aegis physics

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plop!

See the new physics chip is out in the UK - will there be any benefit to
current games or is it a case of waiting to see what games are written to
support this new technology (and what ATI and Nvidia do)?
 
I think that games have to written for it. But it is the NovodeX physics
engine, so maybe it will accelerate current games? Just a case of wait and
see.
 
Nope. Probably not for a couple of years,if at all. Some of the video card
makers are thinking of adding a physics chip the their cards.
 
Well they are out Dell system have them. They cost 249.00 and can be added
to the XPS 600 systems and higher. Been a fast couple of years :) The are
attached to the mother board so are not on the video cards.
 
Maybe you shouldn't be so ignorant and actually research it before you
go bashing it. I was skeptical, but the company puts up good
reasonings and has many partnerships with big manufacturers for big
titles and you can find them all at their site. If you seriously think
that it is a bad idea, i recommend you read this so you can shut your
mouth. http://physx.ageia.com/whitepaper_avanced_gaming_physics.pdf
 
plop! said:
See the new physics chip is out in the UK - will there be any benefit
to current games or is it a case of waiting to see what games are
written to support this new technology (and what ATI and Nvidia do)?
Click to expand...

It seems Microsoft is getting into the act. The "Windows Graphics and
Gaming Technology group is looking for a software design engineer to join a
growing team responsible for developing Direct Physics. This team is
responsible for delivering a great leap forwards in the way game developers
think about integrating Physics into their engines."

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=6b94ac4f-0627-4851-8e6a-633186d96261

However, buried in the text is a reference to GPU based physics
acceleration, so Direct Physics will probably look more like the Havoc SDK
than the Aegis engine. I can't say if that will kill Aegis off but
certainly the game developers will be taking notice of this.
 
Ed Light said:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/ageia-physx.html
Click to expand...

I wasn't criticising the Aegis PPU per se. However, consider these factors:

1. Calculating physics effects requires massive parallelism.

2. GPUs are massively parallel.

3. Nvidia and ATI have lots of experience building massively parallel GPUs.

4. Microsoft's Direct Physics seems to be GPU based.

5. Microsoft has strong ties to Nvidia and ATI.

Where does all that leave a small company like Aegis, especially since their
PPU has its own APIs. Will game developers put the effort into supporting
that as well as the platform independent DirectX/Direct Physics APIs?
 
* DRS:
Where does all that leave a small company like Aegis, especially since their
PPU has its own APIs. Will game developers put the effort into supporting
that as well as the platform independent DirectX/Direct Physics APIs?
Click to expand...

IMHO the Aegis card is just a dead horse. Currently it can do much more
than GPU-based physics engines but there still is very weak support by
current games. Of course there are several announcements about support
for that card but once the standards are set for GPU-based physics
calculations the Aegis card probably will be history.

Benjamin
 
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