Poll

Will Ageia's PhysX be the next big thing for games

Yes54%54% - 47
No33%33% - 29
What?12%12% - 11
Total: 87
daffytag
cheese-it!
+104|6872
Basically its a new physics processor. It allows some crazy things, like lots and lots of objects can collide and be manipulated.

If you check out the video of a game called Cellfactor you will instanlty know what Im on about.
Cybargs
Moderated
+2,285|7013
maybe. i might be getting a physX card, coz i like physics in game to be realistic
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Nagarond.Damminson
Member
+16|7054
hardware is one thing, but it all depends on how many games start writing games to take advantage of it. Same thing as 64bit... need more 64bit games to take advantage of it.
PuckMercury
6 x 9 = 42
+298|6824|Portland, OR USA
I think it will definately improve the realism and general feel of the gaming universe you are playing in, but I wouldn't say the next big thing.  I'd reserve that claim for a more intuitive/immersive I/O system.  I guess it really depends on how you define "next big thing" and what your expectations are.
Janus67
Tech God
+86|6892|Ohio, USA
if it does take off then maybe.  but as of right now I don't see any reason to spend $300 to see more particles fly into the air.
Cybargs
Moderated
+2,285|7013

Janus67 wrote:

if it does take off then maybe.  but as of right now I don't see any reason to spend $300 to see more particles fly into the air.
ppl are already willing to pay 1000 bucks for FX series cpus but the physX cards look pretty neat IMHO
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aardfrith
Δ > x > ¥
+145|7090
What interface does the card have - PCI or PCI-E?  If the latter, I can't see many people using it.
Janus67
Tech God
+86|6892|Ohio, USA
I believe it uses PCI
max
Vela Incident
+1,652|6865|NYC / Hamburg

Janus67 wrote:

I believe it uses PCI
it does.

also the more particles is more myth than fact. i looked at a series of screenshots and videos made in GRAW and frankly couldnt really tell the difference. You also get a slight drop in framerates.

I think that if the games support it and it uses a faster bus, it just might be sucessful (especially since it theoretically can do physics much faster than a cpu and is probabely cheaper than a solution from ATi or nVidia). But for now its just a waste of money.
once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of ' hot  xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, " give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404.
Cybargs
Moderated
+2,285|7013
well as for the particles... the car explosion effects are more realistic and theres little chunks of debris, and thats just about it
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Stalker-NSDQ
SOUL * REAPER
+24|6852|Germany
Well if you just take GHOST RECON ADVANCED WARFIGHTER as an example. Comparing the game with and without a AGEIA PHYSX card. I mean me personally I'm still going to wait. In GRAW it didn't really made that much of a difference, just a couple of more particles during explosions, that's it. All the other things in the environment still bursted apart, like a flower pot i.e.! To make me buy an PHYSX card, the game must make a very very big difference with such a card.
max
Vela Incident
+1,652|6865|NYC / Hamburg

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

well as for the particles... the car explosion effects are more realistic and theres little chunks of debris, and thats just about it
but you usually get them too with CPU-physics

take a look at the ss here

Last edited by max (2006-06-20 08:32:38)

once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of ' hot  xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, " give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404.
Cybargs
Moderated
+2,285|7013

max wrote:

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

well as for the particles... the car explosion effects are more realistic and theres little chunks of debris, and thats just about it
but you usually get them too with CPU-physics

take a look at the ss here
yes well... physX is just sumthing not taken advantage of yet, but we will see in the future
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-r3-anubis
Member
+73|6834|florida
It is a rip off, the price that it. $300 for a pci card. Very strange.
uber73
Member
+188|7049|Brisbane
i heard that in 2006, around 20 games will be released with it..

but that could be very true, total shit, or highly misleading.  but at ~£200 for it, ill not be rushing out to buy one just yet.
Scorpion0x17
can detect anyone's visible post count...
+691|7063|Cambridge (UK)
yes.

Yes.

YEs.

YES.

YES!

YES! YES!

Why so adamantly put? It's not in the nature of what can be done with the PhysX chip, more in the degree to which it can be done - think about the degree of difference in graphics quality there was moving from old software-rendered graphics (Doom I & II) to even the first hardware accelerated graphics - it wasn't so much what techniques could be applied as how many of those techniques could be applied to a single frame - and so we quickly moved from very flat single textured simple rough low-poly models to multi-layered texturing, pixel shaders, vertex shaders, automatic lighting, high poly, draw droppingly gorgeous graphics.

