AEGIA is going to be rich

Kevin Lowe said:
Yeah, but how often do you need the specific types of math they're good at?
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MacOS X can use the GPU for drawing many elements of the GUI, Longhorn is supposed to do the same. CAD and applications like 3DSMax would benefit as well.

Basically, anything which goes faster on a vector PU which is good at FP-math than on a generic scalar PU will benefit.
 
eggrock said:
Everbody's talking bullets this and grenades that. Screw that, let's hear it for building your own castle (or knocking someone else's down) and cutting the heart out of a dragon. I can see major fun with siege engines in RPGs. Sappers, damming rivers to deny them water.... Flinging dead bodies over castles. Calling up a pestilence with magic (thousands of bees would be sweet.)

So screw the FPS already, let's hear it for RPGs! :p
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Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is on Ageias list of Novodex using (PPU compatible) games.
That's very high on my list of "Games I'll be buying no matter what" and it should be out this year (On PC and X360).

For reasons I've specified ad infinitum, I doubt the presence or absence of a PPU will make that much difference, but it could be a good early indicator of how higher end, quality games in the next year will use the tech (and wether it's worth buying into any time soon).
 
MartinX said:
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is on Ageias list of Novodex using (PPU compatible) games.
That's very high on my list of "Games I'll be buying no matter what" and it should be out this year (On PC and X360).

For reasons I've specified ad infinitum, I doubt the presence or absence of a PPU will make that much difference, but it could be a good early indicator of how higher end, quality games in the next year will use the tech (and wether it's worth buying into any time soon).
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Hmmm, the Bethesda devs say no support. We'll see. If so there's a lot of mod potential; it's going to be a blast.
 
I have heard of projects where they have offloaded nongraphical functions to the GPU because it is a powerful floatingpoint processor. It just needs to have the data manipulated into a form that the GPU can handle. This should work for the PPU also.
 
eggrock said:
Hmmm, the Bethesda devs say no support. We'll see. If so there's a lot of mod potential; it's going to be a blast.
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"No support" as in they explictly say they won't support it, or they just don't mention it?

As I've pointed out myself elsewhere, supporting and exploiting are two entirely different things, it'd be interesting if Ageia were just making it up (or over-hyping it), Infinium style.

However, my understanding is that developers don't necessarily need to code directly to the PPU, the Novodex API can offload to the PhysX dynamically if there's one there, so if you're using Novodex, you're able to use the PhysX by extenstion, rather than explicit design.

Obviously Oblivion won't do anything that can't be handled by a conventional CPU/GPU combo, but it might be interesting to see if having a PPU to accelerate the Novodex operations gives any noticable performance benefits at all.

I only brought up Oblivion because it's a AAA game that's out relatively soon and it's on Ageias list.

Here's another "It's a great idea in theory, but there's plenty of reasons why it could go pear shaped" article, he covers why it's not the same as the GPU revolution, and points out something even I hadn't thought about with regards to the upgrade path, or rather, lack thereof: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=140&type=expert&pid=1
 
Many people are saying that even with a PPU, the game would have so many polygons that the graphics card couldn't handle it. They are thinking of large explosions, etc.

But what about these couple things:

1. Flowing hair, clothes, etc. On a non-PPU machine, the objects would remain static. On a PPU machine, they would wrinkle, trail behind you as you run, and "float" as you jumped off a ledge. It would make it a lot more realistic with no more polygons.

2. Racing simulators. No more polygons but the grip on the road, the weight of the car, the speed, how your car flips as it crashes, etc. No additional polygons but much more realistic driving and reaction.

3. Bullet drop. I would LOVE to see this in more games. Bullets dropping over distance, losing energy as it goes through wood or metal, armor piercing, wind resistance. All of this is physics with no additional polygons. Imagine the realistic tank/sim games. One of the problems with World War II Online was that it was so realistic in it's bullet trajectories and penetrations that the CPU was burdened and you got 10 fps.

There is SO much more that can be done with a PPU than just more rocks falling down a hillside. Many of these things can be done, as above, without hurting those that do not have a PPU.

A PPU can change gaming as we know it.
 
From what I understand Unreal 3 is going to be taking this into account and wil work with this...with all the games that are going to be licensed from U3...I see the potential in the card for that alone.....Americas Army will be on the U3 engine...imagine what they can do with the added bonus of the PPU card in your system....Im buying one...its simple.
 
MartinX said:
"No support" as in they explictly say they won't support it, or they just don't mention it?

As I've pointed out myself elsewhere, supporting and exploiting are two entirely different things, it'd be interesting if Ageia were just making it up (or over-hyping it), Infinium style.

