Cynthetiq

When I was doing my research for gaming machines, I kept finding a $299 Physx Ageia included on the highest end machines.

While not alot of games use it, I do see this in the future of gaming...

side by side difference
http://www.ageia.com/physx_in_action/footage_sbs.html

in game footage
http://www.ageia.com/physx_in_action/footage.html

Can this be the same leap in gaming that sound and 3D accelleration made and are now defacto standards to most if not all games?

I'm quite impressed. Anyone else?

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Frosstbyte

I am also impressed. I have a friend of a friend working for this company, actually, and I wasn't quite sure what to think about a physics processor when I first heard about it. When I think about the amount of physics that goes into a game like Half Life 2 and the amount of realism games stand to gain from having a dedicated processor for this stuff, it seems like it could be the next huge step.

Dilbert1234567

Well from what I’ve heard, AMD (previously ATI), and NVIDIA will be incorporating physics into there video cards soon, I think the physx is just a cool fad.

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Cynthetiq

My point of the post isn't that it's just a fad, but actually you've hit on the right part, it's coming of age. I didn't do any research on this earlier because there just isn't the software out there to play that exploits this chipset. But the idea makes alot of sense the more and more I think about it just like sound cards and 3D video accelerator about 10+ years ago.

Remember the company 3Dfx? They came out with the chipset first if I recall correctly. Where are they now?

Effects Physics & Gameplay Physics Explored

ATI Ageia and nVidia - It's Physics

ATI/Nvidia GPU Physics not as good as Ageia's

While it remains to see who's chipset will dominate the market shortly, in the long run, I think we can expect to see a chipset that does do this specialty processing in some capacity.

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hulk

Most gaming rigs now are coming out with dual- or quad-core processors. Most games now use but one of these; that's plenty of untapped power that could easily handle the PPU load.

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Cynthetiq

4 years later, nvidia snapped up the physx PPU and I've still not seen it widely used.

It still looks incredible in a handful of games like this one.


I have only see this card that made any sense where it is included on the card

Newegg.com - EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

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Cynthetiq

Okay so the new GPU I have has this built in. And I must say, Arkham Asylum is incredibly beautiful and haunting visually. The physics adds a very cool touch.

leaves seem to rustle more realistically, ragdoll is much more natural, the extra polygon count is through the roof!!!!

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Shadowex3

I want to like PhysX, I really do, but I've yet to see it actually put to any SIGNIFICANT use. Where's my game where PhysX mode lets me treat the world like I'm playing Bad Company 2? Where's my clone of Cell Factor with barrels that contain liquids which pour out until the liquid level is equal with the hole? Where's my modern Red Faction?

All I see so far is PhysX being put to admittedly good use for processing vast quantities of pretty but generally nonconsequential shiny.

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Cynthetiq

Shadow what you're talking about isn't about the tech, but about the game developers themselves. I see no reason why it's not been put to good use. It's been 4 years since I posed the OP and so far, I've seen just a handful of games that look worthwhile. GPUs is eye candy what the 3D world is all about shiny anyways.

I hear that BC2 supports it. I'm going get a copy of that once I'm done being Batman.

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Shadowex3

Actually it IS the hardware. You can calculate physx stuff on the GPU but it's basically one way, last I heard they still hadn't worked out a feasible means of throwing data from the GPU back to the CPU for genuinely meaningful interactive physics.

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Cynthetiq

I don't understand what you mean by "meaningful interactive physics?"

From what I understand Physx can run on the CPU, GPU, or PPU. It's development goes beyond the PC and into MacOSX, Wii, PS3, and Xbox.

Again, it would be for the developers to develop multithreading code in order to take advantage of either multiple processor units. It doesn't sound feasible to do since that's not codebase I'd select since it would be or could be the smallest amount of hardware base out there.

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