Physics in next gen gaming

[Waelan]

Chemistry is the study of what things in our world are made of. Physics commonly mixed up with the former is the study of the way things work. So what does physics have to do with gaming.

Using technology and physics we are able make simulations of things happening in real life and show them on screen. Without physics you are seeing a rendered picture of what someone drew/animated to look like something. Very simply using physics brings true realism to games. Some examples:

A body of water can have real currents or waves. If you throw in an object the ripples can be calculated.

Weather affects like storms, winds affecting objects on subtle levels like hair blowing on a character or on large scales like tornadoes and hurricanes or strong winds blowing objects over.

More real animations of people and other things in motion and collisions.

All of this and more can be used to show much more realistic things to make you not just play the game but "feel" it. But to what extent will games use this these things and where are we currently with this kind of technology?

[Waelan]

AGEIA is the world leader in physics based technologies. They have recently created a chip named PhysX also known as a PPU (Physics processing unit). This hardware goes inside of your CPU and its purpose is to take all the physics based calculations and do them for the GPU and CPU just like the first graphics cards did with graphics. They also made a complimentary physics library called AGEIA PhysX SDK (also known as NovodeX). NovodeX is a piece of software whose sole purpose is to make it easy for gaming developers to add physics to their games on and bring in the full power of a PPU.

In terms of consoles, the Revolution and Xbox 360 are definetely powerful enough to equip physics into their games and execute them as well as any PC. However, the SPEs inside of the Playstation 3 truly excel at exactly this type of calculation. There is no other PPU than PhysX but AGEIA has claimed the PS3 can perform as well as a PC housing their new chip. Sony has exclusively liscenced out AGEIA and through this is getting a copy of NovodeX adding into playstation software devolopment kits. In addition AGEIA is fine tuning the software to the Cell's specs to provide optimal results. This means anyone making a PS game will have very easy access to top quality physics based affects and a machine that can run them at the very top levels. In return, after people see how well physics affect games the popularity will push people to buy AGEIA's PPUs.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multime...721214043.html
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Sony-...ary-5292.shtml
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-17585-2521-4-7-x

Hope you guys find this interesting :D

[Gorkab]

I've heard about the PPU no so long ago, it was said to be involved in all the new graphics cards to calculate more and more characters at the same time in a scene. More and more charcaters than the new Starship Troopers game who is said to calculate 300 arachnids at the same time ! 8)

[Waelan]

It works with the graphics cards but it is a stand alone completely new type of PC part. It gets its own memory and hooks into your system just like a GPU. There is only one kind of PPU now they are trying to get enough interest to make it a permanent addition. In starship troopers it wouldnt really make more characters. It would run the character animations and other things while the GPU draws in everything visually so in a sense its like taking the stress off the rest of the system allowing them to do much much more.

The PhysX is set to launch in the next several months for 250-300 dollars and can be added into most any PC.

[Gorkab]

Originally Posted by Waelan

It works with the graphics cards but it is a stand alone completely new type of PC part. It gets its own memory and hooks into your system just like a GPU. There is only one kind of PPU now they are trying to get enough interest to make it a permanent addition. In starship troopers it wouldnt really make more characters. It would run the character animations and other things while the GPU draws in everything visually so in a sense its like taking the stress off the rest of the system allowing them to do much much more.

The PhysX is set to launch in the next several months for 250-300 dollars and can be added into most any PC.

Yep, when I've heard about, I was really interested in ! 8)



This new card is PCI-Express, has 128 MB of GDDR3 ans his price will only be of 199 $ instead of the 299 $ annouced price.

[Waelan]

creator of unreal 3 engine says PS3 rocks 360's world in physics and nearly matches Ageia's own PPU's.... great news!!!

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05...s_6126181.html

[Waelan]

I thought this fit with physics well:

http://www.pixeluxentertainment.com/...ink=technology

To hit a few highlights this technology is basically based around giving objects in 3D games actual volume. Take for example a piece of paper and a rock and assume that instead of a very small width that the paper actually has none at all thus making it 2D. Now in the case of 2D games basically you look at the rock from a single angle and that is what is displayed on the screen. With 3D games, imagine taking the paper that is 2D and wrapping it around the rock forming the rocks shape then remove the rock. You now have a 2D imagine wrapped in a 3D manner to form the shape of the rock and they fill it in with color to show you the viewer on the screen.

With this new technology, the rock will have actual volume and an inside. The software can also take traditional 3D models from other programs and automatically convert it to be volumetric. But then, they took it one step further and added in their own physics engine that also works with other ones like Havok and NovodeX. Because objects have volume they can be given other properties like toughness and use those properties to calculate how things break correctly, flexible objects like trees and rope, and better collision detection systems for FPS and other games.

The surface mesh of the object is automatically calculated and added so that there is no limits to LOD like before. If you break an object in two there are surfaces automatically on the insides as opposed to having to redraw surfaces and apply them. Think of a peanut if you break it open you can see the nut on the inside. With standard 3d gaming its an empty shell with no nut. Anyways, the biggie deal is that they can use this technology to create a large variety of differing 3d visuals without having to hand draw them all.

Heres some cool demoes of actually seeing what Im talking about

The 360 uses a similar functioning technique called Procedural Synthesis but it operates completely differently. :D

http://www.pixeluxentertainment.com/index.php?link=demo