Frostbite demos Battlefield 4 running on an iPad, thanks to Apple's Metal API
The folks over at Frostbite have published a new blog post that features a tech demo of the popular Battlefield 4 console game running on an iPad. Frostbite notes that bringing the graphic intensive game to iOS is now possible thanks to Apple’s new Metal graphics API.
Frostbite notes:
It has been quite a challenge. To handle dynamic features such as destruction or moving light sources, most things in the Frostbite engine happen in realtime. This puts extra demand on performance to be able to deliver large, highly detailed worlds with superb visual quality. We were making great progress feature-wise, but hardware and software limitations forced us to either scale down the number of objects and their complexity to retain visual fidelity, or accept lower visual fidelity to cope with a larger number of objects.
This is the first time Frostbite has shown what Apple’s Metal can do for one of its console games. Frostbite stresses that this is only a tech demo and not to expect to see Battlefield 4 on iOS anytime soon.
They conclude:
There is still much to do, but we’re very happy with the results so far. It’s a great feeling porting a system, get it running, and discover that there’s actually performance left. Even though we have much room for performance improvements on our end, we’re pleasantly surprised of the performance we’re getting from the hardware.
First unveiled in June, Apple’s Metal is a new technology capable of bringing true console-quality graphics to its mobile operating system. The technology brings a tenfold increase in rendering efficiency to A7-powered iOS devices.
See also: Metal-powered MOBA game Vainglory confirmed for release on iPhone as well as iPad, Gameloft updates Modern Combat 5: Blackout with Metal-enabled enhancements, and Unveiled at WWDC 2014 for demo of Apple’s Metal, Epic Zen Garden out now on iOS 8.
