【转载】AGEIA\'s PhysX In Action

Elvis

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ageia_physx_ppu/

AGEIA’s PhysX processor has the potential to dramatically revolutionize the way you play games. In theory with physics processing playing a greater role in games, practically any object in games can be turned into a dangerous weapon, not just the objects the game developer wants you to use like rifles, knives, and shotguns, it also has the potential to introduce a wide range of melee-like combat sequences. Physics processing has the potential to open up all kinds of new ways gamers can interact with and within the environment; the area around you can literally take on a life of its own. This could lead to new types of challenges and puzzles that have never been experienced before, or, like in the case of Cell Factor, techniques that have had limited usage in games in the past can take on a much greater scale.

As it stands today however, this level of interaction isn’t a reality in most of today’s games, much less the PPU-ready titles like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. The PhysX-enhanced version GRAW for example adds fairly subtle enhancements that certainly look good, but aren’t good enough to justify a $300 purchase.

$300 can buy you a fairly high-end graphics card like the Radeon X1900 GT or GeForce 7900 GT, a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 CPU, or a nice A64 3200+ CPU and motherboard. Any one of these aforementioned upgrades will work with 100% of all games, not just a select few, and also buys you a tangible performance increase if you’re coming from older hardware; AGEIA’s PhysX PPU can’t claim either of these.

Until more games are built to take advantage of PhysX, or a killer app is introduced, this will always be a problem for AGEIA’s PhysX technology. This is why we’ve asked AGEIA on two separate occasions if they plan on introducing a cheaper PhysX card. With an MSRP of $299.99, AGEIA’s PhysX is priced awfully high -- there are just too many other upgrade options out there at that price point or lower that will deliver a greater real world benefit to gamers at this point.

There are plenty of ways that AGEIA could make PhysX cheaper to produce. Up until just recently, the 0.13-micron manufacturing process it’s built on was considered TSMC’s high performance (read: pricier) process. Switching to TSMC’s smaller 110-nm “value” process would make the PhysX processor cheaper to produce. Another move AGEIA could make would be switching from GDDR3 memory modules to less expensive (and more widely available) DDR2 memory modules. The quicker AGEIA and their board partners can get board prices down, the wider the audience the card will appeal too. At $300 the card’s really only going to appeal to the hardcore audience. To get mainstream acceptance, AGEIA really needs to shoot for the $150-$200 price point.

Most importantly though AGEIA needs a killer app. GRAW barely scratches the surface of what AGEIA’s PPU is capable of, AGEIA needs more games like Cell Factor in order for the technology to really take off. It’s going to take game developers time to integrate PhysX into their upcoming games, Cell Factor for instance is a LAN-only game at this point, AGEIA told us at GDC that the physics calculations that occur in Cell Factor are unfeasible for online multiplayer gaming. So a prospective developer that wanted to build their own Cell Factor would have two develop two versions of the game: one for single-player and LAN play, and a “lite” version for online multiplayer.

Unreal Tournament 2007 could be that killer app AGEIA needs. Epic is reportedly working extensively with AGEIA on getting PhysX properly integrated into UT 2007, and they even have plans to produce bonus maps that require PhysX technology in order to run. By then PhysX cards may be cheaper as well.

phk

某人手上有PCIe版本

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这坟挖得

PaulWong

一挖就是四年啊