As always, that seems a little silly to me. If you’re using hardware that isn’t OpenGL 3.0+ compliant in 2014, you’re going to run into problems really quickly using any 3D package that are bigger than “the viewport doesn’t look good enough”.
The new starts from OGL 3.3+ That removes some vertex things and begin / end.
if the upgrade makes openES/android viable, then I think removing support for older devices are worth it, when a modern tablet has as much resources… the mobile market would open a huge segment of the world…
(powering up a phone is much easier then powering a pc)
I can’t wait to see the viewport project fork merged, and then see the BGE get a boost from it,
also, do they have render draw call batching in the viewport?
I wouldn’t get too attached to the BGE. Chances are it will become less of its own entity in the near future and become more of an enhanced viewport. I don’t think any devs have interest in doing anything serious in terms of upgrades in the future.
Also, OpenGL ES is a standard. It doesn’t mean Blender or the Blender Player will magically work on mobile devices. That would take much more work than just recompiling for ARM, that I’m not sure is (or should be) a high priority for a content creation platform. Being able to play around with a 3D model on a phone or tablet would be cool. You’d have a long argument ahead of you to convince most serious artists that it’d be useful though.
You’ll have a hard time convincing him that the BGE will be recycled into a less game-centric ‘interaction mode’, as he eats, sleeps, and breathes BGE (considering how he brings it up in every thread that talks about the viewport, Blender physics, and real-time technology).