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30°

AMD Talks GPU Gaming Physics

For a brief moment, it once looked like hardware-accelerated gaming physics had the potential to transform PC gaming's static rooms full of storage crates into dynamic worlds full of showering particles, rumpling cloth and realistically collapsing bridges. Co-founded by Manju Hegde, a new start-up called Ageia ambitiously launched its dedicated PhysX accelerator; a technology that's now a part of Nvidia's family, and it looked like gaming physics was about to completely overhauled.

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Community5241d ago
Trroy5241d ago (Edited 5241d ago )

Honestly, complex physics is pretty invisible to the typical gamer. Accelerating it in hardware isn't all that useful, because the real expense of physics comes with sorting the bazillion objects you want to have in the world (sorting is NEVER cheap), not doing the accelerated precise collision mechanics.

About the only thing hardware physics gives us, is the ability to run a fancier simulation on a zillion small, simple objects, in a restrained space against a few more complex geometrical objects. That way you don't need to sift through piles of data to find what you want to collide against, and hardware can do its thing -- be fast without memory issues getting in the way.

In short, about the only things hardware physics are useful for are things like more accurate smoke, sparks, etc simulations. Constrained, compound objects like ragdolls become exponentially expensive as you attempt to make them more complicated, solve motor chains, etc. While it seems clever to throw hardware at this, really the end result is that you end up with wildly variable hardware physics performance, and you just end up having to limit the physics you use anyway, so you don't have performance spikes.

It's not like graphics. It just isn't. Physics is too variable / unpredictable to rely upon hardware acceleration to yield much improvement, relative to its cost. Game devs keep it simple because it not only performs better (HW acceleration would improve performance), but also because it just plain works better when its simple (hardware acceleration would not help make simulations more robust, relative to their complexity).

You can model a bicycle as a box, or low-poly mesh, and wrap an 11-body ragdoll around it, and have it be fast, and work. Or you could model it as a 10000-polygon mesh, and wrap a 45-body ragdoll around it, and have it be fast (with HW accel), and totally whacked out and busted (no matter what you do).

60°

Ministry of Truth: 1984 — Game Overview • VGMM

Obey, hide or fight the system. It's all in your hands. And remember: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

"Ministry of Truth: 1984" is an upcoming political dystopian simulation game developed by Ukrainian studio 'False Memory Dept.'

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videogamesmademe.com
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80°

The 'Stop Killing Games' initiative is close to its final deadline

Ross Scott—also known as Accursed Farms on YouTube—has been fighting tooth and nail for almost a full year to help spearhead game preservation. Starting after it was announced that Ubisoft's The Crew would be shutting down, permanently ending support for the game, Scott launched the "Stop Killing Games" initiative.

That makes a twofold deadline for the Stop Killing Games initiative. Or, at least, one headed up by Scott: The UK petition, which ends July 14, and the EU Citizens' Initiative, which ends July 3.

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M3talDiamond1d 10h ago
M3talDiamond1d 10h ago (Edited 1d 10h ago )

If you live in the EU then Please sign this or our game ownership rights and game preservation is
at stake. I know there isnt much time left but please consider signing the petition

-Foxtrot13h ago

I never knew Ross Scott was doing this

I love Freemans Mind

Inverno3h ago(Edited 3h ago)

People whine and in the end don't do a thing. Then whine more when they get screwed some more smh. If this makes it then it'll be monumental for consumers. That Pirate software guy was no help either smh.

50°

Spook-A-Boo — Game Overview • VGMM

Spook-A-boo is a silly ghost-hunting game where you and up to 3 friends explore different levels, hunting down ghosts in a game of hide-and-seek.

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