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nVidia buy Ageia

Talrinys said:
And obiviously a physics system that's used in quite a few games nowadays, regardless of whether the game uses PPU acceleration or not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysX#Title_support for those who do use the PPU, that's quite a few nice titles that has sold a bit.
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None of them were particularily acclaimed were they. Thus far the hardware support has been purely token with no real gaming advantage.

This is good news but it may well be a while before we actually see the hardware integrated.
 
SteveOBHave said:
None of them were particularily acclaimed were they. Thus far the hardware support has been purely token with no real gaming advantage.

This is good news but it may well be a while before we actually see the hardware integrated.
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UT3 was, but i'm not even sure the PPU is used in that game? What matters is that these games are using it and people can relate to a lot of them.
 
simonnance said:
"the industry leader in gaming physics technology"
"AGEIA's PhysX software is widely adopted"
"AGEIA physics software is pervasive"

talk about marketing BS.....
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Marketing BS? The PhysX software SDK is widely used and is integrated into Unreal Engine 3 amongst other things.

You do realise that the PhysX SDK doesn't require a hardware physics card (PPU) right? don't you?

...and as for them being the leaders in gaming physics technology, well, they are!

:rolleyes:

Let me quote Wiki to totally destroy your arguement...

Quote...

"PhysX can refer either to a proprietary realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by AGEIA (formerly known as the NovodeX SDK) or their PPU expansion card designed to accelerate that SDK. Only games that use the PhysX SDK can benefit from the presence of a PhysX card.

Middleware physics engines allow game developers to avoid writing their own code to handle the complex physics interactions possible in modern games. Sony has licensed the PhysX SDK for their PlayStation 3 video game console.

The PhysX engine and SDK is freely available for Windows and Linux systems, but hardware acceleration only works on Windows."
 
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Good move for Nvidia and hardly surprising, lets hope they can make the technology take off and give us integrated hardware physics (that does not give a reduction in framerate) on their next videocards.
 
Dutch Guy said:
Good move for Nvidia and hardly surprising, lets hope they can make the technology take off and give us integrated hardware physics (that does not give a reduction in framerate) on their next videocards.
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Absolutely, would be great :) Hopefully they'll make a standard along with AMD though :)
 
I believe there are quite a few games that use the SDK, but don't take full advantage of the PPU still.

If the PPU is implemented in the same way as the VPU on the Nvidia then hopefully games using the SDK can transparently make use of the PPU.

If more widespread then hopefully developers will start to develop games that actually do use the PPU to it's full extent and we can start to see what the PPU can do
 
Talrinys said:
Absolutely, would be great :) Hopefully they'll make a standard along with AMD though :)
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Suspect that one of the benefits NV see in buying Aegia is that they get control over what could be emerging as the standard API for physics and thus cut AMD out of the market. Clearly with both NV and AMD dabbling with the idea of offloading physics onto GPUs then NV have decided to move to grab what they hope is an emerging standard rather than continuing to try to get their's adopted
 
BubbySoup said:
Let's hope they put it somewhere else, like a motherboard chipset perhaps.
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If it is integrated on mobo there might be a problem with transfer speed and bus use, by putting it on the videocard PCB it might work a lot faster and better.

And perhaps Nvidia can do a die shrink so that the PPU produces very little heat.
 
Well i hope they start to implement the PPU on the GFX very soon :D i wana see millions of little bits fly across my screen :D
 
Talrinys said:
What needs to happen for this to take off is:
AMD create a chip of their own, easily integrated to their next generation of cards
A standardized API is created so that games can code for this universally, doesn't help anyone if they need to code 4 seperate codepaths for this, one for Nvidia, one for Intel(when they enter the graphics field), one for AMD and one for CPUs.

Something like a DirectX API for physics or something similar would work, possibly as a part of DX11, which hopefully will be out for Vista. That would also give the companies the chance to go market the new cards as "next-gen" wonder cards, that worked so brilliantly with the 8800GTX.

