a privately held technology and game development company headquartered in London. Founded in 1998 with a strong Oxford and Cambridge computer science and electronic engineering pedigree, the company has an unparalleled track record of creative innovation and technical leadership in the field of high performance mobile gaming. Ideaworks3D's Airplay(TM) platform is the result of over 7 years of research and development into high-performance native multimedia applications on mobile devices, and has powered ground-breaking and award-winning titles such as Konami's "Metal Gear Solid Mobile", which won "Best Game" and "Operators' Choice" accolades at IMGA 2008. Ideaworks3D's Studio is also the recipient of multiple industry accolades including two consecutive BAFTA Games Awards in 2005 and 2004 for best handheld and mobile games. More information can be found at:

http://www.ideaworks3d.com.

Airplay is a trademark of Ideaworks3D, Ltd. Khronos and OpenKODE are trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

    
    Contacts:
    Ideaworks3D Ltd.
    +44-20-7762-3333
    press@ideaworks3d.com

SOURCE Ideaworks3D Ltd.