Anyone seen this?

Speedway

came across this today,

http://physx.ageia.com/footage.html

looks pretty interesting if pricey at the moment and only supports a few games but nice idea if it's pulled off well. It essentially is a seperate processor which handles the physics in games and allows the cpu and gpu to concentrate on other duties.

look at the ghost recon footage, its pretty cool

awhir

only seen it now ?

overclockers have the card for sale.

some one posted it a while back.

Dooom

Only thing is, that in GRAW the only noticeable effects you'll see are the explosions.
It's the only part of it that the PPU has effect one.
I've no doubts it'll change with other games though, just that this being the first one and all.

The Free Man

check out the cell factor footage on that site, its amazing.

andy1249

So , These graphics are only possible with this special processor , yet I can see them fine here on the PC I have , with a browser open and music in the background to boot !!
Am I missing something here ??

DannyBZR

In time these cards will should make a big difference in the way the physics work in games.....

developers have to code them to this type of set up as far as I know..

Dooom

andy1249 wrote:

So , These graphics are only possible with this special processor , yet I can see them fine here on the PC I have , with a browser open and music in the background to boot !!
Am I missing something here ??

It does pretty much nothing for the graphics. It's a PPU (Physics Processing Unit) - takes the physics load off the CPU to free up more time for other things it could be doing.
Just read the site in the OP, check out the videos, and all will be revealed.

Danny, UT2007 supports this, out in Q4. And GRAW for the Pc is supporting it aswell, which is out in a month.

Tbh, this may seem optimistic, but I'd say this'll be the norm within a year and a half from now.

DannyBZR

Spike wrote:

Tbh, this may seem optimistic, but I'd say this'll be the norm within a year and a half from now.

I think i would have to agree with this, might sound Optimistic but I def think it will come reality sooner then we all think(The Norm)

_CreeD_

It'll be the norm a few years after a standard Physicis API is integrated into a DirectX package. Since physics affect your playable environment and therefore have a noticable impact on gameplay it will be very hard to implement anything more than some client side physics-candy (ie. nothing that is essential to the game as accurate Physics is intended to be) the alternative is to provide a different gaming experience (and the extra design work involved) to those with and without a PPU. And multiplayer? The most popular and longest lasting aspect of the majority of games these days only works because everyone is on a relatively even keel, Video can be turned down to match FPS etc., but there's no way you could have one client with a more physics bound environment than another. If you have money to burn and plan on playing the games that support it sure, but to me it's money wasted at this stage on something that won't be properly taken advantage of for a long time to come.

Sir Random

andy1249 wrote:

So , These graphics are only possible with this special processor , yet I can see them fine here on the PC I have , with a browser open and music in the background to boot !!
Am I missing something here ??

Watching a video of a game scene is completely different to actually rendering the scene in real time.
You could use an old pentium 166 with intel graphics to watch a video of Oblivion being played at 1600x1200 with graphics options on full.