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Monday, March 20 2006

nVidia Gets Physical  by Craig D at 18:45

PC
Saw on The Inquirer this morning that nVidia and Havoc had demonstrated hardware physics on a GeForce GPU. Interesting stuff.

This press release gives more information.

Through Havok FX, GPUs can simulate the interactions of thousands of colliding rigid bodies, a fundamental technique of physics computation seen in today's latest games. It's now possible to compute the components of friction, collisions, gravity, mass, and velocity that form the basis of rigid body physics. Havok FX is designed for GPUs supporting Shader Model 3.0, including the NVIDIA GeForce 6 and 7 Series GPUs.

Utilizing Havok FX and NVIDIA graphics technology, game developers can now implement sophisticated physical phenomenon such as debris, smoke, and fluids that add immense detail and believability to game environments. Game designers can include advanced physics effects without burdening the CPU and slowing game-play, since the effects are simulated and rendered on the GPU.

What does this mean for the upcoming PhysX card? Or indeed, the Playstation 3?
Comments
Tricky
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21 March 2006 12:23
There was an article a while back about using the ATI card in the Xbox 360 for physics. Something like using a third of its power for physics.. which since the GPU is better at physics calculations than a CPU it would be processing more calculations than the cpu could and just take up a 1/3 of the shader power in the GPU. Might have been TomsHardware or something..
Tricky
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21 March 2006 13:21
Another interesting Inq article here. In response to your question, phyiscs on a GPU is still peanuts compared to PhysX accroding to Inq.
Mani
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21 March 2006 13:24
Aye, read that this morning. I'm still hoping those PPU's take off.


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