What is Digg?149 Comments
- Roger, on 10/12/2007, -3/+31***** is it just me or is the volume on that clip real loud.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20a keyboard and mouse to play correctly
- clickwir, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21No not free. Quite expensive actually.
- BugMeNot2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16$249-$300, to be more accurate.
- ctheory, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17I don't know if I buy it.
Obviously they're two different clips of the situation (one has the guy walking out from the left in front of the car [and dying], the second has the guy walking out from behind the car).
You can argue that they're not the same, but i'm looking at it like this - with all the technology on the market today, even high end video cards can do explosions with pretty sweet particle effects....the first video has none.
The second one is much more elaborate, explosions look cool, yada yada....but who's to say that they didn't actually alter that level to create an explosion with more effects to show off that card? I don't know....I hate to be skeptical, but I just don't buy it. - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Technically, they already did. Physics processing runs on Geforce 6x and 7x cards with Havok's physics engine. Or you can use a dual-core CPU. Ageia's card is NOT worth $300! A top of the line 8 channel digital soundcard costs 1/2 as much! As a matter of fact, there's another opportunity to leverage an existing piece of hardware for physics processing: sound cards.
http://www.havok.com/
I guess now I'm going to get -Diggs from the Ageia fanboys, even though I said nothing insulting or misleading. This comment rating system is ruining Digg! The only comments left are "me too's" or irrelevent jokes that some people think are funny. The paid shills, the delusioned fanboys and noobs that are influencing the comment system need to be controlled somehow.
Here's a suggestion:
Comments should not get a negative rating until at least four people give it a -Digg. That means each -Digg visible in the comments requires four votes. - ctheory, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12That's exactly what I was thinking with my first post.
It's like an infomercial where they have the absolute worst case scenario...
"Ever have clutter in your silverware drawers?"
*Character cuts hand off reaching for butter knife*
"There's got to be a better way!" - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+18"C'mon, you people embarrass us passionate gamers and give us a consumer whorish appearance. Of course, this post will be incredibly under-dugg, or everybody will completely agree with me one second yet forget everything I say when they see a new "next-gen" screenie."
No, I actually agree with you but modded it down due to arrogance and pretentiousness. Choke on that. - thbt, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Colour me unimpressed. I'm sure the first video clip (without PhysX) could have been much nicer... they dumbed it down pretty badly.
- reaver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9They should start by buying some new servers.
- jakethecake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Two more videos showing the PhysX in action.
http://physx.ageia.com/cellfactor_hd.mov Cellfactor [113,8MB] - http://www.cellfactorgame.com/
http://physx.ageia.com/bos_hd.mov Bet on soldier [27,MB] - http://www.betonsoldier.com/ - swax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7finally physics is getting some love. i hate shooting a rocket launcher at a wall and just seeing a black spot where the whole wall should have come down. this is all first gen though $300 bucks.. dont waste your money until the games are out that support it. just take it for what it is, proof of concept, phyics can open up a whole new level of gameplay.
- extremeg24, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I'll just wait until Nvidia comes out with there physics GPU.
- thebeaz, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Do you love Counter-Strike Source as much as you did Wolfenstein 3D? Or more aptly, Doom on a LAN? Also, you're playing the new SOURCE CS... not the original... upgrade for the graphics perhaps?
Sure, we shouldn't start gawking and dropping to our knees for ever little shiny screenshot of some new PC technology, but what's so wrong with the fact that we're getting closer and closer to realistic immersion? It went from sprites to blocky polygons to smoother polygons to self-shaded plastic and now to semi-realistic enemies. Tell me what's wrong with that? Eventually this stuff will be cheaper. Eventually it will be commonplace. Just accept it and end the style vs. substance debate.
If you REALLY prefer 100% substance and near 0% style, there are TONS of open source games for you to pick through. - nova9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Why would anyone trust a video made by a company to sell their own cards. I'll believe it when a independent reviewer shows a video.
- mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Somebody get a fricken mirror up.
- JeffH, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6$300 for...that? Wow. So worth it
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I admit, i play games for the graphics. but that isnt the only thing. yes the game has to have some redeeming factor of quality to it, but also it cant look like total *****.
i play to immerse myself. the more realistic the better, to me. - Clearz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I think I might get flamed for this but I think this is one area where consoles will excel over PC's and BTW this is coming from a hardcore PC gamer myself.
There are two different types of physics that we are talking about. There is Physical effects such as sparks and then there is physics such as blowing a building into rubble using a rocket launcher or leaving a crator in the ground that someone then hides in. The later type of physics is where the problem lies. Games have to be back compatible to work with hardware a few years old right up to the latest hardware. This is fine for graphics because graphics doesn't effect game-play in any way. But physics does.
