Date:
Sunday , May 07, 2006
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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Ageia PhysX & You

Lost in arguing press releases and rhetoric spewed forth about Ageia's new PhysX PPU cards? We cut to the chase and tell you what you really need to know about PhysX and your money.

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PhysX Fluids – Bad

One of the things that I have seen touted as revolutionary with Ageia’s PhysX card is that fluids can be done incredibly well. I am not saying that the technology does not support this, but I can say that the use of PhysX fluids that I have seen in Cell Factor are terrible. Below are some pictures that outline what I am talking about.

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Seeing them in motion is even more painful as the fluid looks to be comprised of big groups of heaving sponges and don’t even get me started on the clipping issues shown. It can be distracting to the point that it seems like a step backwards in technology.

Install Base

Install base is something that has to be realized by gamers. If a game requires PhysX, that means that there are simply not going to be many people to sell the game to. As with Cell Factor, be assured that Ageia has underwritten its development. This is not something that Ageia will be able to do with every game out there. Again this comes back to a “killer app” needed to push forward PhysX card sales. That killer app may very well be Epic’s Unreal Tournament 2007 that is rumored to be released late this year or sometime in 2007.

“Unreal Tournament 2007 takes maximum advantage of the new ‘gaming power triangle’ of CPU, GPU and AGEIA PhysX processor that is revolutionizing the game PC,” said Kathy Schoback, vice president of content acquisition at AGEIA. “As a result, Unreal Tournament 2007 will set new standards for gameplay, graphics and physics in next-generation games.”

Now given that statement comes from an ex-Infinium Labs evangelist, you have to wonder about its validity. Is PhysX going to revolutionize the game PC?

I have been hearing rumors that there are some game developers that are investing their own money into Ageia. If this is true, I would suspect we would see games from them that heavily utilize PhysX features helping widen their install base.

The short of it is that PhysX will not be developed for on the broad scale that is required unless game developers know the gamers have the cards in their systems.

More Cores for All

And while there might be some merit to the “gaming power triangle,” would the “new” corner to that triangle better be thought of as physics in general rather than a PhysX corner alone? ATI and NVIDIA are already running and gunning to move physics onto their GPU cores, and I think they will do it. Also, multi-core CPUs from AMD and Intel are about to become the norm and physics engines taking advantage of these additional cores in a gaming arena is one of the things I see happening. Don’t think for a minute that the four companies mentioned above are going to allow Ageia to corner a market without any challenge whatsoever.

I really do not care if Ageia is successful or not. In fact, I would rather see the GPUs and CPUs we currently purchase be put to better use. From what I have seen in GRAW and Cell Factor, I have no reason to believe that I need an extra $250 PhysX card in my system to accomplish these physics feats. We simply need game developers to take advantage of the power that is already in our machines.

All things considered though, if Ageia shows me PhysX gaming experiences worth the investment, well, sign me up.

Chicken / Egg

As mentioned in our opening paragraph, PhysX is not bad hardware. The disheartening fact is that there are no games you can buy yet that show off its proposed abilities. This issue goes hand in hand with the PhysX install base talked about above, so excuse me if I am a bit redundant. PhysX cards are going to have to be on the market for game developers to start building content for them. If PhysX cards are not selling, game developers will not be building content for them. It should be of no surprise to anyone that buys a PhysX card that there is nothing to really do with them, unless of course you think the coolness of the Cell Factor demo is worth a $250 investment. If you are a hardware enthusiast or like to think of yourself as an early adopter, you know what pitfalls accompany such a purchase. You will likely pay more for the hardware, have more problems, and have less real content, than those that wait for the market to solidify.