Havok FX ~ GFX Card Accelerated Physics

[Cole]

Well more info on it is now out.
Havok FX is Havok's way of running Physics on a graphics card. There was the recent Nvidia SLI Accelerated Physics Annoucment, but thats just based on Havok FX, really Havok FX will work with both Nvidia and ATI, infact any Dx9+ graphics card will be able to utilize this, the graphics card can be doing graphics and physics at the same time to.

Will this touch the Ageia chip? Not at all. Why?
~It is unconfirmed but extremely likely that Havok FX will be used for anything other than "cool looking effects", no real user interactive effects. Why? The GPU does not accel at things like collisions, and two it all matters what get sent between it and the CPU. According to the Nvidia Slides though it looks as if they don't want the CPU involved, thus really making it tough to do things like collision detection.

So Havok FX may just be used to accelerate trees moving in the wind, but nothing that would affect you in-game just pretty stuff.

Ageia Chip would be faster and a free SDK to developers. Havok FX will cost money but you do have a structured graphic card base.

Thats basically a...summary.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30571

 

[VirusType2]

So what do you plan to go with? If a few new games in development say they will utilize it - are you considering buying an Ageia PPU?

It would be nice if every game could support it but I'm afraid it will not get that kind of support.

 

[Cole]

Well since the Ageia PPU SDK is completely free im sure more developers will look into it.

I personally am going to probably get one. The bigger it gets the more developers will look into it. Since the SDK is free it only would be better to at least support Ageia physic cards.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

I forget, what do the phy. cards go on again? Pci-e. or just pci?