Take for example 2 guys playing in an on-line game one has the latest PPU and a dual core CPU and the second guy has a 5 year old piece of rubbish.
What happens when the guy with the PPU blows up a building?
What happens if on his computer the explosion leaves a pile of dynamically generated rubble and a crater that he decides to hide behind? This rubble did not get generated on the other guys system because he doesn't have a PPU so what does he see?
now with a console at least you know what the hardware is gonna be when making a game so you can create anything you want with physics as long as the hardware can handle it. - cyrix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It was quite loud...but my question is why did parts of the vehicle fall to the ground very slowly? It was almost like they were floating down like a feather.
I watched the clip over and over again, and from watching the flames it didn't seem like there was any slow down in the game either. That was my only real basis of time in it since I couldn't make out anyone moving around after the explosion. - revokin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5http://www.vr-zone.com.sg/?i=3372
- Computer_Kid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4A liquid demo:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3103103511684048644&q=physx - DoctorShim, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I hold the belief that graphics play an essential role in games. Take a look at Darwinia (http://www.darwinia.co.uk). The graphics in that game really aided in bringing the "digital universe" to life. It made the whole experience more realistic. (I am not being sarcastic. I mean it.)
Take a look at Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Personally, I would've liked them a little more detailed, but the colourful graphics also help convey a certain depth when playing the game.
That's why I like Nintendo so much. The graphics are _used for conveying a feeling_ or for expressing something in the game. Crappy graphics can indeed inhibit gameplay. But good graphics should never, ever do that. (I always thought Morrowind suffered from that. Great graphics, but lousy game play.) - acceptab1euname, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4whatever happened to GeoMod, featured in both of the Red Faction games? I remember being able to blast holes and tunnels in things with the rocket launcher in those games...
- bean, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5One problem I see with this is for multiplayer games: does everybody have to have a PPU card? Or can you get around that by having the server do all the physics math? It doesn't look promising.
No, you can't do this level of processing on a spare CPU core. The chip is similar to a GPU where everything is done in parallel. Kind of like MMX on steroids.
Havok's physics engine isn't the same beast, it's missing feedback to the game engine. So the truck may explode but the pieces of it can't hit you. You can look but you can't touch. Will the havok kit ever work with ATI cards? When running SLI will it hog a GPU? Will there be lots of data refetching? Will it ever catch up to the features Agiea boasts? Is nvidia desperate to use up extra processor cycles because games are increasingly becoming CPU bound?
Is all this physics just more eye candy or will it allow intriguing play dynamics? We know what Agiea argues, but where is the proof, where's the killer demo? They're never going to penetrate mind-space without a must-have game.
Putting these PPU chips on the same card as the GPU makes sense, both cards are for gaming, so make a gaming card. Common Agiea! partnership!
Is Nintendo Revolution (GO?) going to have a PPU or is that a rumor? Maybe that will justify these chips. - johnny23, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8In an age where dual core processors are becoming more and more mainstream, isn't something like this too little, too late? Wouldn't it be easier for programmers to offload the physics calculations on to the the processor core that isn't running the game?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I'm not seeing any major improvement over the 360 version. What am I missing here?
- Lazaryn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's the same physics as in HL2 because there is only one way to calculate it. Physics isn't really a graphical thing that you can compare. If you attempted to calculate tens of thousands of physics calculations on your CPU it would kinda get overloaded. With physics becoming more important in games a separate PPU would defiantly loosen the CPU's job so it can concentrate more on the AI and other miscellaneous things.
- cybernetic798, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I have to say that Cellfactor game looks SO incredibly good...and I've never even heard of it! The gameplay would really make it the first game to make wide-spread use of physics in gameplay - Half Life 2 just had a few random puzzles and the gravity gun but this is off the charts.
Glad to know this game got some press. - jtibble, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think that this is a great idea-- it's not like our new graphics cards that are obsolete before we get them in our machines. Ageia can supply new firmware to enable gamemakers to continue to expand the card's capabilites, but my question is as follows:
Once they come out with a second version, what will the specs be? Will Ageia be saying "Card calculates 132 ragdolls/second" or "1249 rigid body collisions/ frame"? How can we know the limits of our cool new physics card? - Maasneotek, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6"
Video games today aren't about good games, it's about what games and hardware can generate the largest and greatest hype and cash in on it. I guess this thread really proves the assumptions of many great people of our time, most people are idiots who are seemingly incapable of thinking about reality rather than appearance.
It's all just a classical case of appearance vs. reality, the reality is that half of these games that use these cards are going to be completely redundant and are going to blow really hard nuts, but millions will buy them for the next greatest thing (UT 2007). Of course, the appearance is that these games look really really cool and I'd love to play them."
