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

[tycho102]

Which two games does that Aega work on?

To my understanding, it's just another processor (vector, not general). You're just reducing the strain of the engine -- like the "Havok" engine, which really is a mega drain with any game it's linked to -- on the main processor, freeing it up for AI and graphics.

It's a good idea, but if games were multi-threaded in the first place, that dedicated vector processor wouldn't be needed. It's a half-assed solution to the fundamental problem of serial processes.

[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!

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by tycho102

Which two games does that Aega work on?

To my understanding, it's just another processor (vector, not general). You're just reducing the strain of the engine -- like the "Havok" engine, which really is a mega drain with any game it's linked to -- on the main processor, freeing it up for AI and graphics.

It's a good idea, but if games were multi-threaded in the first place, that dedicated vector processor wouldn't be needed. It's a half-assed solution to the fundamental problem of serial processes.

Multithreaded games are starting to appear. Here are some I know of off the top of my head:

Quake 3

Quake 4

Oblivion

Call of Duty 2

Falcon 4 Allied Force


There are some games on the way too:

UT 2007 (How many revs are we going to get of this game? I was happy with plain old UT!)

Far Cry 2

I am not aware of anymore than this this however.

-S

PS. Is Doom 3 multithreaded?

[tycho102]

Doom 3 isn't multithreaded, and neither is Resurrection of Evil v1.03.

Half-Life 2 is multithreaded, and I will add quite well to that description. The game didn't ship multithreaded, but that 700MB "Protocol 7" update made it MT.

[CB..]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

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!

yes they caught me out a few time as well---after the fight i would often find myself trying to figure out how they got behind me--and discover a hidden room hypo spray etc--the rag doll physics were excellent as well- over all tho the game kinda petered out half way thru--

i reckon the game devs got caught up in genital measure-ing contest with each other-- over who had the most advanced graphics engine and forgot what they were meant to be doing was creating games--

i still reckon game graphics are closer to graphic art than anything else--and a lot more could be done with a lot less if they followed the same principles...take a wander round the local art gallery and look at some old masters--no fancy effects there just straight forward colour on canvas--
you could bring the graphics in a game even as old as AOTD right up to date simply by applying the same principles--a texture is a texture is a texture--it's just a piece of "canvas" with colour apllied--same problems same soloutions--but i reckon that might be a bit to obvious lol????

for example the ships in SH3---are all painted with texture files--better the painter who makes the textures the better the ships will look--some enterprising soul could even have gone round taking colour photographs of similar ships and used those to texture the ships--photo realism--allmost literaly lol--but instead of hiring a top rate artist to paint/draw the textures --they do a half assed job of it and spend the money of fancy lighting effects which half the time you don't really notice--

it's all a bit "scew whiff" best way to get decent graphics in games is get a decent graphical artist to paint the textures--

then all the extra CPU cycles saved by not needing fancy lighting effects could be spent on genuine gameplay elements such as the AI etc--i still reckon most game devs these days are "pulling a fast one"--

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by CB..

yes they caught me out a few time as well---after the fight i would often find myself trying to figure out how they got behind me--and discover a hidden room hypo spray etc--the rag doll physics were excellent as well- over all tho the game kinda petered out half way thru--

i reckon the game devs got caught up in genital measure-ing contest with each other-- over who had the most advanced graphics engine and forgot what they were meant to be doing was creating games--

i still reckon game graphics are closer to graphic art than anything else--and a lot more could be done with a lot less if they followed the same principles...take a wander round the local art gallery and look at some old masters--no fancy effects there just straight forward colour on canvas--
you could bring the graphics in a game even as old as AOTD right up to date simply by applying the same principles--a texture is a texture is a texture--it's just a piece of "canvas" with colour apllied--same problems same soloutions--but i reckon that might be a bit to obvious lol????

for example the ships in SH3---are all painted with texture files--better the painter who makes the textures the better the ships will look--some enterprising soul could even have gone round taking colour photographs of similar ships and used those to texture the ships--photo realism--allmost literaly lol--but instead of hiring a top rate artist to paint/draw the textures --they do a half assed job of it and spend the money of fancy lighting effects which half the time you don't really notice--

it's all a bit "scew whiff" best way to get decent graphics in games is get a decent graphical artist to paint the textures--

then all the extra CPU cycles saved by not needing fancy lighting effects could be spent on genuine gameplay elements such as the AI etc--i still reckon most game devs these days are "pulling a fast one"--

My thoughts exactly on FEAR. Half Way through, the hair raising on the back of my neck stopped. Turned into just another shooter. I must admit though, I did fire off a couple shots at a ghost at least once in that game.

I don't mind all the fancy lighting and kinda of like it actually. But I'd rather have gameplay over fancy graphics, and I'd even rather have good sound and music over fancy graphics. You might say it all needs to be a balanced package in my opinion.

-S

[CB..]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

My thoughts exactly on FEAR. Half Way through, the hair raising on the back of my neck stopped. Turned into just another shooter. I must admit though, I did fire off a couple shots at a ghost at least once in that game.

the girl at the top of the ladder completely freaked me out!!!
the point where i lost interest was when they introduced the mid game bosses--and they turned out to be big stompy robots-- not mind staggeringly scary "somethings!" like you from then on in it was just another FPS it was allmost as if they got half way thru and changed their minds about it being a horror story--very dissapointing--had me jumping out of my skin for the first half--

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by CB..

the girl at the top of the ladder completely freaked me out!!!
the point where i lost interest was when they introduced the mid game bosses--and they turned out to be big stompy robots-- not mind staggeringly scary "somethings!" like you from then on in it was just another FPS it was allmost as if they got half way thru and changed their minds about it being a horror story--very dissapointing--had me jumping out of my skin for the first half--

Exactly! - now you know where I shot my couple shots off! I saw the girl at the top of the ladder and that freaked me out to start with, and then when you reach the bottom the guy walking up to you is where I let the bullets fly! Probably one of the very few times a game has made me shoot at ghosts!

-S

[SUBMAN1]

Now that I think about it, they should have made the girl an object to FEAR. Have her be able to damage you every now and then so that she even freaked you out more. But that can be left ofr episode 2 since she is still alive after the nuke goes off.

-S