Physics Cards... the adventure gaming revolution!

[Risk]

Okay, I don't know if anybody here knows about this, but a company called Ageia, formerly responsible for making 3dfx cards, is currently working on technology that will revolutionize the world of gaming: physics cards. Now, before anyone has a fit ("Graphics and physics don't matter. It's the gameplay that counts!"), I would like you to consider what a physics card can do. If you think hard enough, you'd realize that a physics card can do a lot more than just blow up boxes and airplanes. A physics card can simulate a key unlocking a door, a hand picking up an object, a crowbar breaking into a car, and virtually just about anything possible. But what's the catch? We've obviously been able to do that in games before, right? Well, the difference is this: the physics card simulates a game's possiblities based on physical attributes of its objects, rather than its pre-scripted programming. That means you spend less time programming obvious outcomes, and more time working on aspects such as behavorial outcomes. Most of us may recall how Fate of Atlantis allowed Indy to take 3 seperate paths (fists, wits, or team up.) New physics card would allow adventure gaming to take place on a much higher level... where the possiblities are endless.

Now some of you may say, well... what if I didn't want a key to turn the door? What if I wanted that key to fly away? Easy. You would give the key attributes of a bird, for instance, and then you would determine its behavior as a bird-like object. Some of you may argue that the idea sounds far-fetched, and that the physics card alone will not offer such powerful features, but I can tell you this: in time, the physics card will offer adventure gamers just about everything they ever dreamed of. With the right software and a just little bit of creativity, anyone will be make take their dreams of the wildest adventures a possiblity. Thus, the physics card will revolutionize the world of adventure gaming.

Here are some demos which demonstrate the mere beginning of this physics card revolution:
http://www.ageia.com/press/press4.html

Granted, some of you may not be impressed ("Bah. These physics suck,")Ã,  but I'm here to tell those of you that you should re-evaluate what you see in these demos. These simple demos are just the beginning... they are the product of a pre-Quake gfx card, so to speak. Today the demonstration of a simple plane crash, tomorrow the backbone of every great adventure game.

Gaming will never be the same with AGEIA PhysX Processor. Bridging the gap between beautiful static worlds and responsive physical reality, AGEIA PhysX technologies enable unlimited creative possibilities for game developers. The result will re-ignite the enthusiasm of gamer and game creators alike, and propel the game industry into unexplored new markets. Experience the world of pervasive interactive reality with PhysX technologies.
- AGIEA

[scotch]

I use this physics engine every day (though the fluid simulation part isn't available to the public yet), using it in my game.Ã,  The physics card should increase the complexity of scenes we can do by a lot, I am not sure if it'll take off, but it could, it has the patronage of Epic, for the Unreal 3 engine.Ã,  Increasing CPU speeds will have a similar effect, anyway, it'll just take a bit longer.

You point out a lot of the interesting things about physics for adventures, I think the main hurdle is giving players an easy way to interact with physics objects.Ã,  With current interfaces it'd be quite hard to bend a paperclip into a lock pick, for example.Ã,  I'm sure it can be done with some thought, though.

For anyone interested in attempting these things, the PhysX engine (previously, and to coders still known as NovodeX) is available free for non commercial use, for a physics engine it's pretty simple and nice to use.Ã,  The best one I've used.

A physics card might not be really necessary for adventure game type puzzles, sure you could make very complicated physics set ups, but generally in an adventure game scene 99% of the objects are going to be sitting still at any point in time, so you could have the character manipulating very complex stuff with little CPU usage.

[TheYak]

Phlpppt is what I say to you.  A whole lot of Ppphhhllllppppttt with my tongue spraying wonderful juices, droplets spattering your cheek.   There's a physics demonstration for you.

Granted, physics can add a lot to the gameplay, but there comes a point where their usage is so heavy-handed that ruins the immersion more than the lack of physics.  I found them very engrossing in Half-Life 2 but only one more slap across the face from the steaming pile that was Deus Ex: Invisible War.   

Physical approximation is only one small aspect of the experience.  We actually need a whole new chunk of hardware for this?  Another item that'll need constant expensive upgrading like Video cards and sound cards.  Recall, please, that sound cards were on the verge of dying simply because it was easier to offload the calculations to the CPU. The CPU usage of a dedicated sound card isn't much lower than that off an onboard solution using CPU calculations.

The more specialized our add-ons get, the less useful they become.  We need a physics card about as much as we need an AI-specific card. 

Tests utilizing ATI's newest card for physics calculations (similar calculations to applying pixel-shaders due to the calcs performed as functions in matrices) showed it performing far better when dedicated to this task than modern CPUs, partially due to its speedy memory controller.  So, why would we want another add-in card rather than utilizing the greater resources available to us on our current upgrade paths?  The only real reason I'd want a physic's card to handle a portion of calculations would be so I'd have some damned use for those extra PCI-e slots.

[Risk]

You point out a lot of the interesting things about physics for adventures, I think the main hurdle is giving players an easy way to interact with physics objects.Ã,  With current interfaces it'd be quite hard to bend a paperclip into a lock pick, for example.Ã,  I'm sure it can be done with some thought, though.

