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| [Dec 19, 2005, 12:41 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments |
Cyanide Studios
Supports AGEIA PhysX Processor in Upcoming Action RPG Loki (thanks Frans) is
a press release from the folks behind the hardware physics processing unit that
reveals an unannounced action/RPG called Loki, saying: "AGEIA(TM) Technologies,
Inc., the pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for games, today announced
that renowned French developer Cyanide will support the AGEIA PhysX processor in
its upcoming ACTION RPG Loki." Here's a bit more of the cat they have let out
off the bag: Loki puts the player in key epochs of history surrounded by
legendary heroes, powerful divinities and mythical creatures such as hydrae,
dragons and minotaurs. With Loki's extensive population of characters and
dynamic real- time action, Cyanide developers chose to optimize the game for the
real-time action acceleration of the AGEIA PhysX processor. The dedicated
physics processing horsepower of the AGEIA PhysX processor enables much more
realistic characters with joints, convexes and other intricate geometry, as well
as dazzling real-time effects.
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| 23. |
Re: No subject |
Dec 19, 2005, 19:09 |
SquirrelZero |
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Why would anyone want to buy a physics add-in card when we have a future of upcoming duel core up to potentially quad core cpus that can be useful for much more than just physics, and act as dedicated physics processor in games. Sure maybe the proprietary card is faster, but it's also too specific for my tastes.
This is a very common argument, but one that isn't necessarily valid. For example, in high speed current-gen processors (the top-end 4ghz/4000+ ones) you'll max out at only a couple hundred rigid bodies and joints before the physics processing is consuming too much CPU and causing performance issues. With a PhysX processor, you can have up to about 6000 rigid bodies and joints at once, all active, with very little CPU usage, and those are prototype specs which I expect to see increasing when driver builds are more stable. To be able to adequately handle 6000 rigid bodies/joints, standard CPU processors would most likely need to be 10 times as powerful as they are today. That's at least a decade away.
People used to wonder what the need for a 3D accelerator would be. With processor speeds reaching 200mhz and more back at their inception, they thought the CPU would be able to handle everything. Today we know better. No amount of CPU would be able to do what a 3D graphics card does.
The best argument against them, I think, is that you won't really NEED one. Like you said, they're very specific in what they can do, and no game will be made (at least right away) that absolutely requires one. However, people have already been finding interesting applications for the PPU, like speeding up math operations in 3D graphics programs and other non-standard uses. I for one am very excited to see what else people can do with these things.
As for cost, I'd rather not speculate. It's not really my place.
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