New AGEIA physics processor demo videos

[SlamDunk]

Here's two new demo videos of the AGEIA physX PPU in action:

Airtight Games (http://www.airtightgames.com/currentproject.html)

The new ones are Video 2 "Metal Bending" and Video 3 "Fluid Simulation". Quicktime versions are of the highest quality but WMVs are almost identical despite their much smaller file size.

The site gets easily hammered so here's a GamersHell (http://www.gamershell.com) mirror for all the 3 videos in WMV format:

Fluid Simulation (http://www.gamershell.com/download_10094.shtml)
Metal Bending (http://www.gamershell.com/download_10093.shtml)
Large Scale Destruction (http://www.gamershell.com/download_10092.shtml) (released during E3 2005)

I think we are now starting to get a hint of what the first generation of physX chip can do for PC games :)

[bapenguin]

This shit needs to be integrated onto graphics cards. Here that NVidia or ATI. Pony up the pocket book and buy this bitch.

[Klade]

Heh yeah cause graphics cards need to be running hotter and with more power.

If they can do it on a single chip that runs cool then I say yes, otherwise (and I'm pretty sure this is so), they need to run it on its own board or specifically integrated into the mobo. They need to get some developers lined up to use the thing and then they need to start selling it at reasonable prices, say around 80$ for the first generation. That price combined with a few games to play it on will get quite a few converts.

[kokyunage]

Or motherboard makers need to integrate into their designs. Yes, you wouldn’t be able to upgrade it, but you would probably save money. There is more competition in the motherboard field than the video card field. The top end mobo’s are usually about 75-100 dollars more expensive than the cheaper mobo’s. Video cards can be 200-400 dollars more expensive than the lower tier stuff.

[Pnikosis]

It's awesome.. I hope it'll be selling at a reasonable price. It's a pity that the next gen consoles don't have one of these, there should be a nice place for introducing the PPU.

[Roc Ingersol]

Multi-core processors are going to kill this.
It's a great idea for an add-on card for the same reason it's the obvious first choice to offload to a second core. One of these two will be in more systems 3 years from now.

I don't think physics cards are going to get a second generation.

[Jams]

Multi-core processors are going to kill this.
It's a great idea for an add-on card for the same reason it's the obvious first choice to offload to a second core. One of these two will be in more systems 3 years from now.

I don't think physics cards are going to get a second generation.

I don't know, I think you might by hugely underestimating the amount of power and dedicated hardware is needed for this sort of crazy level of detail in physics. It is an absolutely huge off-load from the CPU too with this kind of detail, if you tried doing this on your average CPU it would kill it, hell even on the X2's you'd be in slideshow city I would imagine.

But of course I suppose what we'll have to see what type of CPU's we'll get next time around. If they do scrap them they better do some decent compatability software for the games that need the chip.

[SlamDunk]

Multi-core processors are going to kill this.Well, according to Andy Keane of AGEIA, that's not going to happen:

Techgage Interview page 2 (http://techgage.com/review.php?id=2038&page=2)


Techgage: Due to current limitations of even the highest end CPU's, they cannot handle the extreme physics in the demos you've showcased. With the introduction of Dual Core CPU's, is there now less of a need for PPU?

Andy Keane: No. In fact, there is a great benefit to pairing Dual Core CPUs with a PhysX processor. Even if you use the full bandwidth of the Dual Core processors, games can only display about 1,000 rigid bodies. The PhysX processor will handle up to 32,000.
I'm interested to see how this PPU vs. MCPU thing is going to unfold in the future...

[megatron666]

Multi-core processors are going to kill this.
It's a great idea for an add-on card for the same reason it's the obvious first choice to offload to a second core. One of these two will be in more systems 3 years from now.

I don't think physics cards are going to get a second generation.

I think you're wrong. Processors, even multi-core ones, are general purpose CPU's. This card is made specifically for physics calculations.

It's like saying, "Why have a video card when I have a couple of multi-core processors in my PC?" Because the video card is going to be optimized for graphics calculations. You won't see the same performance from general purpose processors.

[bapenguin]

It's awesome.. I hope it'll be selling at a reasonable price. It's a pity that the next gen consoles don't have one of these, there should be a nice place for introducing the PPU.

$249-299 is the "reasonable" price they are looking to bring it to the market at.

[Paltry]

do you think we'll see an ai card once ai in games reaches a level of realism comparable to this?

[TheKeck]

do you think we'll see an ai card once ai in games reaches a level of realism comparable to this?

Interesting idea. I don't know too much about this except that Battlefield 1942 had that slider to select how much CPU time was devoted to AI. (And since the Battlefield AI sucked ***, I'm sure games with good AI use up a lot of CPU time too.)

[dojoteef]

Well let's see, considering the Sony PS3 is going to have the PhysX chip on it I see physics chips are here to stay.

[abso]

I doubt physics chips will leave the market any time soon. For one, multi-core cpu's are not the easiest bunch to develop for. You have to deal with shared cache for one, so you always need to know what core is expecting to have what where. With a separate card, you don't have to worry about any of that. Just make the necessary API calls and let the drivers do the rest. Plus, the card will be heavilly optimized for physics calculations IN HARDWARE (read fast). While you could do the same stuff on a general CPU, the hardware is not setup to run in an optimized way. It is essentially the difference between running a game in software rendering mode and through hardware, aka slide show vs real-time.

