Might one day graphics-intensive games such as Battlefield 4 be able to run on devices that you keep in your pocket? Swedish Battlefield developer DICE has taken the next step toward that goal, revealing today that it was able to get "parts" of 2013 shooter Battlefield 4 running on iOS using the Frostbite Engine.
"Whatever you can do on console should be doable on mobile as well," Frosbite product owner Kristoffer Benjaminsson said in a blog post today.
The Frostbite engine has already been used in mobile games such as the Battlefield 4 Commander App and through a Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare tech demo earlier this year on iPad Air. The next step, Benjaminsson said, was to see if DICE could get Battlefield 4 running on iOS.
"It has been quite a challenge. To handle dynamic features such as destruction or moving light sources, most things in the Frostbite engine happen in realtime," he explained. "This puts extra demand on performance to be able to deliver large, highly detailed worlds with superb visual quality."
"We were making great progress feature-wise, but hardware and software limitations forced us to either scale down the number of objects and their complexity to retain visual fidelity, or accept lower visual fidelity to cope with a larger number of objects," he added.
But this changed when Apple introduced the new "Metal" graphics API, Benjaminsson said. "Together with the latest range of hardware, Metal has created possibilities previously out of reach and for the first time we can include both high visual fidelity and a large number of objects," he explained.
Outside of the pair of images you see in this post, DICE did not share any other assets showing Battlefield 4 running on iOS. It's also unclear what "parts" of Battlefield 4 DICE was able to getting running on the mobile platform or if the company plans to extend its mobile work to Android.
Overall, Benjaminsson said DICE is "happy with the results so far," cautioning, though, that "there is still much to do."
"Even though we have much room for performance improvements on our end, we're pleasantly surprised of the performance we're getting from the hardware," he explained.
Benjaminsson said future blog posts will go into greater depth about DICE's efforts to get Battlefield 4 running on iOS. Finally, it should be noted that DICE's exploration of bringing Battlefield 4 to mobile devices is merely a tech demo to test the capabilities of the Frostbite engine. It's not an announcement that Battlefield 4 is coming to iOS.