Interesting that you mention that. I never really considered that until now. I mean, such fine physical manipulation would require a completely new interface that is far from the customary. I can barely imagine using my mouse to bend a paper clip with virtual fingers. I might suggest the data glove technology but I'm not entirely certain how well that would work, since I'm not familiar with this technology.Ã,  Another possibility could be to incorporate AI into the interface, where the main character is verbally controlled (the user could input “bend paper clip.”)Ã,  Of course, this would essentially be the equivalent of a text adventure game taken to the next level. Other than those two interfaces, I really can't fathom any other possibilities. Well, I take that back. There is that one device, the Nintendo “Revolution” Controller that could be the key to certain physical manipulations in a 3d world, but I'm still not entirely certain how this could be applied to bending a paper clip.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Pfffft. Adventure-gamers. Give them ultra-realistic environmental conditions, unlitited interaction, games so real you can - and will - sweat as your own adrenalin triggers, and they want to bend paperclips.

[Gilbert]

Physics is of no importance to adventure games, a detective adventure game will be good only if you can smell where a corpse was dumped!

[Ali]

A physics card can simulate a key unlocking a door, a hand picking up an object, a crowbar breaking into a car, and virtually just about anything possible.

I enjoyed your enthusiasm, but adventure games are about narrative. Physics simulation is irrelevant. I can't imagine an adventure game fan saying, "Yeah, the story was weak, but check out that hyper-realistic key-in-lock action!"

For a long time now books have featured doors being unlocked, cars being jimmied, and objects being picked up. They haven't ever needed a physics engine.

[MrColossal]

In your opinion.

For some people adventure games are also about solving puzzles. For some it's more about solving puzzles.

[Helm]

more direct physical interaction excites me regardless of the game genre. Adventure games are about a lot of things and that doesn't say much by itself. Narrative? sure. But even a mudane use object on x type of puzzle can be spiced up with physics. Is this bad?

[MrColossal]

To agree with Helm and make an obvious joke about him being excited over physics [insert joke]  is where I point out the best part of Half Life 2... getting the batteries for the generator... Too bad it was so damned easy... Extremely simple "get x use y" but in my opinion the world interaction and physics made it seem... fresh.

[Helm]

I originally had written 'more direct physical interaction gives me a huge boner' for what it's worth

[scotch]

I've spoken to Helm about this a lot, and it's clear the main reason he wants physics in adventure games is to throw stuff at the npcs, just to piss them off.

[Helm]

"throw stuff at npcs" well yeah... I guess that includes what I had in mind in a way

[Kinoko]

I read the topic but... I still don't understand what the hell everyone is talking about. These are ... cards? Like for a computer? You... put them into the computer? Different ones? Or just one?

Then... it... makes it.. so that... I don't even know. How can this affect what programming goes into your game? I don't understand. How could it affect your graphics and scripting to make things more complex?

God, I hate technology.

[Haddas]

As I understand it, it leaves the calculating of the physics calculations to the physics card, so that the gfx card can focus on rendering the graphics.

[Kweepa]

Kinoko, perhaps you should just sink back into your cushions, close your eyes, and forget about it.

[esper]

So, I reckon therefore it's like the math coprocessor, only taking up an entire card rather than just a chip within a card.

I was thinking, as I read this, something that no one else seemed to say, at least not in a straightforward fashion: this could make it so that games weren't at all about "use x on y" puzzles... at all..

If they decided to make a door in a game that had a specific key to open it, and you had earlier used that key to throw through a window to break it so you could unlock it, you could open this door by taking a piece of broken glass and slipping it between the doorjamb to jimmie the lock. If a game had real time physics, anything would go. Rather than having to do the puzzle exactly as the programmers designed it, I wouldn't have to sit around and go "dammit! what do they want from me, blood?" I could just, instead, come up with some totally original thing to do that would work because the game works like the real world. If I couldn't reach a window, rather than looking for the complimentary movable crate, I could rather knock down a pile of barrels and climb on them instead.

The only trouble would be, as has been said, getting the character to take the action you have in mind. However, once he could... say, for instance, by using virtual reality gloves or something, anything could work.

However, that would suck, because you could very conceivably win the game in eight seconds. Take for example, Quest for Glory 2. (I think it was 2)... "You wanna play Mancala with me, friggin' lion? Well, since I can do what I want, I'm gonna ram this Mancala board up your..."

ummmm... Okay. I really didn't like that lion guy...

[scotch]

Yeah, basically it is like a math coprocessor, designed for the sort of vector and matrix operations that physics uses.  I am not sure if many people would want to buy a card purely for physics, but I can imagine a future where motherboards have some general purpose vector processors like these on them, something like the PS3 has, with its 8 "cell" coprocessors, these could be used for speeding up lot of things besides physics.  In interviews I've seen the makers of the physx card mention that they are going to/would like to see the features built in to motherboards.

And Kinoko, like a 3d graphics card doesn't make any difference to how fast Monkey Island plays, and doesn't render it suddenly in pixel shaded 3d, a physics card won't make your current game scripting and physics any more complex. It's just a processor that new games can take advantage of to do things that were too slow before, aimed at physics calculations.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Aaahhhh, I get it now - it's kinda like the difference between plugins and script modules, yes?

[Kinoko]

Like putting too much air in a balloon!

(Sorry ^_^ Futurama)