So there have been (both upcomming and released) some stunning 2.5D games, which are essentially 3D but with limited 2.5D gameplay. I've been reading the forums, and a very common reaction, is "This sucks I cant move around", "Why am I limited" etc., etc. This has to do with a concept called "culling" and the ease by which a developer can implement it. The iPhone is a very powerful device, however, compared to a console (obviously) it is limited in terms of its vertex and texture processing capabilities. Basically you get a very set number. If you make a 3D scene where you can move anywhere, at anytime, you have to implement very sophisticated scene culling to manage what goes in and out of memory. This 'problem' becomes very simple in 2.5D because its a linear trajectory. You can cut the scene geometry in regular intervals. Otherwise you have to do a bit more work for scene-graphs and partitioning. You're talking about much more sophisticated game development, and bigger budgets. Though, the engine I built has a very very nice scene processor, and I'm pushing 60-80 fps out of it. Biplane flight simulator anyone ? With Ghost audio so you can here him buzz around you
