Microsoft also had this demo http://gizmodo.com/387305/video-zune-multiplayer-games-in-action which used a raycasting engine (Hmmm video doesn't play for me). Nick's is still on codeplex http://raycasterx.codeplex.com/ maybe it will be faster on the Zune. No one has really tried any perf tests yet to see if we have any more juice...

One wonders what rendering API the announced games use.

I do think its a fair question to get a sw support roadmap for the hw, to understand when XNA will support 3D on Zune.

PhilTaylor:

One wonders what rendering API the announced games use.

All the released games were made using XNA Game Studio.

PhilTaylor:

I do think its a fair question to get a sw support roadmap for the hw, to understand when XNA will support 3D on Zune.

It's a fair question but you will not likely get an answer. It's also not even necessarily a "when XNA will support 3D on Zune" because there hasn't be a definitive answer to "if XNA will support 3D on Zune".

Nick Gravelyn:

All the released games were made using XNA Game Studio.

So how does the weather app access the internet? Is System.Net now available on Zune?

The ZMan:

Nick Gravelyn:

All the released games were made using XNA Game Studio.

So how does the weather app access the internet? Is System.Net now available on Zune?

I said the current games were made using XNA Game Studio. :)

Edit: And for anyone else's reference, that's all I can really say on the matter. I can't comment on the apps or the net connectivity so don't bother asking. :)

Shall we call that a 'no comment'? Or can you find someone who is allowed to answer the question?

The ZMan:

Shall we call that a 'no comment'? Or can you find someone who is allowed to answer the question?

That's a "no comment". :)

Man, Nick's getting good at the MS-type-no-info-here-move-on-nothing-to-see responses! :)

Nick Gravelyn:

PhilTaylor:

One wonders what rendering API the announced games use.

All the released games were made using XNA Game Studio.

So will all XNA games get the sleazy ads on startup too or just the ones that MS publishes for free on the device? Whoever thought that was a good idea should be fired. Especially since no there is way to pay to get rid of them.

Tommy McClain

AzBat360:

So will all XNA games get the sleazy ads on startup too or just the ones that MS publishes for free on the device? Whoever thought that was a good idea should be fired. Especially since no there is way to pay to get rid of them.

The official games on the old Zune also had ads at startup, so I think it's just for the official ones

AzBat360:

sleazy ads

AzBat360:

publishes for free 

Its likely that these 2 items are connected like the free web pages with ads, and the free TV with ads...

Now if you had to pay for the apps and they still had ads that might be something to complain about.

The more I play with the Zune HD the more I prefer its interface over the iPod touch.  It is just beautiful to look at.  I really want to make games for this, and get them into as many hands as possible.  After reading the article at http://furbo.org/2009/07/10/year-two/ about the difficulties developers are having and how Apple's handling of the developers is becoming more of a bad experience I do really appreciate the efforts Microsoft is putting into a system where software is peer reviewed, and the hardware is protected by the abstraction provided via .Net.  I am going to try and set aside the fact that there is not an outlet for our Zune software yet, but that it is something I hope to see resolved in the near future.  Microsoft has already laid down a great approach to the review process, and the "virtual shelf space".

wwm0nkey:

Technicly there already is a 3D game out there, its this Light cycle game but the game isnt really 3D (not a tech guy so cant explain it too well)

LINK

Do you notice any perf difference on the HD?

Sadly no, not really. The games looks better due to the better screen, and I had to draw to a larger resolution so maybe that accounted for the same framerate, but my game Lightcycles runs at about the same FPS on the zune 80 or the zuneHD. I do prefer the look on the zuneHD though. Granted, most games do not need to do what mine do (and mine could potentially be more optimized), and the zuneHD runs just fine, but if anyone was hoping for leaps and bounds ahead in XNA performance, from what I have seen it isn't there.

Your observations are just fine (in fact i think technically proper empirical benchmarks are probably not allowed as per the EULA - they are in most software EULAS from all companies). Do you have the frame rate locked to 30 or 60? If so don't forget to turn that off to seem if it speeds up.

No the framerates arent locked. I have the FPS shown when I run it/debugging but remove it when I release the files, so I know the two are in the same ballpark running Lightcycles. The reason I don't stand behind my findings 100% is that the engine I made runs at a pretty low FPS to begin with. Because there is no native way to draw 2D lines and shapes in XNA (that I have seen, if things have changed I would love to know), I used the ZiggyDraw Library. It does what I need to do, but it slows the system down quite a bit (from completely informal tests long ago it seemed that just drawing one line on the screen made the zune run ~ 24 FPS without any other logic), so my programs are running pretty low to begin with. That said, on a "standard" app I am not sure if there is a more noticeable performance jump.

