Demoed at WWDC back in June to show off the power of Apple’s new low-level graphics framework, Metal, Epic Games’ Zen Garden is now available to download on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices running iOS 8 and powered by the Apple-deigned A7 or A8 processor.
Built on the recently-unveiled Unreal Engine 4, the first game engine with built-in support for the Metal API, Zen Garden classes as a technological showcase.
The latest iPhone 6, for example, renders the demo in a whopping 1,440-by-1,080 resolution at a smooth thirty frames per second.
Check it out in the below video.
For those who love to dig into technical details, the demo uses 4x MSAA and renders about 3,500 butterflies using roughly 4,000 draw calls, with falling petals at 5,000 particles (not draw calls).
Just tap to navigate the interactive oasis and interact with the pond life. And don’t forget to swipe back and forth across the entire Sakura tree to marvel at the thousands of cherry blossoms swirling in the air.
You can also graze the pond to summon leagues of fish, rake the sand with your finger to create subtle designs and touch the well to bring throngs of butterflies out of hiding.
I said it before, but it’s worth repeating: the demo requires an A7 or A8-powered devices so unless you have an iPhone 5s, iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display, iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, Epic Zen Garden will simply crash upon launching.
The download comes in at 232 megabytes.
[App Store]