Epic Games just announced that they were able to get the Unreal Engine to run on the iPhone/iPod Touch. This is quite amazing considering the limited resources available on the iPhone and the massive requirements of Unreal. The guys from AnandTech got a private tech demo from Epic Games to demonstrate how it works. Currently there are no announcements about licensing or availability to the public, but supposedly there is more to come in 2010. They are working on optimizing the graphics and the controller scheme, OpenGL ES 2.0 is now being used for the graphics engine. The video above shows control with a touchscreen in a classic d-pad interface, but Mark Rein from Epic says they are trying out other options.
It is exciting to see an engine as powerful as the Unreal Engine running on the iPhone. It shows that mobile platforms are becoming viable for realtime 3d gaming, and that game engines can be streamlined enough to run on them. Each generation of the iPhone is going to be more powerful, it won’t be too long before mobile processors can compete with current gen consoles.
Check out the link:
http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3695