Ageia Physx Card Interview

[falcon]

GamingNexus is running an interview (http://www.gamingnexus.com/Default.aspx?Section=Article&I=1146) with Ageia VP of Marketing Michael Steele
GamingNexus: The initial reviews of your cards were a little lackluster. Do you think it's because there aren't many games that really take advantage of the hardware yet?

Michael Steele: It is very early on and this is a brand new hardware category. Just as with new consoles, you see a few titles early on but many more in development, and with more time and experience developing to the hardware – plus in our case improved drivers and SDK features – you will see more games that start to take fuller advantage of the potential of the PhysX processor. That being said, the benefits of PhysX hardware in games like Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (where the direction and force of debris effects allow players to sense where attacks are coming from) or City of Villains (where bonus points come from greater destruction) are clear.It's a little overly "PR'ish" but there is some good information.

[Klade]

Sounds like they are really relying pretty heavy on the Unreal 3 engine making people want to buy their stupidly expensive product. I read this to mean they will not lower prices until several months after UT2k7 at the earliest. Personally I haven't seen anything from aegia or the devs that sign on to indicate that a) they couldn't accomplish the same level of physics without the card or b) what they do add in is a useless mechanic that could be done without.

[Qoz]

Everyone in the industry now sees hardware physics as something that will be necessary for PC gaming.
It's true, but then again it's not true.
It depends on how you read it I guess.
That guy is a PR genius. I want one right now!

Regarding AGEIA performance right now, we should be aware of how the first generation of acceleration hardware did in the past. We had S3VIRGE-3D that actually slowed things down. 3Dfx had only Quake and Tombraider for a looong time. Now AGEIA has Cellfactor and some other un-important games.

The real battle right now is getting the developers to use the SDK and incorporate acceleration in the games. AGEIA are loosing money right now, which is planned for sure. It's all an investment to set the groundwork for the next chip. They will survive if they get the developers along and if the 2nd generation of hardware actually do some acceleration.

[Ph00p]

Wow an interview with a physics card! I'm suprised it said anything at all! lol@poorly worded title.

[NeoSuplex]

I'm not seeing this taking off if NVid and ATI can get their SLI/Crossfire Physics Acceleating up and running soon. Having 2 Vid Cards is an advantage even for games that don't utilize an extra physics card, so why get a pure PPU?

Can anyone enlighten me to the advantage of using this instead of an SLI version?

[kid cabelgo]

This is from Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com), which I think is a really great source for PC tech info.

Kenny Erleben, assistant professor at the Datalogical Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, is working on physics-based animation and simulation modeling. He says that from a researcher's theoretical viewpoint, and from what he's heard so far, the PhysX card doesn't look promising, for two main reasons. First, the physics algorithms are locked into the hardware, which prevents programmers from changing the algorithms if they find better ones. Second, as we mentioned earlier, the factors that influence physics cannot be simplified into an equation in a satisfying way. This basically means that you're stuck with what you have and cannot go forward.

Here's (http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/08/03/the_scientists_opinions_on_gaming_physics/index.html) the article that talks about it.