For a long time, graphics have been 'the thing' - games have been constantly striving to improve the graphics, make them more realistic, with better reflections and shadowing, and less jaggies. Now, graphics are reaching a peak, and people are looking for new areas to improve upon - such as AI and physics.
The Ageia PhysX chip is an example of this. Instead of tying up processor time with particle effects, collisions, and other physics related effects, their idea is to offer a dedicated Physics Processing Unit which will take the load off the CPU and allow it to focus on other areas. Let the GPU handle graphics, the PPU handle physics, and the CPU handle stuff like AI.
In principle, it makes sense, but how does it work in practice?
Installation of the PhysX card is simple - stick it in the PCI slot, plug a power connector into it, boot up your machine and install the drivers.
Well, at the last count there were over 60 developers working on games using Ageia PhysX, with the list of actual titles reaching 100. The PhysX card comes with a game called Cell Factor that showcases the Physics engine. The game is essentially multi-player deathmatch, but with new and interesting ways to kill people such as throwing barrels at them, catching them in explosions, or making them fall to their doom. These new 'PhysX kills' are fun, but in my opinion not that special.
The real benefit of the physics chip, in my opinio, is in enhancing existing games.
The best example so far is Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Myself and Blaze, our head gamer, played some Co-Op matches. His machine had the Physics chip in, and I used the software emulation mode. The difference was quite pronounced.
GRAW is quite a serious and tactical game. You need to keep your eyes open, and use any cues you can to find out where the enemy is. He could see where gun shots were coming from a lot more easily than I could. When a bullet went past a palm tree, the leaves moved. Some of the particle effects did seem a bit out of place, but for the most part, they really enhanced the gaming experience. The game that I once thought had great graphics and realistic animation seems flat and lifeless on my machine compared to the extra, physics enabled effects seen with the Ageia PhysX card.
For the test, we used a fresh install of GRAW with the most recent patch installed. Some people have reported clipping errors / objects sinking into scenery when using hardware Physics. We did not have this problem, and found that there was a large improvement in the game with hardware physics turned on. Explosions are bigger, things 'bounce' more naturally, and items seem to have the correct 'weight' (a small, light object hit by a bullet will respond differently to a bigger one).
Another Ageia supporting game of note is City of Villains - the new Mayhem expansion (which allows Villains to go into City of Heroes areas and destroy stuff for points) utilises the physics engine to good effect, making the destruction you cause even more impressive.
There are some that feel that a processor dedicated to physics is overkill, and there are GPU based physics solutions in the works where you can dedicate one GPU in an SLI / Crossfire setup to phsyics and another to graphics. This may work for people who do not wish to squeeze every last drop of performance out of their setup, but seriously, if you can afford a PCI-Express motherboard and two graphics cards, then surely you can afford an Ageia PhysX card too? There is a performance increase to be seen from SLI for graphics - why give that up for Physics when you could have both?
It will be hard to compare the two solutions, since so far Havok and Ageia are only supported in different games. If a developer ever pays the license for both, it will be a good chance to test, but for now we are limited to subjective testing only.
There are some that feel that software physics is a viable option - especially on Dual core machines. Again, that is possible, but performance for non-dual core owners would be an option. For some, purchasing a PCI card to do physics for them, even at a price of around 150 pounds, is preferable to having to replace their CPU - and with it, likely their motherboard, and perhaps even graphics card if they ended up buying a motherboard without AGP.
I suspect that the first round of Physics cards will be like the first round of 3D cards or sound cards - adopted only by the few that live on the bleeding edge of technology. Some will say 'Who needs it?' - I confess, I was like that about the benefits of sound in FPS-es, but now I love to hear where the bullet came from. Eventually, however, I think everyone will feel the need for one.
The list of titles supporting Ageia is growing. My suggestion to gamers would be to keep an eye on the list, and if a game you play appears on it, get the card.
As time goes on, it will become a must have.