I totally agree with you there, flash is waaaaaay above function in modern day games, to an incredibly insulting degree. Considering how many games for the next gen consoles are buggy (GRAW no less demonstrated on this veyr site). ITs also annoying the company proclaims itself as "the next bigthing" .
no reason to call everyone an idiot however.... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Suppose you prefer VHS to DVD too then?
Tapes to CDs? etc etc
Good graphics and good gameplay aren't mutually exclusive - mastercheif, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3 Physics are a big part of games, you cant say that HL2 would have been the same without the gravity gun.
But games that are going to use the PPU are going to take HL2 to the next level. Just becuase you saw a video of Aegia showing how it could improve explosions, and you assume that it is the only thing it could do?
Imangine you lanuch a rocket lancher into a building in a game, what does it do this gen? The building gets dirty, thats about it. With the PPU, developers can incourperate building and walls into the game, so if you launched that same rocket into the same building, every brick would fall down realisticly, and it could open up a whole new part of the level. - Ansible, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well, that's why people don't have a second regular CPU for their graphics. Graphics cards are just way better at the kind of tasks that they do than general purpose chips. Specializing a task in hardware is always way faster than doing it in software, and its no different for physics I'm sure, the hardware can be tuned to do parallel processing of the objects way faster than a regular processor.
What I'm in favor of is every computer having an FPGA card onboard. An FPGA is essentially a blank slate chip that can have a circuit layout downloaded to it after powerup. FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array, ie a chip that can be configured in the field rather than at the factory. So with an FPGA you could download the circuit layout for a parallel processing physics chip, for a special graphics chip, or whatever specialized hardware your current game/simulation/whatever program currently needs. - r3neGaDe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I completely agree. The two clips seem a little too different. They may have merely changed a setting in the visual options or something to make it make it be so drastically different. I just dont believe that simply having a special physics GPU would change the visuals that much.
- Castaa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Considering that's a real-time effect, that's pretty awsome.
- mckirkus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Because, like graphics, specialized chips can do the calculations much faster than a general purpose CPU. This chip was designed from the ground up to do physics. We've essentially been running physics in software emulation mode until now.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Mirror to bos_hd (torrent): http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3461710
- master_of_fm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3that is why one of my favorite alltime games was RED FACTION (the first one only, the second one sucked badly). compared to other games the graphics may have not been as good, but having a destructable environment was so cool. one time i was playing and i didnt snag a key card from a gaurd or something and got stuck, but i had a trusty rocket launcher and made my own door.
- mckirkus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Physics are like graphics in terms of math. Your argument is like saying we shouldn't have GPUs because we now have dual core CPUs. This is an order of magnitude leap in the level of physics possibilities, not just a tool to offload work from the CPU.
- Mocib, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You can see more detail if you watch the GRAW comparison in fullscreen glory: http://physx.ageia.com/sbs_graw.swf / http://physx.ageia.com.nyud.net:8080/sbs_graw.swf
Regularly updated PhysX info site here: http://personal.inet.fi/atk/kjh2348fs/ageia_physx.html - SpacePirate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://physx.ageia.com.nyud.net:8090/footage.html
It's quite a bit faster, at least initially.
I totally hope there will be ExpressCard/34 physics processors... If I'm going to get back into PC gaming with my MacBook, I'm going to be going all out. :D - jtibble, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Back to the dual core comment, what if a core could be used exclusively for physics, and the other core exclusively for AI? So the "new" gaming rig would have a sound card, and a graphics card. Just the four main components.
What else does the program need to do besides sounds, graphics, physics, and AI? what if games in the future just relegated certain tasks to the separate components and used the processors for other background cpu intensive tasks? - kalessin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2actually i had the same problem, i had luck with VLC player http://www.videolan.org
- vermin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's a good first start, but there needs to be more game support for these cards. If it's only one or two games that will see improvements it's not really worth it.
- Castaa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The Cell Factor video is very cool as well.
- xptical, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Remember, that's probably $300 on top of the already awesome system.
$1000 for graphics cards.
$1000 for a CPU
$300 for RAM
$200 for a motherboard.
$600 for dual Raptors.
$200 for a power supply.
$200 for a case.
$100 for fans and such to cool it all.
$300 for the physics card.
$200 for a kick-ass keyboard and mouse.
And, don't forget, you'll need $1000+ for a LCD capable of doing 1600*1280 with an acceptable response time.
So, it's not like you can throw a $300 card in a $1000 computer and see any real difference. - swoper101, on 10/12/2007, -16/+18Yeah, I wet my pants...and not becuase it looked cool.
- blaquekyd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5wow the difference is waaay better than i expected. i want one but im not trying to spend 200 bucks on one
- DisposableRob, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"I'd also like to point out how everytime I refresh the page, there's one less digg, and more importantly, no replies"
How would you like people to reply to being called idiots? Modding you down is more productive than your oh so stimulating debate style. -
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