However, my understanding is that developers don't necessarily need to code directly to the PPU, the Novodex API can offload to the PhysX dynamically if there's one there, so if you're using Novodex, you're able to use the PhysX by extenstion, rather than explicit design.

Obviously Oblivion won't do anything that can't be handled by a conventional CPU/GPU combo, but it might be interesting to see if having a PPU to accelerate the Novodex operations gives any noticable performance benefits at all.

I only brought up Oblivion because it's a AAA game that's out relatively soon and it's on Ageias list.

Here's another "It's a great idea in theory, but there's plenty of reasons why it could go pear shaped" article, he covers why it's not the same as the GPU revolution, and points out something even I hadn't thought about with regards to the upgrade path, or rather, lack thereof: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=140&type=expert&pid=1
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I have actually been following Oblivion very closely, and I have heard the devs said on forums that they will be useing Havok, NOT Novodex therefore not useing a PPU. If Oblivion were to use a PPU I would pay $50 for one in a heart beat. Oblivion is gonna be a beast, and you'll need every ounce of power to make it run as smooth as I want it to run.
 
Chameleoki said:
1. Flowing hair, clothes, etc. On a non-PPU machine, the objects would remain static. On a PPU machine, they would wrinkle, trail behind you as you run, and "float" as you jumped off a ledge. It would make it a lot more realistic with no more polygons.
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In order to animate it, you'll have to divide the strand further. A piece of paper can be made up of two triangles to make a square. To give it the appearance of a bend, you'll have to double the number for the upper and lower half.

2. Racing simulators. No more polygons but the grip on the road, the weight of the car, the speed, how your car flips as it crashes, etc. No additional polygons but much more realistic driving and reaction.
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This is interesting, there are many dynamics involved in a car, particularly when computing for the performance of each component rather than as a whole.

3. Bullet drop. I would LOVE to see this in more games. Bullets dropping over distance, losing energy as it goes through wood or metal, armor piercing, wind resistance. All of this is physics with no additional polygons. Imagine the realistic tank/sim games. One of the problems with World War II Online was that it was so realistic in it's bullet trajectories and penetrations that the CPU was burdened and you got 10 fps.
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This is a winner :)

There is SO much more that can be done with a PPU than just more rocks falling down a hillside. Many of these things can be done, as above, without hurting those that do not have a PPU.

A PPU can change gaming as we know it.
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Some more points

1) The point is, that to make additional animations on a model, you'll have to increase the complexity for it. Hair or a Cape are usually made mostly of vertical polygons, making up most of the length of the object to cut down on triangles, maybe divided in a few places to allow it to move a bit. But they'll have to be divided even more for a PPU to make a visual difference.

2) An example i can think of is how each minor component you bought for your suspension system would perform or wear in the course of a game, affecting how the components stress each other and making all the variables recomputed in real time. The roll or crash could also have collision points that would follow the cars vertices rather than just treat it as a large box.

3) Games that track ballistic trajectories are usually ones where you either don't fire much (Sniping or Low fire rate) or single player. 16vs16 deathmatch with everyone packing miniguns with ballistic tracking would need some serious help. However, making PPU based physics an integral part of gameplay would have game balancing issues. You don't have a PPU so the game changes your bullets behaviour? I'm guessing this kind of interaction wouldn't be around until PPU's become standard. Which, judging by MartinX's article, is still a long way off.


The counters i have about the big explosions and particles is because that's how the guys keep trying to hype it and i'm dubious if the graphics hardware will actually be able to live up to that. I'm actually looking for something non-eyecandy that the chip can do. Thanks for the input ;)

If they want to increase the chance of this PPU becoming a success, the various physics developers (yes, including Carmack :D ) will have to sit down and make a standard. Nobody wants to relive the time when 3D accelerators were just emerging and each game had to be programmed for a specific hardware. Otherwise, if HAVOK3 was hardware based and the developers were divided between that and AEGIA2, you'd need two cards to make the most of the games :p
 
jon_k said:
I have actually been following Oblivion very closely, and I have heard the devs said on forums that they will be useing Havok, NOT Novodex therefore not useing a PPU. If Oblivion were to use a PPU I would pay $50 for one in a heart beat. Oblivion is gonna be a beast, and you'll need every ounce of power to make it run as smooth as I want it to run.
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Interesting.

I withdraw the assertion that Oblivion will be Novodex/PhysX compatible, I know I saw the association reported somewhere, but I can't recall where, and it's not jumping out at me from Ageias own website, it now seems likely that that the original report was simply wrong, or I misunderstood the context, or I dreamed it.

