A year or so ago we learned about a revolutionary new product called a dedicated physics card. What is this you ask? Alam niyo yung mga lumilipad na bakal pag may sumasabog sa laro mo? O yung pag may tumatalsik na tao pag nababaril? These are representations of a game’s physics engine. Instead of making your CPU (yung Intel o AMD part ng pc niyo) calculate these for us, a dedicated physics card will do all that and more!
So what does this mean if you have this card? Well this will mean that games will have a chance to create more calculations in them. This will make your game more realistic, more stunning and a lot faster! Imagine mo nagluluto kayo ng dalawang kapatid mo ng panghapunan. Ikaw nagsasaing at nagluluto ng sinigang, yung isang kapatid mo naman naghahain ng mesa. Kung may pangatlong kapatid kayo (dedicated physics card) na taga luto lang talaga ng sinigang, eh di pagsasaing nalang at paghahain ang problemahin niyo diba? Mas mabilis pa kayo makakain!
To better illustrate this, here’s a video of 2 game renderings. The one on the left is without the physics card. The one on the right is WITH the physics card.
Kitams? Diba hamak na mas mabilis at maganda yung nasa kanan? So what’s the point of all this? Everybody knows the two companies that make the best video card technologies in the industry today; ATI and Nvidia.
Well, recently Nvidia bought Ageia, the developer of the dedicated physics card. And, they are planning to integrate the physics capabilities of the Aegeia Physx dedicated card into their next generation video cards! This is good news for all of us in the gaming industry and all gamers out there since we won’t have to spend an extra peso into buying ANOTHER card for physics.
So far there are over 150 games that employ this techonology and their numbers are growing. Also consoles like the PS3 and Wii are getting into the act with software versions of this technology. Later this year and perhaps early next year we will start seeing graphics cards with their own built-in physics processors.
Here’s a look at a game called Cell Factor using a dedicated physics card.
Sarap tingnan no? yokyokyok. Ngayon maglalaway nalang muna tayo kung ayaw pa natin bumili ng physics card. Sooner or later though, they’ll come built in into our Nvidia cards and the golden age in physics engines in games will begin! Listen… IT HAS BEGUN!! (yokyokyok gusto ko lang gayahin yung sa Mortal Kombat)
Sources: Nvidia.com