Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For gamers, it’s exploding tankers, roaring flames, shattering windows, and splattering blood. Processing all that ultraviolence is the work of a dedicated graphics card. But glitches in the way stuff moves often destroy the illusion: Real-world physics is so hard to replicate that designers resort to smoke-and-mirrors simulations. That’s where Ageia’s new PhysX card comes in. The multicore chip, currently shipping with some Dell machines, is engineered to re-create Newtonian physics, a potential breakthrough in bone-crunching realism. We took it for a test frag with the upcoming CellFactor: Combat Training.
– Brian Lam
Explosions
Most in-game explosion effects are prerendered animations that don’t really interact with the surrounding environment. In CellFactor, explosions produce dangerous shrapnel that can wound players and damage other objects. The PhysX card tracks thousands of moving parts – glass shattering into tiny shards; giant concrete pipes crumbling into bits; crates, barrels, and other debris flying around.
Fabric
Depicting realistic cloth is one of the most processor-intensive jobs – it can take thousands of linked segments to create a single piece of fabric. Most games don’t even try: A clothlike texture is just painted on a character’s body. The PhysX card dresses characters in layers of virtual fabric that are subject to bullet holes and tearing. It can even simulate materials of various thicknesses, elasticities, and types (think silk versus burlap).
Carnage
In current games, geysers of blood are scripted, their speed and trajectory as predictable as Old Faithful. But with a multicore physics processor, fire a few rounds through an enemy’s neck and the gore is in full effect: Liquid sprays realistically, flows over clothes, drips down walls, and pools on the ground. The stuff even splashes when players walk through it.
Ageia’s new PhysX card
In CellFactor, explosions produce dangerous shrapnel that can wound players and damage other objects.
The PhysX card dresses characters in layers of virtual fabric that are subject to bullet holes and tearing.
With a multicore physics processor, fire a few rounds through an enemyés neck and the gore is in full effect: Liquid sprays realistically, flows over clothes, drips down walls, and pools on the ground. The stuff even splashes when players walk through it.
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Reality Chip