That's happened.
 
MartinX said:
Interesting.

I withdraw the assertion that Oblivion will be Novodex/PhysX compatible, I know I saw the association reported somewhere, but I can't recall where, and it's not jumping out at me from Ageias own website, it now seems likely that that the original report was simply wrong, or I misunderstood the context, or I dreamed it.

That's happened.
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believe me I hope to God they would use Novodex. I made a post on bethesda's forum a long time ago asking if they are going to support a PPU, and I got a reply that said they were useing Havok so no PPU. What I'm *hoping* for is someone will write a wrapper that translates havok instructions into PhysX instructions. It would function similar to a Glide wrapper (ie a "glide3x.dll" that converts all glide instructions to Direct3D or OpenGL so you can run glide games on nVidia cards).
 
jon_k said:
believe me I hope to God they would use Novodex. I made a post on bethesda's forum a long time ago asking if they are going to support a PPU, and I got a reply that said they were useing Havok so no PPU. What I'm *hoping* for is someone will write a wrapper that translates havok instructions into PhysX instructions. It would function similar to a Glide wrapper (ie a "glide3x.dll" that converts all glide instructions to Direct3D or OpenGL so you can run glide games on nVidia cards).
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The problem with Havok is its not multithreaded like NovodeX. It might have to be completely rewritten to see much benefit from a PPU....
 
Sly said:
The one you're talking about is probably Red Faction 2, and it has absolutely nothing to do with part 1! No terrain deformation, different weapons (No XRAY vision!), different story, different planet!
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Ahh I see. Thanks. I'll see if I can borrow a copy from my friend and check it out.

I've seen what you are talking about. Max Payne2 and CS:S do it once in a while with a lot of objects and dead people. If they all go flying due to an explosion then things get a little choppy. Then again I'm running 1900x1200 with 16xAF and 4xAA so I'm probably asking for it anyway. :)
 
With the release of this PPU I bet Microsoft will soon buy one of the major physics engines (the company who owns it really) and will integrate it into WGF within a few years in an attempt to get all PPU makers to follow their lead as they have mostly done with Videocards. Their doing so will also help free up the market to make PPU production competetive so it should be a good thing overall.

We are also probably only a couple years away from the first AIPU... This PPU thing will really get people thinking, and if it suceeds at all then AIPU's are inevitable. AIPU's for gaming will also end up pushing AI development in all areas to a whole new level that will completely blow the scientists currently working on AI out of the water.... After all, there is nothing like the prospect of lots of money to be made to make true progress a reality.


Skynet here we come!!!
 
if this ppu idea becomes popular, and they make aipus in the future like the above poster said, we might need more slots on our mobos...
 
Physics cards have been done before.. Actually, they're doing them now. Aegia is getting popularity because of the jump in processor power on their cards versus whats out now.

I remember back in 2000 another company, (heck it might even have been Aegia, I can't recall,) tryed to get hype surrounding their physics card but nothing ever came of it.

If many designers start to support it, and/or a giant game comes out that utilizes it (say half life 3 or something of that caliber) I can see it gaining popularity but don't think it's going to go anywhere. They wouldn't show screen shots or a demo to anyone. Doesn't make sense to me...
 
They've got the Unreal3 engine supporting it for sure, and that means that the 15 other games that use Unreal3 technology are gonna support it as well. This is their ace of spades, and I have a feeling that the success of this technology is gonna depend on how well epic integrates it into their game. If there is a serious difference in speed or gameplay by having a PPU, it's gonna be a success, it not, very few people will buy one.
 
GoHack said:
Have you guys seen this?
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The Building Explode made my FPS drop to 8-9... :S

And the Big Bang gave me..1-2 FPS :( *L*

Terra - I would like one PPU now please :S
 
this ppu is a nice idea.. I guess I should get working on the next thing: AIPU - Artificial Intelligence Processing Unit and maybe a NPU (Network processing unit) and in no time, we will have ASICs for pretty much any task in a system with the CPU coordinating them...
 
drizzt81 said:
this ppu is a nice idea.. I guess I should get working on the next thing: AIPU - Artificial Intelligence Processing Unit and maybe a NPU (Network processing unit)
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I thought a NIC was a "network CPU"? :S

Terra...
 
it's a nice idea yes... but 3 years from now expect this


Microsoft + Nvidia + Ati developing a standard physics processing API(and possibly implementing this into directx) and developing their own PPU add in cards, or finding a way to integrate them into their chipsets/videocards. Poor AEGIA just cant compete with the big guys.
 
