Widescreen Gaming Forum

Well, it's just a matter of taste don't ya think.
I personally would like it to have 3rd person.
I'm still going to buy it though.

I'm happy with 1st person ... as the original was ... 8)

The option to switch to 3rd person would have attracted a few more to buy ... I think ...

Blam......you hit the nail on the head once again Paddy. :)

My random thoughts on the physics accelerator..

1) It sounds awesome and obviosuly it would make gaming a lot more fun and more realistic.

2) I hope they come up with one solution that will become standard and supported by all vendors (not another X vs. Y war) and that this will be built into either video cards, chipsets or whatever because as a $300 add-on card this will not survive long. Because in order to make games take full advantage of it, these games would have to rquire it, they wouldn't be playable without the graphics coprocessor. Most likely the gameplay will rely on modifiable environments and advanced physics and won't be playable without. You can't scale this down the way yo can scale graphics between different levels of video card performance. So, how many game developers will be brave enough to release a game that requires a $300 add on? Or they will need two versions of the game. So, this has to be cheaper and it has to become a standard or it'll die.

3) It may turn out that if quad-core CPUs with math coprocessors arrive there won't be that much need for dedicated physics processor. Even though it'll be faster that even the fatest general purpose CPU the economics will decide here.

4) Despite he fact that this sounds excting, I wouldn't jump on it too soon, don't want to end up with a $300 piece of hardware that won't even serve well as a paperwight. There must be strong game support for it.

I would buy it for GRAW alone ... :mrgreen: :shock: :D :lol:

I would buy it for GRAW alone ... :mrgreen: :shock: :D :lol:

Heh...

This just reinforces the idea that you're made of money, mate. :D :mrgreen:

Well ... when it comes to games ... :lol:
... and GRAW is probably going to be among the best ... I can't help myself ... :roll:

Fair enough. :D

Normally I only get this enthusiastic about a Final Fantasy game... ;) oh, wait, and Devil May Cry... :lol:

Without having played GRAW, Paddy could be right. The first Ghost Recon was ground-breaking and incredibly good (still playable today to a degree)... no reason why this couldn't be the same.

Well... I did buy an Xbox just to play Halo, but I won't do anything like this again. $300 just to play one game? Not worth it.

I would buy it for GRAW alone ... :mrgreen: :shock: :D :lol:

I second that.

And the next UT game will support it. What else do you need?! :D

And it's only money. Go ahead, spend it. We'll make more! :lol:

I just downloaded the hi-def version of cellfactor...

err.... nice!!!

I think the cloth and flowing material physics are amazing.

Imagine gaming characters having real-time clothing which is effected by stuff going on around the character? Being hit with a sword would actually tear the fabric etc...

I think the physX card is going to be a huge leap forward in gaming realism.

I heard about PPU's about 18 months ago, but hadn't heard anything else till now.

I'm excited :D

Imagine gaming characters having real-time clothing which is effected by stuff going on around the character? Being hit with a sword would actually tear the fabric etc...

Lara Croft comes to mind..... :roll: :shock:

Oeh, you're such a dirty guy Neo. :lol:

You might want to reconsider purchasing an additional card to do physics, espeically when you see this: Physx Demo

My random thoughts on the physics accelerator..

1) It sounds awesome and obviosuly it would make gaming a lot more fun and more realistic.

2) I hope they come up with one solution that will become standard and supported by all vendors (not another X vs. Y war) and that this will be built into either video cards, chipsets or whatever because as a $300 add-on card this will not survive long. Because in order to make games take full advantage of it, these games would have to rquire it, they wouldn't be playable without the graphics coprocessor. Most likely the gameplay will rely on modifiable environments and advanced physics and won't be playable without. You can't scale this down the way yo can scale graphics between different levels of video card performance. So, how many game developers will be brave enough to release a game that requires a $300 add on? Or they will need two versions of the game. So, this has to be cheaper and it has to become a standard or it'll die.

3) It may turn out that if quad-core CPUs with math coprocessors arrive there won't be that much need for dedicated physics processor. Even though it'll be faster that even the fatest general purpose CPU the economics will decide here.

4) Despite he fact that this sounds excting, I wouldn't jump on it too soon, don't want to end up with a $300 piece of hardware that won't even serve well as a paperwight. There must be strong game support for it.

I read somewhere that ageia have said that the processor can be incorporated into other devices such as motherboards and graphics cards. Wouldnt it be better to just buy it once though? Instead of having to buy it seperately loads of times.

Either way i cant see it being integrated for a while simply because of the cost of it, its a little to expensive to do that at the moment.

Having the PPU as part of the motherboard is how i first read about the system as well.

So you'd have the CPU, northbridge, southbridge, PPU etc all as part of the mobo rather than as a seperate card.

Sounds like a better idea to me.

the physics cards from BFG have another noisy "shitty" fan too... looks like unless they change them a bit i will have to WC mine ;) when i see how much UT improves anyway, but thats months away ;) :P

the asus cards look like they have a better fan gilly... reading an article about Nvidia doing their own physics too, maybe using a single card out of an sli system just to handle the physics. seems a bit weird to me, losing a whole card, but they seemed to have teamed up with a large software manufacturer who had done alot of stuff for all the big gaming names. looks like a nice rift in gaming will happen again, so nvidia, ati and Physix machines will al handle games differently :( who says monopolies are a bad thing :)

The one big question i have about PPU's is one that nobody can answer.

I am willing to bet there will be a first/second/third generation PPU... all progressively faster and able to handle more 'effects'. So how will that effect games?

For example, if i buy a Physix PPU, in 2yrs time will I have to upgrade that because UT2009 requires an "Physix GTX Platinum Ultra XT"? I think we all know the answer will be "yes".

At the moment PPU's are being marketed as offering special effects. But PPU's will actually do more- they will affect gameplay. So if a person with a slow PPU throws 20 barrels in a game, a person with a faster PPU might be able to throw 60 barrels... and that will effect the gameplay.

I'm finding it hard to formulate my question into words, but what i'm trying to say is the PPU will become another dependant component of game-performance. No longer will making a game run be dependant on CPU/GPU/RAM.... we'll also need the lastest PPU to get maximum performance.

So from a pragmatic point of view, it makes more sense for nVidia & ATi to handle PPU calculations on their video cards -- because upgrading video cards is better all round than having to upgrade these + a PPU.


i hope i've got my point across.... it's been a long day, i'm tired, and i really have tried my best to convey this. good on u for trying. :)