Monday, March 27, 2006

Ageia Phys-X Released

Even though the card has gone gold and is shipping with complete computers from Alienware, Dell and Falcon Northwest, it won't show up in retail until sometime around May, when there's more games released that supports the hardware.
"Interested conference goers were able to get their hands on a playable Cell Factor multiplayer shooter demo in the Ageia booth. Developed by Artificial Studios, the Cell Factor demo featured a multilevel fuel station map filled with boxes, pipes, cloth, shipping containers, and a handful of vehicles. Players could use "psi" powers, Star Wars Force-like effects, to toss around objects and even each other."
-Gamespot, 24th March, 2006

So far as I can tell, every game using either the Reality Engine or Unreal 3 Engine will have embedded support for the Phys-X chip. Currently two top titles that's featuring Phys-X is Unreal Tournament 3 and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and you can be sure it's more to come. This might be the same revolution for computer gaming hardware as 3dfx was back in the good old days.

Movies:

Large Scale Destruction by Airtight Games
Metal Bending by Airtight Games
Bet on Soldier by Kiloton
Cell Factor by Artificial Studios
Monster Madness by Artifical Studios

Links:
GDC 06: Next-gen physics in full force
Q&A: Epic Games' Tim Sweeney on Ageia PhysX

UPDATE:
"Ageia plans to bundle the demo [Cell Factor] with its PhysX cards with a full collection of mod tools to let players explore and modify the code behind the physics."

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