The future processors can be dedicated to graphics card calls, memory management, and everything else they need to do, that can only be considered a good thing. No one has the knowledge of parallel computing that the graphics card companies do, so they'd do a fine job integrating this.
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I like where you're going. Good ideas

BubbySoup said:
Joy, more heat to be dispersed off the graphics card.
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And more joy to be had in future games. I'll take a tad more heat
 
“Originally Posted by simonnance
talk about marketing BS.....”
It’s not BS. Noticed how they said software not hardware. The PhysX software is widely adopted it’s the biggest or 2nd biggest used physics engine in games. It’s in the default PS3 SDK package.
The API is widely used in 100’s of games if not1000’s of games if you include consoles.




“Originally Posted by Gerard
Industry leader..lmao. yeah becuase those cards are endorsed by gamers worldwide right?“
Read it again. The API is the Industry leader. There are as many if not more PhysX games then Havok games. Ageia is not just a card PPU company.





”Originally Posted by Hen_Dawg
~Where are you Pottsey? I'm interested in your take in this one”
This is great news now we are one step closer to getting PPU’s built into GPU’s With a bit of luck this could kick start the PPU market if Nvidia start adding in PPU’s to all there 3dcards we should start seeing far more PPU game support. The only reason most developers don’t support the PPU is the market is too small.

This does leave AMD with a big problem if PPU’s do take off. Now Intel has Havok.
Click on liquids/fluids http://www.ageia.com/developers/index.html
Just think we could have stuff like that in games with PPU’s are built into GPU’s.





“I think he is trying to work out if Nvidia will release more/better drivers for his card than Ageia did.”
What? The drivers are about the only thing Ageia got right. Ageia bought out regular drivers with good 64-bit support and often with speed increase’s. Apart from the first 2 sets of drivers there where no major bugs and the drivers where stable.
 
No I am not saying the card is crap but the marketing of the card is extremely bad and so is the website. They bought out the card far to early before any games supported it decently. They didn’t send decent guide lines on how to do a fair physics reviews. A lot of misinformation was and still is spreading around, but Ageia made no attempt to correct anyone. Game support is also lacking not as good as it should have been. Ageia didn’t make enough effort to go out there and get game support. GRAW 1 should never have been bought out in the state it was in physic wise, it did far more harm then good. There should have been a decent amout of game support ready for when the card was in the shop.

A lot of games they promised would support it never did. They also said 100 games by end of 2007 but I only count 50 ish.

When the card works, it works well the problem isnt the hardware or drivers is the marketing and everything else.
 
Well the only way for it to take off imo is if nvidia incorporate it on their gpu's or on their motherboards. I think people spoke with their wallets and sad no at the thought of another add in card that worked in a few games. If it had some effect in every game that may have been a different story but obviously thats not possible.
 
Hmmm Im looking at this in a totally different light than a lot of you as I feel the buy-out was reactive to Intel buying out Havok and announcing interest in producing discrete graphics cards last year IIRC.

This doesnt mean nVidia will develop the PPU or the API, but just puts them in a good position if they consider an integrated graphics/physics unit the way forward or more importantly if Intel does (who seem to be just sitting on their Havok acquisition). Id be very surprised if they just dont treat it as another 3dfx and rape the IP and close the business and very much later in the future (lets say a couple of years) release an integrated product.

I just dont think at this point in time that the market is mature/large enough for such big players to invest heavily into physics and its much more a long-term stand they are taking (in other words theres no real money to be had - also where can physics really go? - we have photo-realism for graphics, but we just dont have the same realised goal for physics; so how could they make/justify new generations of products...).

With regards to standardisation in the past it seems that until a proprietary API becomes popular (like 3dfxs Glide3d) Microsoft just monitor the potential - I cant see any standardisation unless they are involved and its integrated into the DirectX APIs.

The physics market is very niche; the potential un-quantified; and the investment is considerable until viable and useful applications are apparent to the majority of PC users. Im glad nVidia have bought out Ageia as they really didnt have a clue how to market their product or develop a market for it - hopefully this accelerates adoption but its a long road ahead...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
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