Can the iPhone simulator handle PVR textures?

Question

I have a really weird problem with PVR textures on the iPhone simulator- the framerate falls through the floor on the iPhone simulator, but on the iPhone itself it works just fine. Has anyone had any experiences similar to this? I'm using SDK 3.1.2

Answer 1

The iPhone simulator is notorious about being almost like the iPhone.

I cannot speak about PVR textures, as I am not sure. But, from other things I have done (and from what I read on the internet) most developers give up on the simulator rather quickly due to its minor differences from the real thing.

In the end if it works on the iPhone, then the simulator doesn't matter.

Answer 2

I am using PVR(TC) textures within simulator and device, never recognized major differences. The MacBook I am using is ancient (first generation 2ghz dualcore with GMA950 GFX adapter).

What kind of machine are you testing with, what GFX-card is installed?

It sounds as if you are using a machine / gfx adapter that is particularly bad in implementing the usage of such textures. Maybe a driver update does some magic?

Answer 3

The iPhone simulator is known to be extremely slow for certain rendering scenarios.

One especially bad case we experienced was that creating (glGenTextures+glTexImage2D) and destroying (glDeleteTextures) a big texture (title screen) will kill all performance until a hard simulator restart.

Testing your "logic" on the simulator and "assuming" it will be fast on the device has been working pretty good for us.

As always: Try avoiding state changes!

And yes: PVR textures are supported, but simulated in the shader.

Answer 4

Yes, simulator supports PVRTC textures, but probably does decompression into RGB format during upload or when texture is used for the first time. In my game it causes big slowdown until every PVR texture is shown at least once. Of course, those slowdowns appear in simulator only and on actual device PVRTC textures are very very fast.