Mobility's next dimension

The third screen is traveling into the third dimension. 3D graphics, a staple of traditional video game platforms since the 1980 introduction of Atari's “Battlezone,” are coming to next-generation wireless handsets. Think 3D can't cut it on a screen that's not even 3 inches? Think again.

“The screens are small now, but the resolution works to our advantage — the quality of graphics is really good,” said Manish Singh, director of product management at Santa Clara-based visual computing technology developer Nvidia. “If you look at the dots per inch on these screens, it's almost richer than a PC screen. You have the same resolution, but you're cramming it into a much smaller space.”

Founded in 1993, Nvidia spent a decade developing graphics and communications processors for consumer and professional computing platforms including PCs, military navigation systems and video game consoles before moving into the handset space last year. At February's 3GSM World Congress, the company announced it would license its AR10 3D core for use in wireless phone system-on-chips.

Promising fully interactive, photorealistic graphics, the AR10 pretty much screams out for 3D gaming, but Nvidia envisions other potential applications as well. Singh cited the example of what he calls avatar technology, wherein animated characters and faces stand in for callers during videoconferences.

“Maybe when the call comes in, you've just woken up or you haven't shaved,” he said. “So now, when the phone rings on a video call, the avatar is a symbol of you.” Dawn, a pixie-like animated character created by Nvidia, captures a full range of human expressions: She winks, smiles and even looks irritated.

Speaking of irritation, 3D gaming and multimedia are all well and good, but the problem is that media-rich applications can sap all of a handset's battery power without leaving enough juice to make even a brief voice call. That's why when Nvidia expanded into the mobile market in 2003, their first task was acquiring wireless media processor MediaQ in an effort to develop solutions for maximizing handset battery life. The resulting nPower technology enables more than 10 times the energy efficiency of comparable software-based solutions.

“You can integrate all the multimedia you want, but if the battery runs out and you cannot use the device as a phone, it's not going to fly,” Singh said. “The challenge is to integrate all this video and multimedia technology without ruining the battery life of the product or weighing it down with this expensive battery that you're going to have to put in to support the application. Power management is a huge deal for us, and for everyone in this ecosystem — the content providers, the handset vendors and the carriers as well.”

Another huge deal is the recent introduction of two new mobile imaging standards. One is OpenGL ES, a low-level, lightweight application program interface (API) based on the 3D graphics language for PCs. The other is the more complex Java-based Mobile 3D Graphics API for J2ME, a.k.a. M3G, which includes facilities for 3D scene management and animation as well as a file format for over-the-air deployment of 3D content. With Nvidia focusing on the Open GL ES standard, the company recently partnered with 3D software and content developer Mascot Capsule, which supports M3G standards.

“The idea is that Nvidia is going to provide a core that does great 3D graphics and delivers incredible performance, and they're going to do that through OpenGL ES,” said Josh Mogal, senior director of marketing with Mobile Capsule. “But the game developer may choose to work at a higher level — the Java level — so if they want to work with M3G, we can provide that layer on top of OpenGL ES for Nvidia's game developer customers.”

And just as “Battlezone” wasn't the final evolution of traditional video games, Nvidia doesn't expect wireless multimedia to peak once the first 3D games are launched in the U.S. market. “It's not about the handset anymore — it's about life engagement,” Singh said. “You use it for everything: your music, your video, for all the entertainment that you consume or the content you create. You carry it everywhere and you use it everywhere. We're still seeing just the early stages of what multimedia can do.”