"plop!" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)
> See the new physics chip is out in the UK - will there be any benefit
> to current games or is it a case of waiting to see what games are
> written to support this new technology (and what ATI and Nvidia do)?

It seems Microsoft is getting into the act. The "Windows Graphics and
Gaming Technology group is looking for a software design engineer to join a
growing team responsible for developing Direct Physics. This team is
responsible for delivering a great leap forwards in the way game developers
think about integrating Physics into their engines."

http://members.microsoft.com/careers...a-633186d96261

However, buried in the text is a reference to GPU based physics
acceleration, so Direct Physics will probably look more like the Havoc SDK
than the Aegis engine. I can't say if that will kill Aegis off but
certainly the game developers will be taking notice of this.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...eia-physx.html


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"Ed Light" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:ileng.359$lv.243@fed1read12
> http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...eia-physx.html

I wasn't criticising the Aegis PPU per se. However, consider these factors:

1. Calculating physics effects requires massive parallelism.

2. GPUs are massively parallel.

3. Nvidia and ATI have lots of experience building massively parallel GPUs.

4. Microsoft's Direct Physics seems to be GPU based.

5. Microsoft has strong ties to Nvidia and ATI.

Where does all that leave a small company like Aegis, especially since their
PPU has its own APIs. Will game developers put the effort into supporting
that as well as the platform independent DirectX/Direct Physics APIs?

* DRS:

> Where does all that leave a small company like Aegis, especially since their
> PPU has its own APIs. Will game developers put the effort into supporting
> that as well as the platform independent DirectX/Direct Physics APIs?

IMHO the Aegis card is just a dead horse. Currently it can do much more
than GPU-based physics engines but there still is very weak support by
current games. Of course there are several announcements about support
for that card but once the standards are set for GPU-based physics
calculations the Aegis card probably will be history.

Benjamin