Oh my god, you gotta check this out

Pretty cool huh,..anyways they already have this in the other forum. Alienware, Dell and Falcon is already offering thier gaming rig with this physics engine and for the rest it's coming out this May.  

i dont really get it  ... i know games now have a ton of physics and calculations to do, but will this make a big difference? it sounds like it could, but how big are we talking? in oblivion id like to see at least a 25% gain if i were to buy one   seems more of a novelty, cool idea, but may not be as good as i hope... at least not right when its released.

You're probably not going to see any gain in games made before this Fall I'd say. The game has to support it for it to make a difference. Oblivion wasn't written to support a seperate physics chip so unless the chip can get data to crunch without the game knowing about it, then it won't make a difference.

figures, to good to be true   i guess itll be used more with vista... like everything else it seems

It would be nice if it used the PCI-E x1 slots... Actually put it to use!!!

Ok, I will be the first to ask it! "How do i overclock my physX card!?!?"

Now that we got that out of the way.

Within 5 years we are likely to look at 64 - 128 fold (not +25% or so) the number crunching capability for 3D games. With such a device (whichever way they go, personlly wanting to see www.clearpspeed.com do SIMD/MIMD with huge arrays of data myself, off-loaded from CPU with minimal code changes) expect to see the following (within 5 years):

Yes a +6300% to +12700% increase in mathamatical crunching on arrays performance in home PCs within 5 years. No doubt this will not translate into ~infinity   frames per second but instead be used to more realistically similate 'small worlds'. With liquid dynamics effects and the like in games (eg: napalm, fuel air bombs that look realistic with realistic damage), buildings where each brick can fly out, and the ability to demolish entire sky-rise building in games, and see each brick fall as it might in real life.

Fire detectors, and automatic water (or water substitute that doesn't kill PCs) flooding building floors, with accurate liquid dynamics, etc. Liquids mixing with other liquids, or air, some liquids evapourate over time into gases, that players could 'smell' (sniff sniff sound, coughing), and if possible lighting a match near said gas clouds (far more realistic ones than now) could hurt 100's of players / AI.

Even Nuclear, Chemical, Biological effects / simulations could be added, as all these units do is crunch numbers and try to spit out the results 60+ times a second so it can be rendered in front of the player in real-time.

The ability to process physics on multiple (100's) objects per clock cycle in realtime (60fps+), instead of only 3-4 objects per clock cycle now. (and that may be closer to 2-3 clock cycles per object in some games now, as there are 3 dimentions + time instancing to worry about. Frames are a variable length of time.  ).

yea, like i said it sounds like a kick ass idea... but right now it doesnt really seem nesserary  ... maybe in my next system ill pick one up!

If I remember correctly UT2007 is supposed to be the first game to support the new physics processor. Looks very promising cant wait to see the actual benefits.

Yeah, those physics processing cards are the next step into the video game world. In fact, I thought that the Xbox360 had a physics processing unit in it?

I've seen one of these and it is amazing (it increased frame rate by 20% in a rock slide simulation) the one I was looking at did not require a game to be coded for it, the drivers divided up the work game sent out to the CPU, Video Card, and PhysX card.

No, GRAW (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter) is the first game to take advantage of it, as it already does. UT '07 doesn't come out until late this year. Here are a handful of games that are out and soon to come out that support Aegia: City of Villains, GRAW, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, Bet On Soldier (with a patch).

Huh, I never thought of physics being super important and worthy of its own dedicated card and such, but now it seems like a great idea.

I've always thought about how something like this needs to happen, but I was thinking more along the lines of a dedicated AI card for gaming that would make AI characters make their own decisions based on anything and everything. But now there are dual-core processors and the likes, so my idea isn't looking too brilliant anymore.

No, the Xbox360 does not have that specific one in it; the physics processing unit the Xbox360 has is known as a "CPU".  

No, the Xbox360 does not have that specific one in it; the physics processing unit the Xbox360 has is known as a "CPU".  


lol

I was just curious because my friend at school said it had a PPU in it.... (idoit)

Guess I should have looked a little.  

Here is a link to some demo's, current titles and future ones.

http://physx.ageia.com/

[sarcasm]I assume they can use one of their 40 redundant cores for it.[/sarcasm]

those videos are sweet! this thing will probably evolve into something that will be able to create the most realistic world any one has ever rendered. I think it is/will be revolutionary