Ageia recently released its PhysX card to the public, and it didn\'t take long for Nvidia and ATI to in turn present their own take on how to best calculate physics. There are some, however, who say that none of these methods is especially good for the task. According to physics scientists, there are just no algorithms good enough to yield satisfying results.
 
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I don't get that :S.
 
Surely Ageia has it's own physics scientists that say there are algorithms that are more than adequate for the task of processing physics.
 
One side has to be wrong!

did you read the article?  you're over simplifying.  they talked about how some physics functions are more simple than others, and therefore require less hardware horsepower to perform properly.
 
there is no "right" or "wrong" solution in a problem with such varying questions and requirements.  what is "adequate" to a scientist?  how about to a gamer?  to a hardware manufacturer?  how about a hardcore gamer with a $5k rig, vs an occasional gamer with a $500 one?
 
neither side is "wrong", THG is just providing the viewpoint of a few different scientists to give you more multifaceted information than the marketing "information" you get from Nvidia, ATI and Ageia.

I believe it, its much easier (and faster) to linearize differential equations than to solve them directly.  It only makes sense that Ageia would take that approach because to make use of the full algorithms would be useless for gaming because of the slowdown.

One thing people must realize is this.  The physics card isn't offloading from the CPU as much as it is adding a completly new element.  Perhap Ageia, ATI, and nVidia are all wrong.  The best way may be throwing more cores.  Imagine the power of a Quad-Core Core 2 processor!?

I got owned.

Here is the solution.   Make a Physics card that has a licensed version of the Maple (maplesoft) math engine.   by doing this you would allow developers to bypass lengthy coding and just pass simple strings of math to the PPU to be calculated.    
 
so if you want to solve a system of equations you send the string  
 
solve( 'equation 1', 'equation 2', ... 'equation n')
 
 and the maple engine along with the hardware calculated the solution .   it would make vector math and linear algebra easy and would reduce the overall bloat of the game  
 
the hardware exists , so does the software why not put them together to maple a ppu

 
Cos corporations are stingy and don't want to "waste" money on licensing things!

 
You know that would be extremely slow, don't you?

"In the gaming industry, physics seems to be the new focal point."
 
I disagree. Maybe all the gaming hardware manufacturers are telling us that we need more realistic physics in our games so we can spend more money, but in the end, more realistic physics are not what's going to make a game great, because they don't add gamplay value.  Sure, it's a neat sidenote to be able to blow stuff apart and have it be realistic when it does, but when you're playing the game and involved in whatever task is at hand, you really don't care.
 
It would probably be cool to have realistic physics in some games like Grand Theft Auto that have a lot of freeform gamplay value, because just running around and blowing stuff up is a fairly fun part of the game.  But what about a game like World of Warcraft, which is probably more similar to the big games we'll be seeing in the next 5-10 years than anything else?  That's very freeform as well, but nobody cares that you can't go around blowing stuff up.  Especially since you would blow it up for everyone else too, which wouldn't work at all.  And what about something like "Madden/NCAA Football", hugely popular games on the consoles?  What good would better phyics do for them? nothing.
 
And sure, Warcraft could use a little better collision detection and there are definately other nuances in the physics that could be fixed, just like any other game.  But these things certainly don't require a whole new PPU.  The only thing I see a PPU being good for is taking developer's attention off the gameplay, which is really the deciding factor in whether a game is fun or not, and spending the time instead on some silly physics that people spend 30 seconds looking at and going "thats cool" and then going on to play the game.
 
Just my 2 cents.

 
How could improved physics not help a game with 22 bodies colliding simultaneously and an oblong ball being batted around?
 
The game gets more "realistic" in every iteration because they just program in more things like gangtackling, but its not real.  Have you ever seen what happens when on a fumble?  The ball bounces around like its landing on firecrackers.  I think real physics in sports game would be spectacular.  Along with virtually everyother game.

