As far as I read from magazines both ATI and NVidia are working on such a solution . ATI told that a second graphic card could deliver even more physics power than this special physics card. When that is true then this physics card will not have a great future.

I have to agree with Frank_G. "Ageia Physx" will have a really bad future and another bad points are:

- not many games support this; now: Ghost Recon3,Rise of Legends future: ut 2007,sacred 2, warhammer online

- too expensive ( 250 €)

- not better and faster as you could see it

- ATI's, NVidia's counterattack


mfg beegee

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GenuineMotors.de

I think the price does not really count, as said before,
the ethusiasts will buy them if there is support in the games,
that was always the case in the history of this industry, with cpus,
gpus and many other things, which are standard at today.

A problem with the gpu solution could be that ATI and nVidia will design
their own device, and if, we have two to choose from, so developers
have the double work to do for supporting them.
So the support via gpu is not allways a + for this problem in my opinion.

old_bill

Yes. Absolutely Old_Bill brought important points here. As far as I know the GPU manufacturers integrate physics in collaboration with Havoks. That is a tool that we cannot afford (at least most of us). But it will be supported in the big engines. So it will make it into games in the future.

But how easy would it be to integrate such hardware gpu phyisics into ODE, Newton or other affordable solutions?

what everyone needs to remember is that 6 years ago we thought we'd never need a 100gig hard drive, and 20 years ago, a graphical operating system "would never be useful".

I still recall the days when a 20 MB hard drive (that's right MB) was top of the line, and I used to have such a hard drive. A 2-floppy game was a big blow on this hard drive and it was very slow. Even today, we're getting into the terabyte range and hard drives could still get into the petabyte range still not being on the atomic scale (but very close to it). I don't recall the specs of the computer, but I know the model as Tandy 1000. Sound, back then, was nothing more than beeps and that sort of thing. Nowadays, sound cards can play sounds 192,000 Hz, 24-bit, 8-channel stereo with such clarity, it's almost life-like.

Physics cards would likely be in the same way. Like the oldest of sound where it was nothing more than beeps (likely with a 30 or 40 dB SNR), physics cards would be in this same way. As time would progress and development continues, it'd be more like sound cards supporting 11,025 Hz, 8-bit, stereo a few years from now and when the 202nd decade starts in 2011, it'd be more like sound cards supporting a CD-quality audio.

That has nothing to do with hard drives. Sound cards are very important for computers and games and nevertheless alot of people do not buy sound cards. They have sound chips onboard.

The same could happen with physics chips. They get incorporated into graphic cards or mother boards. Some "freaks" will buy extra cards but not the standard user.

I'm just giving an example. Back in the early 1990's, a 20 MB hard drive was top of the line. I'm using sound cards as an example to how the future of physics cards might be. Sound is often commonly found onboard the motherboard nowadays. All I was doing is using something related to explain what path physics cards may take for the future. At the moment, mainly hardcore gamers would get it.