I'm a little curious about why GPU sprites is not supported on Mobile.

anonymous_user_a74133dd · November 9, 2014, 10:01am

Hi Friends:
I’m curious about the reason, can someone provide an explaination from computer graphics/hardware perspective about why GPU sprites is not supported on mobile?

Thanks

anonymous_user_a74133dd · November 10, 2014, 3:41pm

really hope engine developers give an answer

sanford87 · November 10, 2014, 4:59pm

I don’t think mobile devices really have dedicated GPUs at this point.

HaxO · November 10, 2014, 9:48pm

There are phones with integrated GPUs like the HTC ONE but they are so rare at this point. I am sure as they become more prevalent EPIC will make the effort to adapt.

xdbxdbx · November 10, 2014, 9:50pm

Could be a number of reasons, my best guess is that most hardware probably lacks support for textures with 16bit floating point channels. This is needed to encode things into the GPU like position, velocity, etc for each particle.

RCaloca · November 10, 2014, 10:21pm

Hey guys, we are actively working on getting these enabled for Mobile

xdbxdbx · November 11, 2014, 1:43pm

Thats great to hear. Any information you could shed on this to us? What phones, any limitations, and when might we see these features?

RCaloca · November 11, 2014, 3:47pm

Hopefully no restrictions! And hope to get it in by 4.7 (or 4.6.1 if we do one), or you if you are running off github you might be able to get the change directly.

RCaloca · November 11, 2014, 9:15pm

Update: This will be working on Metal-enabled devices, but GL might take a bit longer (3d textures are required).

Nawrot · November 12, 2014, 10:59am

Great news.

anonymous_user_e815e8ea · December 7, 2014, 3:47pm

Sorry, what do you mean by Metal-enabled devices? I’m looking up what this “metal” is and it seems something exclusive to iOS. Part of my game relies on GPU particles, but I’m developing on Android. Can I expect a change to allow these on android phones?

anonymous_user_3c9603ca · December 7, 2014, 3:59pm

I think he means the Metal Framework from Apple.

anonymous_user_e815e8ea · December 7, 2014, 4:31pm

That’s what I thought… So, Apple’s coming first then?

RCaloca · December 8, 2014, 8:01pm

Yes, Metal support is being worked on. We might work on it for Android, but it’s further down the line… However if you have an AEP device (Tegra K1) running the high-end rendering path will use it.

anonymous_user_a36a29c6 · February 1, 2015, 7:49pm

Does this work for mobile in 4.6.1? (on Metal)

anonymous_user_a36a29c6 · February 2, 2015, 8:16pm

I tested it in 4.6.1 and it appears the answer is no, has anyone tried this in 4.7?

RCaloca · February 2, 2015, 11:44pm

Yes, it will be on 4.7.

anonymous_user_a36a29c6 · February 3, 2015, 12:40am

Thanks RCaloca, there are some really great things I’ll be able to do with this :).

anonymous_user_1521166e · February 20, 2015, 12:22pm

Thanks for the greate news!However,I tested gpu particles with 4.7 preview8 with metal checked,but it did not seem to work on IOS 8(iphone 6 plus).

RCaloca · February 24, 2015, 7:15pm

Sadness maybe you found a bug. Can you please open an Answerhub ticket for this so it goes through support?