Terra said:
I thought a NIC was a "network CPU"? :S

Terra...
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Only the more expensive ones. Cheap NICs tend to offload a lot of processing to the CPU.
 
drizzt81 said:
this ppu is a nice idea.. I guess I should get working on the next thing: AIPU - Artificial Intelligence Processing Unit and maybe a NPU (Network processing unit) and in no time, we will have ASICs for pretty much any task in a system with the CPU coordinating them...
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You mean like the Amiga Computer System?

Amiga's were built from the ground up to let the CPU offload tasks to each sub system, heck on an Amiga, even the floppy drive controller had it's own CPU (a 6801 if I remember right) and some games even used it for additional processing.

hmm, I just realized Elledan already brought this up.

==>Lazn
 
It goes back further than that... the Commodore 64 was loaded with custom chips to do the work. SID did the sound and VIC2 did the video (hardware scrolling and stuff). Way ahead of it's time. In some ways higher spec than some of the contemporary arcade machines. It was all ruled over by a 6510 (iirc) and the floppy drive also had a cpu in it too.

I'm just wondering if there'll be a universal accelerator in the future (hear me out on this). You have a PGA (Programmable Gate Array) with multiple cores (or just have multiple chips). These can be individually programmed for graphics, or physics, or the large arrays needed for convincing AI. A game will reprogram each core as needed. For example: a first person shooter will give 1 core to AI, 1 core to Physics, and 2 cores to graphics. But then you load up a turn-based strategy game and it gives 2 of the cores to AI, as that's more important. 1 each to physics and graphics, as the presentation is secondary.
 
ColinR said:
It goes back further than that... the Commodore 64 was loaded with custom chips to do the work. SID did the sound and VIC2 did the video (hardware scrolling and stuff). Way ahead of it's time. In some ways higher spec than some of the contemporary arcade machines. It was all ruled over by a 6510 (iirc) and the floppy drive also had a cpu in it too.

I'm just wondering if there'll be a universal accelerator in the future (hear me out on this). You have a PGA (Programmable Gate Array) with multiple cores (or just have multiple chips). These can be individually programmed for graphics, or physics, or the large arrays needed for convincing AI. A game will reprogram each core as needed. For example: a first person shooter will give 1 core to AI, 1 core to Physics, and 2 cores to graphics. But then you load up a turn-based strategy game and it gives 2 of the cores to AI, as that's more important. 1 each to physics and graphics, as the presentation is secondary.
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Great idea, but FPGAs have some major limitations right now. There are a few out there with built in MIPS CPU's with a PGA array around them that are quite cool, but it will be a while before that kind of device becomes common as a computer's main CPU. (outside of the embedded market that is, not enough computing power yet)

==>Lazn
 
As you can probably guess by what I have shown you above, simply having the NovodeX engine in the game isn't going to bring about any of the gameplay revolutions the AGEIA staff would want you to see. After all, a game developer that implements the NovodeX engine today, or even this year, knows that very few if any gamers will have a PPU in their system and has to then develop the game for the lowest common denominator (LCD). That means that any physics that is required for their game has to be simple enough to be run on a mid-level processor efficiently. PPU owners will only see an increase in performance in this case, but how much of an increase is a complete unknown for now.
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In other words, unless you have a midrange system, don't even bother for at least a year.
 
Seems to me that it would be almost impossible for a high end system to benefit from the PPU until....well.....for a long time. Games have to be programmed for non-ppu equipped pc's too, so therefore there can't be a revolutionary increase in physics complexity programmed into the game.

If I'm programming a game today, I'm programming it to get ~30 fps on a 3.0ghz (3000+) machine. A high end system will already be getting 60+ fps, so adding a ppu to the high end system only increases to 80fps (or whatever).

The mid range system though stands to benefit much more. Maybe now the 3.0 can crank 60fps.

 
ColinR said:
I'm just wondering if there'll be a universal accelerator in the future...
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I actually reckon there will be, from what I've seen GPU design is sort of going that way as it is (In fact, I think some bright spark already figured out a way to accelerate audio with an existing GPU).

The GPU in the xbox360 sure does more for the system than a traditional GPU.
 
jebo_4jc said:
Seems to me that it would be almost impossible for a high end system to benefit from the PPU until....well.....for a long time. Games have to be programmed for non-ppu equipped pc's too, so therefore there can't be a revolutionary increase in physics complexity programmed into the game.

