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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land FiringSquad got in touch with NVIDIA recently to chat about its acquisition of PhysX designer AGEIA. I found it a curious decision, considering NVIDIA’s GPUs support Havok’s hardware-accelerated physics implementation, not to mention PhysX hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm.
Now it looks like NVIDIA’s plans for AGEIA’s technology aren’t just games-related.
You can head on over to FiringSquad for the entire interview, however, here’s the meatiest part of the short talk:
Second, the computer industry is moving towards a heterogeneous computing model, combining a flexible CPU and a massively parallel processor like the GPU to perform computationally intensive applications like real-time computer graphics. Physics is a natural for processing on the GPU because, like graphics, it is made up of thousands of parallel computations, and with our CUDA technology, which is rapidly becoming one of the most pervasive parallel computing programming environments in history, we can open this exciting parallel processing world to applications desperate for a giant step in computing performance—such as physics processing, computer vision, video/image processing, and a world of exciting applications we’ve not yet imagined.
What I’m getting from this is that NVIDIA isn’t so much interested in AGEIA for hardware-accelerated physics in games, but more what the massively parallel design of the hardware can be used for in certain general processing tasks. This is something AGEIA’s PPU and the GPU have in common.
Is NVIDIA looking to take on Intel and AMD? There’s definitely a place for this sort of hardware in specialised markets.
NVIDIA AGEIA PhysX Acquisition Interview [FiringSquad]
NVIDIA today confirmed rumblings that they were looking to buy physics-centric AGEIA Technologies. NVIDIA saied an agreement to acquire the industry leaders in gaming physics, though the acquisition still remains subject to some closing conditions.
More details about the deal will shake out during NVIDIA’s upcoming quarterly conference call, set for Feb. 13.
While AGEIA appears to continue to struggle breaking into the mainstream PC market, they’ve made significant in-roads into the console market with 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC. The company has more than 10,000 registered and active users of their PhysX software development kit as well.
“NVIDIA is the perfect fit for us. They have the world’s best parallel computing technology and are the thought leaders in GPUs and gaming. We are united by a common culture based on a passion for innovating and driving the consumer experience,” said Manju Hegde, co-founder and CEO of AGEIA.
Full release on the jump. I wonder if NVIDIA would try to come up with a way to incorporate the PhysX engine into a graphics card, instead of requiring two pieces of hardware? Maybe that’s not possible, actually.
Ageia’s PhysX cards, specialised components that support in-game physics just as a video card supports graphics, haven’t really taken the world by storm. Why? My guess is that, among other reasons, it’s tough enough for consumers to pony up $US 200 when they need a new graphics card, let alone an extra $US 130-$US 180 on top of that. But in Japan, PhysX will have a chance to address the price barrier. Because Japanese graphics card manufacturer ELSA is going to begin selling PhysX cards for just 6000 yen (or about $US 50).
And when ordering a new computer, checking a $US 50 box rings of “impulse buy” a lot more than a card running three times that price. Seriously, $US 50 in computers is the grocery store checkout equivalent of a Mars bar and an issue of Cosmo. (Which, by the way, makes for a great Friday night if you are short on plans).
PhysX Cards At $50 In Japan [digitalbattle]
NetDevil’s PhysX-powered, totally dhttp://blogs.gawker.com/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=327604&blog_id=9&saved_changes=1# Upload Fileestructible (mostly) shooter Warmonger, Operation: Downtown Destruction is now available for free download on the official site.
It’s worth noting that not only is the game free, it doesn’t actually require AGEIA’s PhysX card to play. You need the card to get the total experience, but don’t let that stop you from checking it out if you don’t have one.
Here are the official requirements:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6400 (2MB L2 Cache,2.13GHz,1066) or equivalent RAM: 2GB RAM GPU: Nvidia 7900 graphics card or equivalent PPU: PhysX 100 Series Processor strongly recommended, with system software 7.11.13 or later HD: 1.8GB of available space
Egads. This well and truly marks the end of AGEIA and its PhysX hardware physics processor. Havok already has a commanding lead – or should that be a monopoly – on the physics middleware business, and this will only make it bigger, better and more ragdoll-y.
So, it’s up to Unreal Tournament 3 to bring back the biff for AGEIA – but I don’t see that happening. Take BioShock, based on Unreal Engine 3, which includes PhysX by default. 2K Australia/2K Boston went to the trouble of replacing PhysX with Havok. When you consider the former is free while the latter is not… well, it’s bad tidings for AGEIA indeed.
Full press release after the jump.
The Ubisoft Montreal folks showed off some spectacular Far Cry 2 gameplay today touching on a laundry list of new features there shooter will have including the need to treat your own injuries, weapon jams, “Real Tree” technology and their thoughts on DX10, Games for Windows Live and the PhysX physics card.
The game takes place in a 50 kilometer open world set in Africa with view distances of about 850 metres. You drop into this world as a mercenary sent to track down and kill an arms dealer. Right off the bat the developers dropped into a jungle to show off the graphics.
“Far Cry is sort of known for its jungles… Jungles are not our signature location, but they do kick ass.”
