A significant snag has hit the development of Dream:scape, the promising Unreal Engine-powered adventure game that’s been making waves with those of us who like our visuals crisp and our worlds open. According to the game’s creator, the title flat-out won’t operate on third-generation devices or even the original iPad -- but there’s still hope it will be able to.

"So I have finally, after dozens of painstaking hours, accepted that my game, dream:scape, will never run on the iPad 1, iPod Touch, or iPhone 3GS,” he wrote on the official UDK message board. A vicious memory bug, which makes the game crash when a build-up occurs, is to blame.

At the time of writing, “kamequazi” wasn’t sure if he could just release the title for the iPhone 4 and iPad 2. It was an obvious point of concern in the post, as it sounds like the title is currently worming its way through the Apple review process.

The good news here is that, yeah, you can submit a targeted game. “I did get the go-ahead from Apple to release the targeted version,” he wrote in an update. He followed up, adding, “Ironically, however, I did connect with a programmer who feels confident that we can get D:S running on all relevant devices.”

“So, while he works on that, I am adding a few new gameplay elements. There will be a new trailer in the next week or so, and when D:S finally does get released it will be better than ever.”

Who knew awesomeness could come from such a bummer moment?

Remember late last month when we learned that Firemint’s Real Racing 2 HD [$9.99] would be getting full 1080p output to your TV using an iPad 2? Well, in case you missed it, the gist of it is that connecting an iPad 2 running Real Racing 2 HD to your television using the Apple HDMI dongle will let you display the game on your HD TV in full 1080p. The iPad then acts as the controller for playing the game on the TV while simultaneously displaying a track map and other information pertaining to your race. The game runs full screen without any borders and at a solid 30 frames per second.

Today the update containing this feature has gone live for Real Racing 2 HD. You can get an idea of just how it works by checking out the following demonstration video that Firemint has put together:

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If you're one of the millions of people out there who have found themselves gingerly stroking their new iPad 2's lately waiting for some more games to truly unleash the beast on, today is your lucky day. The guys from Trendy Entertainment dropped us a note and let us know that Dungeon Defenders: First Wave now fully takes advantage of everything the iPad 2 has to offer. All you've got to do is download the latest version of Dungeon Defenders and turn the somewhat confusingly named "video upscale percentage" slider all the way up.

Doing so makes Dungeon Defenders look and play like this:

It might be a little hard to see in the video, but the difference is insane. Performance on the original iPad was always lackluster (to put it kindly) and it's crazy to see what a difference the iPad 2 hardware makes. Unfortunately, all of our original criticisms of the game's UI still stands, and even though it performs substantially better, it's still incredibly clunky to play due to the incredibly complicated on-screen interface.

Regardless, the game is on sale for a buck for the next few days so if you're looking for something to try on your iPad 2 or have just been looking to check out Dungeon Defenders, now is as good of a time as any.

Earlier this morning we posted news that Firemint would soon be bringing an update to Real Racing 2 HD [App Store], with support for full-screen 1080p video-out on the iPad 2. This news got us wondering about the overall situation that the iPad 2 and it's new PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics processor(s) present to existing games that already utilize TV-out by way of Apple's earlier component and VGA video cables for iOS devices.

I chatted up Keith Shepherd of Imangi, author of Max Adventure [App Store], which has supported TV-out via the aforementioned cables for some time now, to see what he thought the iPad 2's 1080p capability means for existing titles. While he hadn't tested Max on an iPad 2 personally, he felt it likely that the newly supported resolution should be there among those presented to an application by iOS, and therefore presented as an option in his game.

And, he was right.

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The folks at Firemint have just sent over a brief demonstration video of the next major feature they have cooking for Real Racing 2 HD [$9.99], which will arrive in the next update. Using the video out feature of an iPad 2, Real Racing 2 HD will be able to be displayed on a big screen in full 1080p resolution while the device's 10-inch touchscreen shows a track map and race statistics.

