Firemint — publishers of Flight Control and Real Racing — have posted a new YouTube video showing off what they describe as a tech demo that shows off the gaming potential of the iPhone 3GS.
Real Racing is Firemint’s 3D racing game, which puts you in the driver’s seat as you carom around tracks in three different classes of automobile. Right now, the game is limited to six on-screen cars at a time, but Firemint’s tech demo shows the iPhone 3GS with up to 40 cars on-screen at once.
“Since the game uses a high fidelity physics engine, adding cars is a good test for pushing the hardware. We started our tech demo with 8 cars on the track, then 10, 12, 16 and 20, and the 3GS still didn’t break a sweat,” wrote Firemint’s Alexandra Peters. “We finally stopped when we got to 40 cars on the track at the same time, still with no perceptible drop in frame rate. We think the results are mind blowing.”
Firemint cautioned in a blog posting that the video is a tech demo only. “We have no plans to release it as an app,” reads the posting. Still, it’s an impressive indication of the top end capabilities of the iPhone 3GS, and suggests that it’s entirely possible that developers can significantly enrich the gameplay experience for new iPhone customers.