[PIPBoy3000]

I think that consoles are probably the best place to install early versions of the chip since developers can guarantee that all users will have it onboard.

I'm guessing that the next place you'll see them is for high-end PCs paired with custom software for physics simulations (duh) and more importantly movie making. Eventually you'll also see PC developers using "eye candy" physics. Simplistic physics is done on the processor. If the physics card is present, the effects will be more visually appealing but won't significantly impact gameplay.

Basically I think we need a "DirectX" of physics - something that can simulate physics functionality in software if it's not supported in hardware. Odds are you'll see middleware folks supporting it first. Havok will have two versions of fluid simulations - one that is all software and another that is more realistic and takes advantage of dedicated hardware.

Exciting times.

[Pnikosis]

$249-299 is the "reasonable" price they are looking to bring it to the market at.

With this reasonable criteria about reasonable, I find no reason to buy it...

[Paltry]

yea realistic physics are the next step in gaming. The games we play now are staged so to speak. They do not exist in a living dynamic world like ours. True immersion will come when every grain of sand and particle of smoke exists on its own with its own properties. How many years till we see that hmm?

[Worldcrafter]

I'm definitely interested in this technology, but not at the proposed price. I imagine the move to dedicated physics hardware cards will be similar to the move to hardware video. The 3DFX only games were pretty awkward since you had to have a specific card to play them, and then the company went out of business. Anyone remember Extreme Assult? But eventually things became more stabalized in that you could buy any video card, and play any game. I expect early adopters will get the shaft, but will hopefully pave the way for this technology to be used oh a wider scale.

On a side note, I think a hardware AI card would be a great idea. Surely developers are using the same basic technology to drive their AI. If a dedicated piece of hardware could take all that load off of the CPU, and provide an AI API, then we might be able to finally have those advanced AI interactions we've always wanted. Now, if they combined hardware physics and AI on the same card for $250, then we might be talking.

[KNOTE]

Well let's see, considering the Sony PS3 is going to have the PhysX chip on it I see physics chips are here to stay.

That is incorrect. Sony has signed an agreement to lisence their physics engine for PS3 development, not to put a chip in each PS3. Sony is touting the SPEs for physics, so it would not make sense to put an PPU in the playstation.

[PIPBoy3000]

An add-in AI card is an alluring idea, but it's unlikely we'll see something any time soon. The reason is that you probably won't see it soon is that the card's inputs and outputs would likely vary so much for any particular game. The AI for an RPG is completely different than the AI for an RTS or an FPS. Unless everyone's basic game structure was the same, I can't see it working properly.

What you may see going to hardware are more general purpose things like speech recognition engines - fancy ones that figure out your meaning based on the context of the discussion, intonation, and other things. That would be a Holy Grail of not just gaming, but all sorts of applications.

Interesting note that the PS3 is only licensing it for development. I wonder if that means that they're using the software portions, or using the hardware for making rendered movies and the like.

[KarmaGhost]

I was really impressed with the fluid demo, but not so much with the other two.

[Thenetcase]

I'll shell out $300 for one of these if I have to... Definitely.

But I think they should try to make it cheaper... most people can't just throw $300 at gaming stuff every time something new comes out...

-TNC-

[nonchalance]

Interesting note that the PS3 is only licensing it for development. I wonder if that means that they're using the software portions, or using the hardware for making rendered movies and the like.

I'm guessing they're using it to make the SPEs do physics in the same way as the PPU card.

One could infer from this that AGEIA's physX SDK may, in fact, become that 'DirectX of physics' that a previous poster was talking about?

[Zeal]

That made Source look like a joke.

Oh, and Havok is over.

[SlutiCus]

None of the videos looked great, physics wise. This physics engine/algorithym/whatever needs alot more work . Only certain parts of objects acted realistically, while others were just unbendable. Very disappointing - wouldn't even shell out $50 for this!

[dojoteef]

That is incorrect. Sony has signed an agreement to lisence their physics engine for PS3 development, not to put a chip in each PS3. Sony is touting the SPEs for physics, so it would not make sense to put an PPU in the playstation.
Actually that is not incorrect. I was told this by a developer that went to Microsoft Meltdown last week. He spoke with people from Ageia. So for now the PS3 will feature their PhysX chip. Of course nothing is certain until the PS3 is actually released in late 2006/early 2007, but that is the current news as of now.

[Mason]

The fluid one was interesting, but then it hardly looked perfect, and having seen just the one example it's hard to say how flexible the system is. The other movies weren't impressive. Whether that's because they aren't representative of the card's full power or the card isn't far beyond a modern CPU is hard to say.

Regarding an AI card, there's nothing close to a common standard for AI algorithms at this point in time. However, in the long run AI systems will tend to perform common tasks, like visual ray-tracing or neural network models of swarms/societies. But right now it makes a lot more sense for each game to optimize their approach to AI based on the needs of the game. And in a practical sense, PC gaming is completely dead if we need a $1000+ base PC plus expensive audio, video, physics, and AI card. Leave it on the CPU, without physics and AI what the hell else is being executed for a game?

[H.Bogard]

I`m sorry.....but those videos arent anything worth spending $299 on, not remotely.