This is the first indication we've seen of an iOS game taking advantage of the iPad 2's ability to render out at a full 1920x1080 HD resolution. On an HDTV, Real Racing 2 HD will run full screen with no black borders and at native 1080p resolution, without scaling.

[ UPDATE: Inspired by this news, we dug deeper and did a little lab work and found that many of the existing iOS games that have supported TV out on earlier devices can be played in full 1080p on the iPad 2 with HDMI or VGA cable -- without an update. See our post on the subject. ]

The game is said to run at a solid 30fps in this mode, and real-time telemetry between the iPad screen and TV will allow for no lag while controlling the game with the iPad.

This announcement is big news, as it effectively paves the way for your iOS device playing the part of a home gaming console in addition to a mobile platform. While not quite as powerful as the current crop of gaming consoles, and iPad 2 is capable of some impressive visuals, and the appeal of being able to play the same games on my living room TV that I play while I’m out and about is huge.

Firemint is vague on a timeframe for this feature's arrival, only saying that it will come in the next major update. Real Racing 2 HD is already on of the best games for showing off the power of an iPad 2, and once this update is released you’ll be able to show it off in your living room in full 1080p.

As readers are by now aware, the iPad 2 launched last week, bringing with it a powerful dual-core CPU and a dramatically more capable graphics subsystem. And, aside from pushing more polygons and tossing more texels, the GPU in the A5 at the heart of the iPad 2 is capable of mirroring its screen to an external display via the Apple Digital AV Adapter, which provides HDMI-out.

To give a folks a look at this feature in action, I've put together a video of the iPad 2 running through a number of games and apps, with video mirrored to a 50-inch plasma HDTV.

(Note that we can't be responsible for any rifts in space-time caused by watching this video on an iPad 2 outputting to an external HDTV.)

UPDATE: Lots of readers have been asking what app is shown here or there in the video. Here's the list of apps shown, in order: AirCoaster, Infinity Blade, Bit.Trip Beat HD, X-Plane 9, Centipede Ultra [app link], Pocket Pond HD, Sword of Fargoal Legends, PongVaders, [clip from The Rock (film)], Google Earth, Intellivision, MiniGore HD, Modizer, ActiveGS Apple IIgs emulator running NinjaForce's Mega Demo followed by FTA's Delta Demo.

On Thursday, prior to the launch of the iPad 2, we posted a look at some early numbers from a suite of benchmarks run on a pre-launch iPad 2 media unit. These included a custom benchmark written by Guy English to gauge the graphics performance of an iOS device, which showed Apple's new tablet to boast a dramatically improved fill-rate as compared to the original iPad.

For example, on my original iPad, with 200 on-screen sprites, the framerate dropped to 45 fps. On the iPad 2, with 400 on-screen sprites, the framerate remained at 65 fps. On the iPad 1, Guy’s demo app dropped below 60 fps with about 100 animated sprites; on the iPad 2, it didn’t drop below 60 fps until there were over 750 animated sprites.

Since then, we've seen the iPad 2 land in stores and additional performance reports start to surface, now that folks can get their hands on one. One such report was posted by AnandTech who has put the iPad 2's graphics processor through its paces using GLBenchmark 2.0, an application written to gauge OpenGL ES 2.0 performance. They are also indicating that Apple's new A5 system-on-a-chip contains a dual-core configuration of Imagination Technologies' graphics processor, the PowerVR SGX543MP2, which comes as no surprise.

Architecturally the 543MP2 has more than twice the compute horsepower of the SGX 535 used in Apple's A4. Each shader pipeline can execute twice the number of instructions per clock as the SGX 535, and then there are four times as many pipes in an SGX 543MP2 as there are in a 535.

The full report of the benchmark results can be seen over at AnandTech, but I've compiled the key numbers for quick review, below.

As you can see by the results, the iPad 2 markedly outperforms both the original iPad as well as Motorola's new Android-based Xoom tablet with its Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset. GLBenchmark shows it moving nearly 5x the number of triangles per second as the iPad and fetching textures nearly 7x faster than the Xoom. Truly impressive results.

