According to engadget.com: iPhone 3G S supports OpenGL ES 2.0, but 3G only supports 1.1 — will the App Store splinter?
“When we were breaking down the meaty differences between the old-school 3G and the 3G S yesterday, we made an assumption about support for OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics APIs in the original iPhone 3G based on the fact that it had been available in the iPhone OS 3.0 SDK for several betas. Turns out, though, that the graphics processor in the 3G S — the PowerVR SGX — supports hardware acceleration of both OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 while the more pedestrian PowerVR MBX found in the iPhone 3G supports 1.1 alone.”
And since there is no new iPod Touch the same probably goes for that.
This is one of the reasons I was holding off on discussing anymore OpenGL. I was waiting to see what happened. It’s not surprising that the existing chipsets can’t be updated through software to support OpenGL ES 2.0. I was just waiting to see if the new hardware would support 2.0. So developers will need to make a decision. I think I’m going to shift focus to the new chipset and 2.0. Though I wouldn’t rule out building 1.1 apps entirely. I could always experiment with #ifdef’ing the code to support both.