Just plain wrong, and gameplay IS physics (the story line is different). Physics in games is much more important than pretty graphics- it's probably the most important thing, and the hardest thing to do well. That's why the developers need new hardware help. Most people think it's just stuff looking like it's blowing up but that's wrong. Most of that is just pre-scripted events because they don't have access to real physics calculation horsepower. The building will "blow up" exactly the same way every time no matter where the missle hits it or how strong the missle is. Physics includes the whole "world" in the game. Gravity is applied to objects like jeeps, bullets, people, so they are drawn towards world-center. So when your character jumps, you come  back down and don't behave like superman or a jet. Like the article said, it's simple to make a flat wall look textured like a stone wall. But once something happens to that wall you need physics. And the more the better.
 
Right now cloth doesn't behave ingame like cloth very well, nor does water. Empty soda cans on the ground don't even move, let alone crush when stepped on. Physics would let me pick up an individual can and toss it in a room to distract the enemy so I can flank them. Or move/stack boxes so I can climb on a roof. Some games have varying degrees of these things. Bottles and shelves move in FEAR but you can't do anything with them. Let me pick up a flare in one room, then 3 rooms later find a gas can, and let me make a IED if I need too.
 
Last time I threw a football and it hit the ground it randomly bounced all over. Right now in a computer football game the football behaves as if it was round, last time I saw. Of course they have to make it unrealistic to a degree so the gamer can easily get the ball, especially on consoles. In every game except maybe checkers, physics is very important but can't be done well yet. Even the original Pong game had a basic physics.

 
TallGuy beat me to it.. But you have to be kidding right.  The better the physics the better the football.  Guys cracking into each other, the ball bouncing off of helmets and getting popped out of a guys arm if the collision is just right.  There are all kinds of ways that realistic physics could improve Madden.

pschmid,  WHY do you keep starting physics/graphics discussions in the Memory section?!

 
I disagree with you. I think real physics (altough would be tough to simulate real physics on spells lol) would add a lot of depth to MMORPGs. You could have new gameplay, never done before (I won't give examples as I'm working on the development of one of these to make use of physics and we intend on bringing a whole new level of interaction and gameplay to our game).
 
Also, in sports it would be really awesome to have real physics...imagine a formula 1 game with physics? What about a soccer game (no more fifa 94 cheat goal places lol)? And other games like flight simulators? The options are so many...
 
And this is just the first step to a more immersive entertainment system, and if include here innovations like the Nintendo Wii controler and virtual reality the next 10 years look very promising. (Got a little carried away here, but what the heck, it sure would be fun to play a game like battlefield 2 with virtual reality).

 
Blame the reviewer!!

The tricky part in this article that maybe was missed was that Tom's asked scientests if the PPU(or the like) would make real physics.
 
The reason why this is important is that you can make algorithms that produce results that are very close to real(as close as you want or need them to be) but are only valid for some range of a variable(like time or distance or mass....).  The real advantage to these types of algorithms is they are very quick and easy to calculate(for a computer anyway).  
 
The real physics that scientests need are not done that way(generally) though.
 
The difference would be like comparing algorithms that arrive at 2.49999999999(almost instantly) vs. 2.5 (exactly but took 50-100 times as long).  
 
The first number is a very good approximation of the second.  
It would work well in a game for describing something and you would likely not notice the difference, provided that the range of the algorithm was not exceeded.  
In scientific work that kind of error in calculation is unacceptable if it can be avoided.

 
I agree 100%.  I think a lot of people are underestimating the importance of realistic physics.  When you start getting into completely interactive environments, physics is probably the most important factor.  I think half the reason HL2 is so great is because of its physics engine.
 
The best analogy they made in the article was the 'building collapsing under its own weight" analogy.  Naturally, no game can do this (yet).  There are some games that simulate it (with scripts and only 1 outcome).  But in all games, you just can't simply walk up to say... a water tower and blow the legs out from underneath it.
 
How cool would that be?  You've got some NPC's sniping you from a tree or tower and to kill them you shoot an RPG at the base.  Then the tree or tower collapses realistically.  That's the kind of stuff that makes a game cool.  And it can only be done with some sort of accelerated physics.