Coinciding with the launch of the iPad 2, we've seen a number of developers release updates to their titles that take advantage of the new device's muscle. (And, most every existing title is benefitting from the extra horsepower as well, we're seeing.) But, really, it's going to take some time before we see the power of the iPad 2's A5 truly exploited, as developers have a chance to really test the limits of the new hardware and craft titles that are dramatically more complex than anything we've yet seen in the App Store.

And, of course, we'll keep you posted.

On a gloomy and rainy day in Boston, I stood around with hundreds of other people to secure myself an iPad 2. It had potential to be miserable, but thankfully Apple provided some really awesome umbrellas in addition to the normal array of beverages and snacks they usually give to people standing in launch day lines. There have been a number of review on the device already, so I'll just focus on how the device works in games. (Although, I will say you must get a smart cover, they're awesome.)

Unsurprisingly, everything I've tried seems to run substantially better across the board. Games that previously chugged on the iPad now run at or near a solid 60 FPS. In fact, I've yet to play a single iPad game on my iPad 2 that didn't perform phenomenally. It's fantastic, as over the last year of talking to developers I've heard many tales of woe regarding the poor graphical performance of the original iPad.

If you just got an iPad 2 and are looking to stretch its legs, the device launched with four games that have been "optimized" for the device. Only one of them is even a new game, the rest of them all had free updates land today to beef up the graphics (and the file size, unfortunately) for the iPad 2.

Real Racing 2 HD, $9.99 - There's not a whole lot to say about this game that we haven't already other than it runs on the iPad and looks fantastic on the iPad 2. We loved the iPhone version in our review, and RR2 HD almost feels even more immersive because of the increase of screen size. One thing though, with the bigger screen, just how flat the cockpits of the cars look is much more noticeable. I'd love to see some bump mapping or other depth given to them, as once you notice it, it's kind of hard to un-see. Obviously, it runs much better on the iPad 2 than the original iPad as well.

Dead Space for iPad, $6.99 - We reviewed this game when it was first released and liked it then, and now it's even better with some heavy anti-aliasing. Check out the crisp border of the sign in the above screenshot, on the original iPad that's jaggy as all get-out. This new iPad 2 version of the game looks good enough that it's worth re-playing the whole game over again just to see it.

Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD, $6.99 - This is the most underwhelming of all the "optimized" games. It runs great on the device, and the draw distance is crazy, but after playing Dead Space or Real Racing 2 HD, the lack of anti-aliasing really sticks out. Also, while the draw distance is far enough out to completely eliminate pop-in, power-ups and other cars still seem to pop-in even though the scenery doesn't. It's a good effort I suppose, but if you're only going to pick up one of these iPad 2 games, don't let it be this one unless you're just crazy about Burnout-style games.

Infinity Blade, $5.99 - As we said in our initial review, "It doesn't get much more 'must-have' than this." That goes double if you've got an iPad 2. This gesture-based sword-fighter looks nuts. So nuts I posted a completely separate comparison post between the iPad and iPad 2. Infinity Blade is such an impressive display of what the iPad 2 is capable of that it should have come preloaded on the device.

These four launch day games are very impressive, and I doubt I'm alone when I say that I can't wait to see what developers come up with on this substantially faster device.

After spending hours in line today, I managed to get my greasy sausage fingers on a brand new iPad 2. I'll be doing a first impressions post shortly, but the insane differences between Infinity Blade [$5.99] running on the original iPad when compared to the iPad 2 seemed too substantial to not immediately write about. Some things to look for in these screen shots include how smooth the edges are on the iPad 2, as well as how high resolution the textures are in comparison. We have this kind of image quality, while everything runs at a much higher frame rate.

The best way to view these comparisons is to click on one to load up the light box image viewer, then click through the screenshots one by one, going back and forth to compare them. The differences are obvious.

iPad 2 on left, iPad on right:

If this is what the iPad 2 can do with existing games that got a quick update to take advantage of the new horsepower, I can't wait to see what games are going to look like that are built from the ground up for the device.