ok sorry for going off-topic

While what you say makes sense, I still dont think the future of games/simulations is a specialized hardware for everything.

I dont see why CPU-based physics isnt good enough for the future, as it's pretty darn good in games like Half-life 2, Oblivion, etc. As CPUs get faster, won't physics models improve as well? Is the answer to every limitation going to be new specialized hardware hardware?

what about the "rainFX" chip, or the "realGrass" chip, or whatever? You could conceivably build chips for anything like this..making the developers life a pure hell, and the users life just an excersize in futility trying to keep up.

Oh well, I'm not against physics acceleration per se, but I do think it has to be part of the cpu or motherbpoard/video card, rather than a stand alone. ..