Comparing PC Game Physics

John Callaham writes "On Wednesday we posted up comments from Havok about rival AGEIA's use of their physics processor in the PC version of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Today we have an expanded article with point-to-point comments from AGEIA that address Havok's statements." From the article: "How much interaction do you want in your PC games? It used to be that graphics were the number one factor in picking up a new game but now players are asking more and more about interactions in the environment. One company that has provided such interaction is Havok. They have developed a physics engine that has been used in a ton of games, including most famously in Valve's first person shooter Half-Life 2. Recently, Havok announced plans for a new physics engine, Havok FX, that would use Shader Model 3.0 graphics cards to further enhance game interactions and physics."

AnandTech actually reviewed a card

[Anonymous Coward]

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2751 [anandtech.com]

Not much more needs to be said -- they tested and analysed it.

Re:On physics

[Detritus]

Just for the record, a .50 caliber Desert Dagle will make you backflip if you're shot in the face - plus it'll take your head clean off at the same time.

Only in Hollywood.

Hello, Dr. Semantics!

[nugneant]

Let's see. I press the "A" button. Megaman launches upward, hits a peak, falls downward. In some cases (Super Mario Brothers), I press the "A" button, Mario jumps, and he appears to "float" in the air - ie, when I move left or right, in the air, he moves slower than the equivelant ground-based movement. Not so much in Megaman, but I digress.

Maybe it's not calculating momentum on the fly using real-time Einsteinian rendering, but I, the player of the game, could care less. "Simple gravity simulations", for me, make the difference between a game I could be playing right now instead of even bothering to get into this ridiculous argument (Megaman III) and one so bad that... jesus, it's bad (Captain Comic).

It's physics to me.

But go ahead, code some "impressive" "real-time physics"-utilizing game where every time I jump, a small army of Emotion Gnomes dives into my PS2's CPU and calculates just where on the parabola I shall lose 0.0003% momentum and whether swinging my sword will affect my doppler-wind-resistance enough to cause me to miss that platform I was so eagerly expecting to reach. And while you're scratching your head and wondering why all the game reviewers called that game a sloppy nightmare, I'll be playing a Capcom game. :-D

Re:Starcraft sucked.

[Anonymous Coward]

Same AC replies:

Oh, hell yeah, TA is considerably better. The interface in particular is lightyears ahead, and the huge scale makes it all more fun. Though it's a shame there are only two sides, and they're very similar. However, I still play both today, so they both get my recognition as truly excellent games. Starcraft's single-player campaigns aren't that much fun (though some of the weird little missions are cool, and the story/cutscenes are good if you like that kind of thing). Did you play multi-player?

I'm looking forward to Supreme Commander (sort of TA 2) more than any other game right now. And have you tried TA Spring? And the TAUCP unit pack? TA utterly rules when you consider the mods.

Re:PhysX - mediocre technology, good business plan

[DrXym]

End users are not going to be interested in a card with a fan consuming a slot in their machines. This thing must appear on graphics cards or motherboards because it sure as hell won't sell otherwise. A few hardcore gamers might be interested in it but it will never capture the imagination or the critical mass as a card. And few games are going to demand a hardware accelerated physics engine when few people actually have one.