If I'm programming a game today, I'm programming it to get ~30 fps on a 3.0ghz (3000+) machine. A high end system will already be getting 60+ fps, so adding a ppu to the high end system only increases to 80fps (or whatever).

The mid range system though stands to benefit much more. Maybe now the 3.0 can crank 60fps.

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Go download the program GoHack posted http://www.novodex.com/rocket/NovodexRocket_V1_1.exe and try to imagine if a high end system could run the bigbang demo, not bloody likely. With 17000 bricks my 3ghz p4 chokes along at 3fps.
 
forcefed said:
Go download the program GoHack posted http://www.novodex.com/rocket/NovodexRocket_V1_1.exe and try to imagine if a high end system could run the bigbang demo, not bloody likely. With 17000 bricks my 3ghz p4 chokes along at 3fps.
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I downloaded that demo yesterday and am looking forward to testing it....
2 things: First, I was considering 3ghz (or 3000+) as mid range (when it comes to gamers, anyway).

Second, my main point was that I don't think a developer would make a game with 17000 bricks because any system other than those who don't have a ppu will choke along with single digit fps. Why would a dev make a game unplayable for most of their target market?

The only thing I can see is making games with a non-ppu mode that simply eliminates debris. I blow up a building on my system, and a hole in the building appears. Somebody with a ppu blows up the building, and they see all the bricks, dust, etc. that I don't see.

Let's not even talk about multiplayer games. There's no way you can give non-ppu users the advantage of less fog and dust to cloud their view. Maybe just decrease their draw distance, I don't know. I'm going to stop rambling now and say that, in summary, devs have their work cut out for them to determine exactly how to implement a ppu when it's far from standard hardware.
 
jebo_4jc said:
Second, my main point was that I don't think a developer would make a game with 17000 bricks because any system other than those who don't have a ppu will choke along with single digit fps. Why would a dev make a game unplayable for most of their target market?
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You miss the point.... The devs would make 1 game, but with 2 novodex paths.

In the PPU accelerated path all 17000 objects would be calculated independently.

In the non-PPU accelerated path the 17000 objects would be told to group together into larger objects in such a way that at no time are more than a few hundred or so objects being calculated at one time.

So then the game would work on both systems but look more realistic on the PPU one. Problem solved, and this is exactly Ageia's intent to begin with.


 
I don’t see how they will be able to make 2 versions for multi-player games, the "world" you play in has to be the same for everyone , its not like just replacing a texture for a lower res one like can be done with graphic cards , either a object is there or it isn't.

I agree it’s easy to set different physics paths with single player games but MP is a whole other ballgame. say I got a PPU and I knock out a brick to make a hole in a wall to shoot thru, the other player doesn't have a PPU so for him either a big chunk of the wall is blown up exposing myself (if we use the many objects grouping together for non ppu player) or nothing in the wall is knocked out, making the guy appear to be shooting thru walls.

The problem is that these cards don't just change how things look, they change the world you play in. Maybe they won’t use any of the ppu things in MP. Maybe it will be only used for fluff and not really used in game play itself (which would be a shame). I don't know its a chicken or egg thing, developers wont want to code for it unless lots of people have them, and I sure as hell wont spent 300$ on something that might not really do anything for me (especially if it only adds fluff and not game play). Up to about 150$ I’d buy it without too much thought but not at 300$, I’ve been burned too many times before with unproven technology (Power VR comes to mind). Don't get me wrong, if they deliver on what they say and the problems can be worked out it will kick ass and be the best thing since sliced bread but they got their work cut out for them.

something else I’m kinda wondering is how will video cards keep up with all those new objects on screen, we're already for the most part GPU limited, what’s gonna happen when you have 20000 more objects on the screen, maybe that’s why its priced so high , maybe only people with sli setups can actually make any use of it so they figure they'll milk them for all they can.
 
Lint said:
*lots of stuff*
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Good post, and you said my thoughts exactly. I see how having two different versions of single player games works, but I don't see how multiplayer could benefit, other than accelerating mid range systems. You can't have thick, wavy, real-time grass on a ppu enabled system, and no grass on a non-ppu system. This problem is much different than the old school "software" and "hardware" 3d modes, which helped ease the growing pains of 3d card hardware back in the day--our problems aren't solved simply by having 2 separate modes.
The question about 3d cards keeping up with the additional objects is a valid one, also.
 
i don't know how it will work with MP games

but at the least it could offload all the physics to the PPU providing a performance increase with the CPU doing other things
 
I'd personally love to see a dual core system attempt the physics demo's that have been made......
Unless, of course, we are simply going to run into the same old problem of the code not being SMP optimized.
 
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