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PhysX PPU Announced
by Maarten Goldstein, Mar 08, 2005 5:04am PSTFabless semiconductor company Ageia has announced their plans to release PhysX, a dedicated physics processor designed to co-exist with existing GPU and CPU chips. With PhysX, games can go from having a few dozen physics objects to 30,000 to 40,000 of them. Gamers Depot talks why and how with Ageia CEO Manju Hegde and COO Curtis Davis and on GameSpot you can find a Q&A with Tim Sweeney, as Epic will be supporting the PhysX PPU.
GS: Can you give examples of how a game might be able to increase realism with the help of a PPU? TS: When people talk about physics in recent games, they mostly think of Unreal Tournament 2004's vehicles or Half Life 2's dynamic objects. There, you have tens or perhaps 100 big objects interacting physically in an otherwise static environment. Knocking chairs and tables around is fun, but that's hardly the apex of physics simulation! The next steps are realistic dynamic environments, fluid simulation, large-scale particle simulation, and other very large-scale physical phenomenon. If you look at a modern action or sci-fi movie, and what's possible with the non-realtime computer graphics effects there, it's clear that major new physics innovations will be introduced into gaming as hardware performance increases 10X, 100X, and more.Ageia is still working out deals with add-in board partners, but hopes to have various PPU solutions out this Christmas.
Comments
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In consumer space, at least. I could see flight simulator companies (the really big ones that move when you crash) implementing something like this, and probably the army or something, but no-one will pay anything more than $100 for a dedicated physics chip.
Possibly the two CPU makers may implement some specially designed hardware on their chips, but I really don't see this succeed as an add-in board.
Just my 0.02 ISK.
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this really excites me for a number of reasons...
finally, we'll move beyond rag doll physics. every game has them now, and they're tired imho. it is a standard that has made its way across all new games and now every single game should have it.
i would like to see waterfalls and other bodies of water that have different splashing effects and weather effects (such as typhoons, hurricanes, tsunami, etc) and as for weather effects it would be cool if it were snowing or raining and it seemed more realistic (whatever that means :P) maybe even earthquakes or tornados.
i would like to see better damage effects like blowing holes through walls, exploding cars, gas stations, even completely tearing down a house...
I would think that this would be more popular amongst next generation consoles more then PC's but at the same time all popular mainboards really should integrate this (im talking about the main motherboards that are used for gaming, all new nforce boards, all of the top-of-the-line boards really should have this)
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Reality Engine Integrates NovodeX Physics (from Feb 22nd)
http://www.artificialstudios.com/news.php
Ubisoft And AGEIA Join Forces To Re-Ignite Game Innovation
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050308/sftu106_1.html
AGEIA To Redefine Realism With Hardware-Accelerated Physics
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050308/sftu104_1.html
Looking good so far :)
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I'm skeptical. I see this flopping. if it was really a worthwhile adventure, the academic physics community would use things like it all the time instead of supercomputers, workstations, and clusters. and, well, they don't.
crypto and things like chess-playing machines, on the other hand, have benefitted greatly from specialized hardware.
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I'm thinking since it won't need as much memory as a graphics card (since it won't be dealing with those hefty textures) low memory is probably sufficient (32mb for caching should be more than sufficient).
my official guess? $50-$100
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I for one hope it takes off, but I see the above problems as reason for slower market acceptance then GPU's
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Also, show this integrated into HL2 or UT2004 and show people having a firefight that shows them blowing up the place Red Faction style, only to the 10th power and have buildings coming down around them, or an AT-ST shooting up Ewoks and have trees getting smashed by lasers and tumbling over or something.
They need to show something with some real wow factor or else this is going to be a long, hard sell.
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I guess the 3dfx Voodoo managed to take off simply as a gaming board, so this at least has a shot. The price will determine if it lives or dies. I'd pay $100 or so for this functionality, but more than that won't be justified until the physics are fully integrated into the gameplay.
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ps: putting the physics processor on the graphics card is silly. Modularity amongst components is almost always better.
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from one of their interviews. so really, this could be on fall ati and nvidia graphics cards if they can work out deals. would be neat to see that happen.
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Yes everytime I talk about physics I talk about UT2k4's vehicles..... ooohhh waaait no... I .... don't...
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I'm not sure about having all these seperate cards though. I Would think it would be better if you just had a "gaming card" or something that had a chip for graphics, physics, ai etc.
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I still think its a great idea, its just going to have to be paired with something else in order to take off.
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The only real problem I see is with standards. Just like how 3DFX used it's own "mini-GL", if this card supports a proprietary physics engine it's usefulness will be limited. That's why I think we need a "DirectPhyisics" so that we have a standard for all software and hardware companies to support. That means competition on the hardware side, and that's good, plus a standard for software publishers to use, which is great. Until then, I'm afraid you'll shell out $200 (or whatever) for this card and only have Unreal to play with for a long time.
We have dedicated sound processors, dedicated 3-D processors, why not dedicated physics processors? The idea makes a lot of sense.
Furthermore, offloading physics from the CPU frees up the CPU for AI, networking, etc which further enhances gameplay. With this card not only with the physics get better, but with all the CPU cycles it frees up it'll improve graphics, AI, netcode, and more.
I'm encouraged, and I hope it really takes off!
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we have a graphics accelerator
we have a sound fx accelerator(live, audigy, etc)
we will soon have a physics accelerator
we will soon hear about an AI logic accelerator
In the future what else will we accelerate?
Possibly an atomic accelerator. You use it in conjunction with the PPU, so that when you shoot someone in the head, the "true" physics of a lead projectile hitting human flesh will be rendered onscreen perfectly...blood spray and brain chunks.
Possibly a Touch Accelerator : You hook this up into your computer, and the other connection goes into...YOUR BRAIN!. You can feel in game objects with startling precision.
Possibly a Smell/Taste Accelerator : Ever been in a game and seen a burger and thought to yourself, "Man, I want to eat that"..well now you can!
Put all of these accelerators together and you will get the next big pr0n thing just waiting to happen.
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also the gamespot link no worky :(
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For PC though, it seems like it won't be much more than a gimmick for a long while.
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