Thoughts on Physics cards next to your graphics card anyone?

[SUBMAN1]

I want a Physics card, but I am thinking they are way to pricey for the 2 games they support right now. There are 100 games in the works that will use these cards in the not too distant future, but I am on the fence on whether or not to get one right now???!!! If they were below $200, I'd buy it I think, but not at almost $300.

Does anyone have one of these things yet? Or am I being the guinea pig?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

-S

[Konovalov]

I will wait till it 'matures' before I seriously consider buying one.

[CB..]

oh great we get uber graphics --uber physics--and AI that can't think it self out of a paper bag---if they include some cross-over between the physics and the AI (so the AI can use the more advanced physics lets say on a World War One Biplane for example--) the ok other wise---it depends what they use it for--if they use it purely for modelling buildings collapsing then it's just another form of graphics card IMO--eye candy nothing else--

if they use it for correctly modelling the stall on a Sopwith camel- or dynamics of a ship plowing thru heavy seas perhaps--or the handling of a formula one car--then ok--fine

me i'd much rather have brilliantly intelligent and human AI pilots flying poor aircraft--then poor dumb AI pilots flying aircraft with hugely complex physics--(they wont be able to do it for a start off---lawn darts a go go)

had to come tho---a combine physics and AI card yes definitely--if they are talking about physics in terms of simulations then they are going to need enhanced AI to make it work any way--

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by CB..

oh great we get uber graphics --uber physics--and AI that can't think it self out of a paper bag---if they include some cross-over between the physics and the AI (so the AI can use the more advanced physics lets say on a World War One Biplane for example--) the ok other wise---it depends what they use it for--if they use it purely for modelling buildings collapsing then it's just another form of graphics card IMO--eye candy nothing else--

if they use it for correctly modelling the stall on a Sopwith camel- or dynamics of a ship plowing thru heavy seas perhaps--or the handling of a formula one car--then ok--fine

me i'd much rather have brilliantly intelligent and human AI pilots flying poor aircraft--then poor dumb AI pilots flying aircraft with hugely complex physics--(they wont be able to do it for a start off---lawn darts a go go)

had to come tho---a combine physics and AI card yes definitely--if they are talking about physics in terms of simulations then they are going to need enhanced AI to make it work any way--

That is the point - your CPU can be left to handle nothing but AI and the base system + game engine. All math intensive physics can be offloaded to the physics board leaving plenty of CPU power open to be utilized on AI.

There are some games that will be released shortly that will start to 'require' some sort of physics processor, and if you have none, you can't play.

ATI and NVidia already have some sort of strategy. ATI says both the x1800 and x1900 series of boards will utilize spare cycles for physics (Not sure I want my GPU doing this over graphics after playing Oblivion which can still drag my x1900 XTX down in places), and NVidia says they can do the same with the 7800 and 7900. ATI takes it one step further though in that they say when you upgrade to a new video card, you can use your old card for pure physics processing.

I am not sure about the NVIdia and ATI approach since it is not an 'optimized' engine they are trying to use for Physics calcs like the Aegia engine is. We will see how this plays out in the future. You may get stuck having to buy a $300 board in addition to a $650 graphics board - which equals $1000 worth of hardware - just to have decent gameplay in the future. Are we being drained of our pocket books through the 'wow' factor???

-S

[CB..]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

We will see how this plays out in the future. You may get stuck having to buy a $300 board in addition to a $650 graphics board - which equals $1000 worth of hardware - just to have decent gameplay in the future. Are we being drained of our pocket books through the 'wow' factor???

-S

that's what i suspect i have to say--they have been draining us dry with never ending graphics card up-grades--now the graphics side has sort of reached a plateaux--they are fishing around for other ways to fleece us dry---sooner or later as you say we will be paying huge amounts of money to have AI that won't actually be any better than the destroyers in AOTD or the soldiers in Half Life 1--

i like the idea- but just don't think they're doing it to gives us better gameplay---better gameplay is cheap and easy and can be run on a PII 300mghz with 16 mb of graphics ram-- it's like the guy who steals your garden furniture then runs round the front of the house knocks on your door and sells it back to you at a vastly inflated price --then moans at all the problems he had carting the bench fron the back of your house to the front--and demands a tip--

[PeriscopeDepth]

IIRC, MS is working on a physics API.

PD

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by CB..

that's what i suspect i have to say--they have been draining us dry with never ending graphics card up-grades--now the graphics side has sort of reached a plateaux--they are fishing around for other ways to fleece us dry---sooner or later as you say we will be paying huge amounts of money to have AI that won't actually be any better than the destroyers in AOTD or the soldiers in Half Life 1--

i like the idea- but just don't think they're doing it to gives us better gameplay---better gameplay is cheap and easy and can be run on a PII 300mghz with 16 mb of graphics ram-- it's like the guy who steals your garden furniture then runs round the front of the house knocks on your door and sells it back to you at a vastly inflated price --then moans at all the problems he had carting the bench fron the back of your house to the front--and demands a tip--

Yeah, I think we have reached a platue too in the graphics department. I mean, cooler stuff will come down the line like HDR recently, but for the most part, no one company is going to spend 2 years just creating chracter models to make use of too much more GPU power. Yeah - great - the card can push a ton of pixels, but who wants to spend the time to program it? They will just compensate by putting more objects instead of better looking objects. Of course there will be a few games that make use of it, but the time they spend making good looking models will be lost in the gameplay department. It will be a lackluster game meant for eye candy only. Anyway, maybe I am being too negative, but I feel a lot of games are just cookie cutter games these days and people are trying to just make it look better than past games without making better or different revolutionary gameplay.

-S

PS. THe AI in FEAR was pretty good. Many times I found myself doubling back to shoot the enemy in the back and I ran into the enemy face to face trying to do the same thing to me!