And so it will be the same physics processors and the current PhysX chip is a much larger leap from what can currently be done in software than we saw in graphics with the first generation of 3d accelerators. The numbers of 'scene elements' that be given complex active physics behaviour has just gone up by a phenomonal amount! Rather just a few players, vehicles, objects and the odd bit of breakble scenery having physics properties, everything will - you will be able to have truly destructive scenery for example. And the list goes on - anything you can only currently do with roughly emulated cg effect, you will be able to model as true physical simulation.

Physics cards will change gaming in so many ways that are easy to see but will also change it so many ways that we can barely imagine. They will free up a huge amount of CPU resources to be used for other game processes - such as the core game logic and artificial intelligence.
SniperF0x
Member
+49|6822
This is just another rich mans toy.
And this is another reason why i hate commercialism.
Cybargs
Moderated
+2,285|7013
if all games have real physics that would be awsome, first physx cards were just supposed to take load off cpu, for example, garry's mod in half-life 2. add 200 water melons, and throw a grenade at them... u get uber lag. but when a physx card is inserterd it shouldnt be lag since the card will take load of cpu

sum1 gave me neg1 karma for my mommy doesn't like ur sig cuz it has a semi naked woman on it. READ THE RULES OF FORUM. and a mod make my sig, go contact alpha.
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twood375
Member
+16|6945|Washington, D.C.
A physics card sounds like a good idea, as it seems like it would help out the cpu as cyborg said. Only thing is this PhysX card doesnt look like its working correctly. In a few years I'm sure that we'll be seeing some more destructible environments and real-time physics such as the HAVOC engine in Half-Life 2
TheEternalPessimist
Wibble
+412|6917|Mhz

aegia physx? no physics accellerators yes... they'll b built on your graphics cards within a year, nvidia and i think maybe ati are working on ways to use your redundant graphics cards function as physics accellerators too so when you do buy a newer card ur not left with a peice of tat lying around your home, you can actually just move it to another slot and put it to some use

*apollogies if sum1 said this alreay im too tired from work to read all the posts*

Last edited by TheEternalPessimist (2006-06-20 09:40:18)

Scorpion0x17
can detect anyone's visible post count...
+691|7063|Cambridge (UK)

TheEternalPessimist wrote:

aegia physx? no physics accellerators yes... they'll b built on your graphics cards within a year, nvidia and i think maybe ati are working on ways to use your redundant graphics cards function as physics accellerators too so when you do buy a newer card ur not left with a peice of tat lying around your home, you can actually just move it to another slot and put it to some use

*apollogies if sum1 said this alreay im too tired from work to read all the posts*
I think it more likely that the developments going into using GPUs as hardware physics processes will simply be more of a stop-gap than anything else - they and the physics middleware developers have got to do something in response to aegia - but I highly doubt we'll see the ability to use redundant graphics cards as physics processors - they'd much rather sell you yet another piece of hardware.
Cybargs
Moderated
+2,285|7013
gpus calculating physics is pretty expensive... u have to get SLI, if u have a high end rig then its 600 dollar for vga card, another 600 for physics, ill stick w/ 300 bucks for Physx
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=OBS= EstebanRey
Member
+256|6848|Oxford, England, UK, EU, Earth

Scorpion0x17 wrote:

Rather just a few players, vehicles, objects and the odd bit of breakble scenery having physics properties, everything will - you will be able to have truly destructive scenery for example.
Yeah but how could that be implemented in a game like BF2?  There are already glitches with an indestructable environmennt, imagine how many they'd be if you could destroy everything?  Gameplay would suffer because someone would find a certain piece of wall that if you hit it with a certain weapon it would break and cause some kind of glitch.  They's have to test the destruction of every element in the game and I can't see EA/Dice doing that... 

BF2 with realistic damage to the static elements would be unplayable (fly a jet into the TV station and that flag's gone for a start)
rustynutz
I am British!
+124|6980|England and damn proud

Stalker-NSDQ wrote:

Well if you just take GHOST RECON ADVANCED WARFIGHTER as an example. Comparing the game with and without a AGEIA PHYSX card. I mean me personally I'm still going to wait. In GRAW it didn't really made that much of a difference, just a couple of more particles during explosions, that's it. All the other things in the environment still bursted apart, like a flower pot i.e.! To make me buy an PHYSX card, the game must make a very very big difference with such a card.
HOLY SHIT DUDE YOUR SIG IS THE BEST I THINK I HAVE EVER SEEN
Nabraham
EWWW!!! Thats Nasty!!!
+18|6981|Enon
I doubht it will be the next big thing. Especially with Nvidia and ATI saying that you can put one of there weaker cards into a PCI slot to do the same thing. $300 is just to much, espeically since GRAW is the only thing using it right now.

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