What's this? What's this?
Hmm... turns out NVidia is buying out Ageia.
http://www.dailytech.com/Update+NVIDIA+to+Acquire+AGEIA/article10573.htm
"Who buying what now?" you ask.
Well NVidia is one of the top two video card manufacturers in the world. Ageia is the maker of a processor helper card that helps calculate physics in 3d graphics, taking the task off of the back of a computer main processor. The way debris spangs around the playing field in real time or how that zombie's corpse bounces off of the side of the building after you blow it up with a RPG are all handled by a game's physics engine. Those calculations take time and resources away from your CPU as it does a whole bunch of other tasks. Your video card handles that real rough stuff such as drawing those realistic looking graphics but the CPU still has a load of other things it needs to handle. The Ageia card helped in that it takes some of that load off and thus allows for a physics engine that looks more realistic.
The Ageia card was a separate card that you had to plug into your computer. Also, the game you played had to be able to support the Ageia physics engine to take advantage of it. When it came out, I thought: "That's nice but is it really worth the money?" CPUs and Video Card GPUs were getting faster and cheaper so the Ageia was rapidly becoming obsolete. I had this conversation with a friend last week about how I was very "Meh" about it.
With this announcement, though, I find myself rethinking the concept. With NVidia owning the Ageia they could then integrate the chip onto their existing line of video cards. They then could have the leverage to make Microsoft update DirectX to include support for this. What would this mean for Joe Gamer? Not much in the next year or two but when a hardware physics engine becomes as common as a hardware pixel shader or texture engine then we will see more real time real world physics interaction. When you blow up that tank with a shaped charge, every piece of shrapnel will be a real object in a game that ricochets off of other objects and interacts with them rather than being a pre-rendered explosion that leaves the exact same crater and debris field. When you wreck your car in Burnout Paradise 2 the pieces will be strewn across the street and remain there for other cars to run over and deform and maybe wreck themselves on.
It is sort of what we are seeing in the Force Unleashed from Lucas Arts which is combining a materials interaction engine with a physics engine to give some really insane real world physics in the game.
This could lead to more realistic gaming... or perhaps lead to more hilarious interactions such as this...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/01
http://www.dailytech.com/Update+NVIDIA+to+Acquire+AGEIA/article10573.htm
"Who buying what now?" you ask.
Well NVidia is one of the top two video card manufacturers in the world. Ageia is the maker of a processor helper card that helps calculate physics in 3d graphics, taking the task off of the back of a computer main processor. The way debris spangs around the playing field in real time or how that zombie's corpse bounces off of the side of the building after you blow it up with a RPG are all handled by a game's physics engine. Those calculations take time and resources away from your CPU as it does a whole bunch of other tasks. Your video card handles that real rough stuff such as drawing those realistic looking graphics but the CPU still has a load of other things it needs to handle. The Ageia card helped in that it takes some of that load off and thus allows for a physics engine that looks more realistic.
The Ageia card was a separate card that you had to plug into your computer. Also, the game you played had to be able to support the Ageia physics engine to take advantage of it. When it came out, I thought: "That's nice but is it really worth the money?" CPUs and Video Card GPUs were getting faster and cheaper so the Ageia was rapidly becoming obsolete. I had this conversation with a friend last week about how I was very "Meh" about it.
With this announcement, though, I find myself rethinking the concept. With NVidia owning the Ageia they could then integrate the chip onto their existing line of video cards. They then could have the leverage to make Microsoft update DirectX to include support for this. What would this mean for Joe Gamer? Not much in the next year or two but when a hardware physics engine becomes as common as a hardware pixel shader or texture engine then we will see more real time real world physics interaction. When you blow up that tank with a shaped charge, every piece of shrapnel will be a real object in a game that ricochets off of other objects and interacts with them rather than being a pre-rendered explosion that leaves the exact same crater and debris field. When you wreck your car in Burnout Paradise 2 the pieces will be strewn across the street and remain there for other cars to run over and deform and maybe wreck themselves on.
It is sort of what we are seeing in the Force Unleashed from Lucas Arts which is combining a materials interaction engine with a physics engine to give some really insane real world physics in the game.
This could lead to more realistic gaming... or perhaps lead to more hilarious interactions such as this...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/01