Date:
Monday , July 10, 2006
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Effects Physics & Gameplay Physics Explored

Confused about effects physics vs. gameplay physics? We have asked ATI, NVIDIA, Havok, and Ageia about the two. We received in-depth responses providing great detail regarding effects and gameplay physics, what they mean for gameplay, and current hardware physics abilities.

Introduction

Dedicated hardware physics acceleration has become a hot topic this year. We at HardOCP have been vocal on the subject, both in the forms of editorial and giving you our opinions about whether or not you need to buy a physics card now. There is a lot of potential in what dedicated hardware physics acceleration can bring to your gameplay experience. Undoubtedly gameplay physics is in its infancy even though the basis has been around for a while. The industry itself is still trying to figure out just how to go about it in a way that will benefit the gamer the most while not sacrificing a game’s sales to a small install footprint. All the differing opinions and marketing fluff make it quite confusing to gamers and us at HardOCP as well. We were confused about some things and decided to ask some very pointed questions to all the gameplay physics suspects.

Three different hardware vendors are competing for your money using different software methods. You’ve got Ageia’s PhysX processor that is a dedicated card with a fast processor on board made to specifically accelerate physics using Ageia’s own PhysX engine. Then you have NVIDIA who announced that they can do the same thing with a GPU. Then ATI announced what they can do and expanded upon the GPU idea even further stating that the GPU might even be up to 9X the performance of the PhysX card with an X1900 XT. HavokFX was announced as the physics engine of choice for GPU acceleration currently.

With all these options available to you, the question is, “How do they differ in capability and what will be delivered in terms of gameplay immersion and performance?” There has been a lot of talk on forums across the Internet regarding “effects” physics and “gameplay” physics. The debate is argued that Ageia’s PhysX card can hardware accelerate effects physics and gameplay physics. It is argued that the PhysX card is favorable over GPUs because GPU physics have only announced effects physics acceleration and not gameplay physics acceleration. This is a debate that a lot of gamers are very confused about and I’ve seen multiple statements based on miss-information regarding the capability of the hardware and software of all three competitors. We hope that this article will clear this debate and offer insight into the two types of physics that exist in games.

Effect and Gameplay Physics?

So which is better? How does effects differ from gameplay physics? What does this mean to the gamer? What are the capabilities of the current hardware out on the market?

What we have done is asked ATI, NVIDIA, Havok and Ageia some very pointed questions about effects physics and gameplay physics. We sent each a few interview style questions formulated to get to the bottom of what effects physics and gameplay physics are, hardware capabilities and what this means for gamers.

We were very excited to see that each one provided us with detailed answers. Their answers follow across the following pages.