14 DAY TRIAL // Redmond-based software giant Microsoft announced last month during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the launch of a new mobile operating system, the Windows Phone 7 OS, which will arrive on the market by the end of 2010, and new details on the platform are now available. Among them, we can count the fact that the first games developed for handsets running under the OS are expected to boast WVGA resolutions (480 x 800 pixels), though HVGA ones should also enjoy support through a future update.
Microsoft has recently showcased a few more features of the future devices, including they capability to support 3D games, and the company's Shawn Hargreaves has just published a blog entry on the matter, where the fact that the 480 x 800 pixel (WVGA) display resolution will be in place has been unveiled as well. Moreover, a wide range of other details are also brought to light in his post, including some tidbits regarding the interoperability between Windows PCs, Windows Phone 7 and Xbox in the gaming area courtesy of Game Studio 4.0.
“The phone supports full hardware accelerated 3D, but we are not exposing programmable shaders in this release. […] Instead of programmable shaders, we augmented the existing BasicEffect with four new configurable effects: SkinnedEffect, EnvironmentMapEffect, DualTextureEffect, and AlphaTestEffect. These are designed to run efficiently on the mobile GPU hardware, and I think do a good job of providing enough flexibility for developers to create awesome looking games, while also meeting our goals of being able to ship a robust and well tested product on schedule,” Shawn Hargreaves states.
In addition, the blog post notes that all phones will have a WVGA display resolution, but that 320 x 480 pixels (HVGA) support will also be added in a future update. Developers will be able to set the game to detect the resolution and adapt to it, yet the handsets will feature an image scaler that will “allows games to pick just one resolution, always render at that fixed size, and still run correctly on phones with different native screen sizes.” It seems that 3D games will find the resolution most challenging, as a lot of data will have to be rendered at a good frame rate.