The Google I/O conference keynote on Wednesday saw Google showcase the next version of its operating system, Android L and its enhanced gaming capabilities.
Google turned to Epic Games and Nvidia to demo the capabilities of the new Android Extension Pack (AEP), which is a set of API’s that extend the functionality of OpenGL ES 3.1 that can bring state-of-the art PC and console quality graphics on Android. If you ever had doubts that the graphical performance of games on the mobile platform would ever reach console like quality, you’d have to check out this demo.
The video was made in in Unreal Engine 4 “Rivalry” and rendered on NVIDIA’s Tegra K1. The Epic team was able to achieve some of the cool effects in the video using AEP’s features such as tessellation, shaders, and texture compression that improve the detail of geometry rendered onscreen as well as add details and shadows to what is rendered onscreen.
Apart from the software, we got to see some of the hardware capabilities of the NVIDIA’s Tegra K1. The Tegra K1 is based on the same technology that is seen on Nvidia’s desktop GPUs, namely a Kepler based GPU with 192 CUDA cores, 4 ROPs (render output units), and 8 texture units. Nvidia is also working on developing Android L on the 64-bit version of Tegra K1 mobile processor, which can deliver unrivaled single-thread and multi-thread performances.
The Tegra K1 demo clearly highlights the possibilities when PC-class gaming technologies are brought to the mobile platform. With Android L, Google looks to be on the right path to bringing PC quality gaming to your pocket.
