You have no idea how bad I wanted to make a completely immature joke about pee. Apparently I do have a conscience.
So, unless you’re a total feral child who’s been living out in the woods for the past… well, a long time; You’ve probably at least heard of a CPU (Central Processing Unit for those wild children). If you’ve bought a new one recently at a store, the sales rep probably said something about a GPU (Graphics) and playing video games and watching movies. Anywho, here’s another acronym for ya: PPU (Physics PU).
Let’s focus on gaming, since that’s who’s being targeted mostly. AGEIA, the company who came up with the first PPU, envisions three gaming processing areas; As illustrated in their “Gaming Power Triangle” to the left. You can click on that to get to their website. The actual technology is being called PhysX.
As Physics major, as well as a gamer (Actually, mostly as a gamer), this is quite intriguing. Up to this point, even the most modern games have been limited to about 30 – 40 active bodies when it comes to Physics emulation. Not near enough for real-time explosions. By using a seperate processing unit for these processes, programmers will be able to emulate about 32,000 to 40,000 active bodies.
This isn’t just important for violence either: Realistic foliage, water, lava, hair… these will all benifit. Right now, most hair in games is still explicitly animated and pre-rendered. Bethesda’s Oblivion had one of the most intense physics systems out today (Half-life 2 was quite a bit better), but they’re still pretty clunky.
As of now, a BFG brand PhysX PPU runs about 299$… prices should be coming down soon. You can also buy a couple games that are PhysX compatible. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is one of these games, and I actually played the demo with PhysX software emulation. The Xbox 360 and PS3 also have PhysX software support. I don’t know about the Wii. Still too expensive for me.
Another step towards realism in gaming. Physics comes from the Latin Physis which roughly means Nature. Better Physics emulation = More Realism. Don’t worry, there’s not a post on morality coming.
:: Related Extras ::
- Gamespot article – About PhysX
- What is PhysX – Over at the AGEIA website
- GRAW – Newest Ghost Recon
Filed under: Tech | Leave a Comment
No Responses Yet to “PPU? Sounds like a personal problem to me.”