An email sent by Palm to developers late last week seems to suggest 3D gaming is being readied for the firm's Pixi handset.

Palm, which was recently purchased by PC giant Hewlett-Packard, launched 3D gaming on webOS back in January, although at the time the Pre was the only benefactor.

Now, PreCentral reports that Palm is advising developers to test apps that make use of its Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) – which extends the original SDK with tools to enable 3D programming – against the newly released webOS 1.4.5 beta.

Not so easy 3D

Its sources claim the new version of the OS will bring the PDK to the Pixi for the first time, making 3D gaming on the handset possible.

The PDK will also be available to independent developers, Palm having initially only signed deals with EA, Gameloft, Glu and Laminar Research.

With an official release on Pixi expected in several weeks, it's believed not all 3D games will be available on the handset, with developers having to contend with the Pre's smaller screen resolution.

As such, studios will have to recode any PDK apps that make the leap to Pixi to support its resolution. The Pixi also has different OpenGL support and differences in hardware that might result in some titles running too slow to make them playable.

[source: PreCentral]