Hey Gang (and devs), I'm getting confused now. Is this new iPhone 4 resolution anything like the iPad HD resolution? Will iPhone games optimized for this new Retina Resolution look nicer on the iPad or will the iPad's non-native support default to the base iPhone reolution?
I think that's the issue on a lot of iPad owners' minds... I'll be pretty disppointed if the new games don't look good on my brand new iPad.
The iPhone 4 "Retina Display" is 940x640 pixels, and the iPad is 1024x768, slightly higher resolution. The new iPhone's big claim is number of pixels per inch, since it crams all those pixels into a 3.5 screen, where the iPad is 9.7 inches across. Basically, an iPhone 4 full "Retina Display" enhanced game will fit on an iPad screen, with a black border around it. As you say, the question is, how will the iPad handle an iPhone 4 enhanced game right now? Odds are it will look fantastic when iOS 4.0 is ready for the iPad, but will it render a downscaled version and then upscale it, creating the blockiness of pixel doubling? Maybe they built support into the current iPad OS with this in mind? Someone will need to try an iPhone 4 enhanced game to report the results
Being a developer I was REALLY concerned when Apple began "forking" the display ratios and resolutions. However, they have done it in such a way that it is a non issue. 1. Even though the iPhone 4, iPad, and 1st - 3rd gen iPhone devices all have a different resolution, all OpenGL contexts render into a standard 320x480 buffer unless specifically told otherwise, then they are simply up-sampled to that devices native resolution (or as close as they can in the iPad case). This allows for older apps to run on any future device, no matter what the resolution. They even benefit from a slight Anti-Aliasing effect on newer hardware due to sub pixel filtering. 2. You can create a "High Res" version of you game quite easily, as long as you have not hard coded your 2D values. Unfortunately I did hard code my 2D values, so I have to do a little more work... 3. The way they implemented pixel doubling to get around the fact that the iPad has a completely different ratio than the iPhone devices is brilliant. It didnt orphan thousands of non updated apps, but also gave the developer incentive to create another app that uses the native resolution of that device. So in short, if you want to develop for all current devices that are in the field, simply use the standard buffers, and it should look fine. If you want to develop specifically for the new iPhone 4 and get some crazy HD going, then use the 2X multiplyer when setting up your buffers. If you want to develop only for the ipad, then use the native resolution. However, it is really quite easy to build an app that will handle all 3 resolutions just fine, as long as you do not hard code your 2D.
