Unity support on embedded systems

Set top boxes with Internet Browser (IE hybrid, Opera, or some other non standard browsers) want to have their TV viewers to be able to play Unity games on their TV sets. The set top boxes run on Linux system. The question is, "can Unity support this?"

If not, does Unity plan to support it? What more information does Unity need to know to support it? Imagine the convenience of sitting in front of your TV set and play Networked Unity games with your remote control. I think it is cool.

 

No it can't
There is no Linux support nor is it planned for the near future according the postings in the linux webplayer thread.


Also even if it would run: the performance of the chipsets especially the graphic and its ram on those setup boxes is not even sufficient to start the engine.

 

As far as I know, this company's settop boxes are using expensive fast CPU chip, with 2G RAM, their settop box can output Real HD videos to HD TV sets. They can plug in portable hard disk, have RJ45 network plug. They can already browse internet with their settop boxes. I have seen it, its power is comparable with network notebook.
Unity can run on Windows and Mac platforms, why can't it run on Linux? This shouldn't be that hard.
My guess......

 

Outputing video does not guarantee it has:
1. A real gpu (chances are kind of higher that it has 1+ video decoder chips and handles the whole graphical output on the cpu. Ram is only there for stutter free streaming, decompression etc).

2. nor does it likely have a standard linux distribution, which would be a requirement. Otherwise it wouldn't run their either. I kind of doubt that this is the case.


If it wouldn't be hard to support Linux its there.
But the effort to port and support it is too large for the expectable benefit of it, at least at the time.

 

I am not an expert on embedded system, so here is purely my speculation: most of the set top boxes using embedded linux OS, it is popular and it is powerful. And the potential market for playing networked games on TV is huge. So it does worth the efforts to develop Unity for embedded Linux (Probably not worth to develop for PC Linux though). As for the GPU, do you mean independent video card? or is it part of the CPU? My shabby laptop doesn't have an independent video card and I can run Unity games without problems, the experience is fair. Unity is great for small games, and small games running on embedded system seems perfectly logical to me. All you need is a killer app that for TV dwellers.

 

independent

one thats part of the gpu is totally worthless and one thats onboard will likely be ultra low power like something worse or equal to an intel and also be insufficient.


The main restriction of such embedded linux is that they commonly don't allow you to install or lack major libraries that are not required for their usage and stuff like that.

worked with different linux routers and alike and they are really very different from what you have on a pc.

also the amount of setup boxes and the market there is totally nonexistant compared to regular linux so if regular linux is no topic, setup boxes by far are no topic unless a manufacturer of such boxes likely is going to drive that by working out a deal with UT I would guess

 

So seems like the company either have to work out a deal directly with UT or go find another Unity like product that supports embedded Linux.

 

which means none as nobody invests tens of thousands into developing a solution thats going to be used by a few hundred users.

the only way for it to work out is if it comes preinstalled or at least very closely bound to it with a dedicated page with players opted for the platform (as most won't run on it anyway).

 

Preinstalled, yes. That's exactly what this company is thinking. They can have the Unity web player and the games all preinstalled. That's no problem to them, and even the only option to them. Because their users are home TV viewers. They have already an user base of 100,000 nation-wide. So it is not a few hundreds ppl. Their user base are still growing fast. Do you think UT are interested in working with this company to develop an embedded version of Unity3D webplayer?