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Hello PPU!

Sett
polycounter lvl 18
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Sett polycounter lvl 18
"...such cards can handle up to 50000 rigid bones. A CPU can do a couple hundred at the most. "

http://theinquirer.net/?article=21648

Now this is what I've been waiting for. Imagine 100 pawns runnig at you. Detonate a bomb into the middle of the pack. 800 body parts fly in 800 directions. Now that's fun!

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  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    I like it i like it alot!
  • CheapAlert
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    CheapAlert polycounter lvl 18
    "Big guys like Gabe Novell, the developer of Half Life 2, asked for more physics and Jon Carmak of Doom 3 wanted the same."

    Heh, lost twins?
  • ElysiumGX
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    ElysiumGX polycounter lvl 18
    That's without a doubt one of the worst written articles I've read in weeks. Yay alliteration!

    The technology sounds impressive. I wanna see demos, especially of water. NOW!
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    Hmmm, somehow I doubt this will sell well, but you never know, maybe it will be the next "3dfx voodoo1" (oh the memories wink.gif ).

    Edit: with the upcomming multicore CPUs it is much more likely that one of these paralell cores will be used for computing physics. Might not be as optimised, but a full 4ghz cpu just for physics (and currently they plan 2 and 4 core multicore cpus, but in the future there might be even more cores in one cpu) should be more than enought (hmmm, but didn't B.Gates say that about floppy disks too???)
  • CheapAlert
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    CheapAlert polycounter lvl 18
    WIND POWER = the new bilinear filter!
    AIR CURRENTS = the next lens flare!
  • ElysiumGX
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    ElysiumGX polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    WIND POWER... AIR CURRENTS

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Think of the possibilities! I could create a WW2 game!
  • TomDunne
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    TomDunne polycounter lvl 18
    That *is* a poorly written article. "Liquid fluids"? Apparently the text was edited by the department of redundency department...
  • John Warner
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    John Warner polycounter lvl 18
    I'm not sure if i completely understand one thing

    if this card can do the physics on 50,000 bones, that still sounds like a lot more than the graphics card or the cpu can process as far as the geometry that's attached to it.

    3 spine bones, 4 arm, 4 leg, 4 foot, 15 hand bones, makes 30 bones, on a few-thousand-or-so poly model. 30 goes into 50,000 1666 times. that's 1,666 models on screen.

    obviously this ppu thing is amazing, and it's going to speed up games, and you're not going to have that many models on the screen at once ANYWAY, but it still seems that claiming it can do 50,000 bones is a bit of a bottleneck, because i can't immagine a way that there's going to be 50,000 bones worth of geo on the screen. unless i'm missing.. something.....??
  • gauss
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    gauss polycounter lvl 18
    yes, a PPU card would be a huge leg-up on the next generation (or so) of games, but that'd be hard to sell on its own. what will happen if they're smart is ATI or Nvidia will partner up/buy out one of these PPU companies and then the PPUs will start to be on your next graphic cards. that'd be the logical thing... PPUs would have doubtful marketability on their own.
  • Dravalen
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    Dravalen polycounter lvl 18
    Chances are you won't be using it just for model physics. There's a host of other things you could apply it towards I'm sure but I haven't read too much on it.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    John: If bones no longer were an issue I'd go ahead with my 150+ bone rigs that consist 3/4th of dynamic bones (cloth simulation). It's all just a matter of trying.

    With the upcoming multiprocessor consoles I guess you're free to let one or two processors handle only physics. The remaining game logic isn't very demanding. Perhaps AI might take some power but what's left is probably little enough that even Cheapy's PCs could handle it. If we put more and more tasks into dedicated chips the CPU will soon be pretty useless which will create the dilemma of technically not needing a good CPU and the marketing pressure of claiming the MHz crown.

    On the other hand I doubt it's physics that make Perimeter slow to a crawl in larger battles even on an Athlon 64 3000, 1GB RAM and a GeForce6800...

    And PPU or not, it would still choke on Clonk's physics.
  • skankerzero
    [ QUOTE ]
    John: If bones no longer were an issue I'd go ahead with my 150+ bone rigs that consist 3/4th of dynamic bones (cloth simulation). It's all just a matter of trying.

    With the upcoming multiprocessor consoles I guess you're free to let one or two processors handle only physics. The remaining game logic isn't very demanding. Perhaps AI might take some power but what's left is probably little enough that even Cheapy's PCs could handle it. If we put more and more tasks into dedicated chips the CPU will soon be pretty useless which will create the dilemma of technically not needing a good CPU and the marketing pressure of claiming the MHz crown.

    On the other hand I doubt it's physics that make Perimeter slow to a crawl in larger battles even on an Athlon 64 3000, 1GB RAM and a GeForce6800...

    And PPU or not, it would still choke on Clonk's physics.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    One of our next gen characters has 150 - 180 bones just in the hair...
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    And to think, i was happy with my 10 bones for a whole body...
  • John Warner
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    John Warner polycounter lvl 18
    skanker! that's awesome! i stand corrected.

    and i suppose that come to think of it, because you can't do morph targets in games (inless you can in next gen stuff) then you'll probably have to rig the hell out of the face, too.. and bones for armour that shifts about, etcetc. yah, silly me. sometimes i forget about stuff like that.
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    Someone I know who got to see some demos of this stuff a few months back said that Id tried to get Nvidia to integrate them into their cards. But it would have added around another $100 or so to the price.

    They also mentioned that this physics chips may or may not be showing up in the PSP3 or Xbox 2.

    Anyhow, their point was right now. Big deal. Most people aren't going to spend $110+ for even a add in card just to see better physics other than the hardcare gamer. So its not like alot of developers are going to integrate that functionality. A few more years, and that functionality will be possible in the CPU or built into the motherboard chipset.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    John: The Cell is geared for vector processing, morph targets should be child's play for it. The Xenon's CPU should be capable enough, too (HL2 uses morph targets and doesn't choke current PCs). No word about Revolution but it'll probably be comparable.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    people happily spend £300 on new cards just so they can get £20 games to run, I don't see much of a problem shifting this card to the pc gamer community.

    --

    [ QUOTE ]

    http://theinquirer.net/?article=21648

    Seriously hard to read... about every other word was a spelling mistake. Who the hell is Gabe Novell! (Newell?)

    Considering the popularity of this news in the gaming community, you'd think this article would have the once over from an editor.

    regards


    [/ QUOTE ]

    (still, gave me an email to write)
  • Downsizer
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    Downsizer polycounter lvl 18
    Our engine licenses the novodex physics engine, which that PPU developer seems to own. I'll see if I can get more information on it. It would be beneficial for non-game applications, but I can't see how a studio would write a scalable physics system. You would essentially have to create two versions of every model with differentiating physics handles. And since physics puzzles will drive future games, this could cause inconsistancies with gameplay depending on if you own the Physx chip or not..
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