Next Gen PC games based on PPU?

[jakarta]

Ageia recently announced the creation of a "physics accelerator" chip for PC that could be used to offload the processing of the advanced environmental and object interactions. The chip, named the PhysX, is designed to perform the same role that a typical GPU performs for accelerating pixel rendering. Of course, the PhysX won't perform elementary graphics processing, but will accelerate functions like particle systems, fluid-body dynamics, life-like human motion, water and liquid environment physics, and lots of other dazzling eye candy that gamers could only dream of.

The purpose of the chip is to basically perform all the advanced physics processing required to make models more life-like, and for that Ageia is to be applauded. Today's games have yet to even saturate the bandwidth of the AGP bus. Ageia has developed a software engine it calls Novodex to take advantage of PhysX's abilities to address this issue. Nevertheless, I look forward to Ageia's product demonstrations to come ... perhaps this could be the market catalyst that game developers need to produce new visually revolutionary games. Ageia is hoping to have something out before Christmas, and is even working with a number of popular gaming corporations to produce 5-15 games specifically designed to use the new chip. We have seen previews of the next-gen Live for a while now, but AFAIR thats for Xbox360. Maybe in the near future, PC gamers like us will also be able to enjoy NG Live series with realtime cloth, hair and fluid animation. But, the question is whether or not EA will adopt this new chip for it's next gen PC games.

For more info go to : http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/08 ... 19896.html

[The Other Kevin]

I don't know if they will, cost's too much for all parties involved.

Welcome to the forums, fantastic first post. Enjoy your stay.

[Steve [The Spiderman]]

Sorry, but I am a little bit confused. For example, would this be in place of an Ati or Nvidia GPU, or would this be alongside it?

(Nevermind...I read the article and it explained it. Great stuff btw!)

[hipn]

Daammmm i didnt get anything except that the chip can make things look almost real.

[jakarta]

Tx, i've been lurking the forums for a long time, but didn't notice the need to post anything until a time when I got fed up with the lack of efforts that EA made in pumping pc gfx muscle for Live'06!

Hopefully, along with CPU, GPU and APU we will achieve better simulation and richer visuals from a PPU, but again that's entirely depends on those business-oriented PC game developers. BFG, a PC video card maker, will release the first PPU card in the market by the end of 2005. And the card itself is targeted for $249-$299 range.

Sorry for non-basketball related, but here is a sample game that uses PhysX http://www.ageia.com/press/Eye%20on%20S ... 80.wmv.avi

[hipn]

damm thats smooth...