I grabbed some madebrot code from here: http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorials/aspnet/05748429-75a4-449a-9aab-82758cfb13df/animating-mandelbrot-frac.aspx

No clever optimisations (e.g. threading etc), running release code with no debugger attached and timing the genration of the data only not the rendering. 272x480 data size (looks nice on the ZuneHD)

Windows: 42fps/.024s (2.4Ghz quad core)
Xbox:  3.8fps/.26s
ZuneHD: 0.6 fps/1.7s
Zune 8/80: 0.2 fps/5s

So the ZuneHDs are faster than their older brothers for floating point intensive stuff but not by an order of magnitude.

Splitting the calculation into 4 threads gives a wonderful speedup on PC, a little on the xbox and nothing on the Zune. ProcessorCount returns 1 on the Zune so no surprise there.
Windows: 120fps
Xbox: 8 fps (running on default (1 I assume), 3, 4, 5 - 0 and 2 are reserved for XNA Framework).
ZuneHD: 0.6

Again note that this is just a quick and dirty run to give some rough ideas, nothing official...

^ I bet that looks pretty in OLED! ;)

Well since rendering wasn't the important bit here I didn't do any fancy lookups so sorry just monochrome ;-)

Well I bet the blacks looked great! Ha...  Neat work though.  While you guys have been coding away, I was soldering away to get my car receiver Zune ready. :)

Thanks for doing that ZMan, that is quite interesting. The difference between 1.7s and 5s is pretty large actually (4x the FPS!!), but once again this is another "special case" situation. I would be curious if anyone will find that a game that they couldn't make on the zune 80  possible to run on the zune HD (performance issues only, obviously not the need for a touchscreen or anything).

Remyremrem:

Robert Morse:

I purchased a Zune 120 last year, and immediately put some of my own code onto the device.  It was a blast, but I quickly lost interest in it when there was no way to easily provide this software to other Zune owners, without sacrificing the user experience (loading a hassle).  I am excited about the Zune HD, and picked up one today, and it kicks.  I am happy to hear about the extensions, but again, I feel apprehensive to spend any time on developing for the unit, yet I am still very intrigued about developing games for a portable device.  My wife owns an IPod touch, and I have seriously considered developing for that device to feed the programming hunger, but please Microsoft don't make me go there.  I absolutely enjoy developing in .Net.

Try looking at this.

http://xnatouch.codeplex.com/

iphone 3d uses openGL ES, xna runs on direct3d.  I am curious how xnatouch works on iphone?

BunnyAn:

Remyremrem:

Robert Morse:

I purchased a Zune 120 last year, and immediately put some of my own code onto the device.  It was a blast, but I quickly lost interest in it when there was no way to easily provide this software to other Zune owners, without sacrificing the user experience (loading a hassle).  I am excited about the Zune HD, and picked up one today, and it kicks.  I am happy to hear about the extensions, but again, I feel apprehensive to spend any time on developing for the unit, yet I am still very intrigued about developing games for a portable device.  My wife owns an IPod touch, and I have seriously considered developing for that device to feed the programming hunger, but please Microsoft don't make me go there.  I absolutely enjoy developing in .Net.

Try looking at this.

http://xnatouch.codeplex.com/

iphone 3d uses openGL ES, xna runs on direct3d.  I am curious how xnatouch works on iphone?

Because it's just a wrapper on top of OpenGL ES. Someone made an API that looks just like the XNA Framework, but has implemented it on top of a different set of APIs.

Nick Gravelyn:

BunnyAn:

Remyremrem:

Robert Morse:

I purchased a Zune 120 last year, and immediately put some of my own code onto the device.  It was a blast, but I quickly lost interest in it when there was no way to easily provide this software to other Zune owners, without sacrificing the user experience (loading a hassle).  I am excited about the Zune HD, and picked up one today, and it kicks.  I am happy to hear about the extensions, but again, I feel apprehensive to spend any time on developing for the unit, yet I am still very intrigued about developing games for a portable device.  My wife owns an IPod touch, and I have seriously considered developing for that device to feed the programming hunger, but please Microsoft don't make me go there.  I absolutely enjoy developing in .Net.

Try looking at this.

http://xnatouch.codeplex.com/

iphone 3d uses openGL ES, xna runs on direct3d.  I am curious how xnatouch works on iphone?

Because it's just a wrapper on top of OpenGL ES. Someone made an API that looks just lie the XNA Framework, but has implemented it on top of a different set of APIs.

Yeah, I traced the framework code and got answer, thanks for your reply.