Apophis

PhysX Brings New Physical Realism to Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter® 2.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – June 15, 2007 – AGEIA™ Technologies, Inc. the pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for PC and console games, today announced that AGEIA PhysX will be helping to provide a new level of realism in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter® 2 (GRAW 2) from Ubisoft. Leading-edge video game developer GRIN has leveraged PhysX to extend the visually rich and complex GRAW 2 to an entirely new level of game realism and interactivity, with dynamic gameplay physics, impactful environmental effects and persistent destruction and debris throughout. The game also features an innovative PhysX hardware bonus level that delivers an action-packed, physics-intensive mission available exclusively to owners of the AGEIA PhysX accelerator.

“With PhysX, we are able to bring gamers a realistic combat experience they will crave to play over and over again because it’s never the same twice,” said Bo Andersson, chief executive officer of GRIN. “The physics system is built into everything in the game – from the characters to tanks to buildings and every other object within the game world. When something explodes, the physics engine kicks in to create superb explosions, emitting debris which affects gameplay.”

Not only will all levels of the game be enhanced with PhysX, but owners of the AGEIA PhysX accelerator will be able to take on an additional hardware-accelerated, fully immersive mission known as “AGEIA Island.” This exclusive level features a fully destructible environment with groundbreaking environmental physics and persistent effects. Here, gamers can morph the environment to complete the mission in new, game-changing ways. Nearly every element in the level is physically modeled to enable strategically significant real-time interaction. Shoot individual planks of wooden fences to expose the enemy; destroy trees to get a better look at an opponent; blow up towers and buildings to take out the enemy within, while the flying debris impacts those nearby. Environmental effects such as blowing wind send swirling leaves and debris flying throughout the landscape to add to the “in-the-game” experience and create new challenges that directly affect how you interact with the game. The PhysX processor also enables more persistence of effects throughout the AGEIA Island level, for a more believable experience. The game is never the same.

“AGEIA’s PhysX redefines how games should look and feel and, more to the point, how they should be played,” said Manju Hegde, CEO of AGEIA Technologies. “Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 is a fantastic example of how a great development team can leverage AGEIA PhysX to enrich the game-play experience and deliver a compelling game that people will want to play again and again.”

AGEIA will debut the PhysX-enabled AGEIA Island level in an exclusive sneak preview at the upcoming Maximum PC Showdown LAN 2007 event in San Jose California from June 15 to 17. Gamers will have a chance to play against Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls as well as win prizes in a GRAW 2 tournament in AGEIA’s Booth #109 over the weekend.

About Ubisoft

Ubisoft is a leading producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products worldwide and has grown considerably through a strong and diversified line-up of products and partnerships. Ubisoft has offices in 22 countries and sales in more than 50 countries around the globe. It is committed to delivering high-quality, cutting-edge video game titles to consumers. Ubisoft generated sales of 680 million Euros for the 2006-07 fiscal year. To learn more, please visit www.ubisoftgroup.com.

About GRIN

GRIN is a cutting edge developer with a long track record of pushing hardware to its very max, utilizing every ounce of power to bring gamers a more immersive experience. Being one of the first companies to ever ship a game using pixel shaders (Ballistics), deferred rendering (GRAW) and AGEIA PhysX utilization (GRAW) GRIN has proven again and again to be on the frontline of what developers can do. GRIN is based out of Stockholm, Sweden and Barcelona, Spain committed to bringing first class entertainment to all high end gamers. For more information visit GRIN at www.grin.se

About AGEIA

AGEIA™ Technologies, Inc., is the pioneer of hardware-accelerated physics for PC games and has developed the world’s first dedicated physics processor, the AGEIA PhysX processor. The AGEIA PhysX processor powers massive and pervasive real-time interactive worlds that for the first time obey the laws of classical physics. AGEIA provides a world-class cross platform software development kit to simplify advanced physics programming for the PhysX processor, as well next-generation gaming consoles. AGEIA is changing the face of gaming by working with more than sixty leading developers and publishers to deliver the next generation of physically immersive entertainment. The company, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is privately held. For more information visit http://www.ageia.com.


Order the AGEIA PhysX Card from Amazon.

AGEIA and PhysX are trademarks of AGEIA Technologies, Inc.

© 2007 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Frag Dolls, Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, the Soldier Icon, Ubisoft, Ubi.com and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries. PC version developed by GRIN.

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Magnum50

Of course this is a nice idea... I remember when it first was introduced, the first games to support it was GRAW1 and Joint Task Force.

But since that time, the number of supported games is still in the single digits, and the price (back then when I considered one) was 500 plus bucks.

And I saw videos of GRAW1 compared with and without, bigger louder explosions was/is not more realistic IMO.

I'm sorry to say IMO this is still just a flash in the pan at this time, or shall we say a test.

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Apophis

It's $148 from Amazon using the link provided at the bottom of the article. I wasn't going to bite at first when it was in the $500 range either. But considering we're in the sub $150 range.. Well.. That changes things a bit.

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Magnum50

agreed, I just wish more games were supported, but at that NOW price, order placed...

At the very least it will make my screenshot collection better.

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Magnum
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Apophis

I'm trying to get a demo card from Ageia for a review. Only a few games are supported right now, but when I bought my first 3dFX Voodoo card only a couple games were supported. That didn't make the Voodoo card any less cool though!

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Gunnyhighway

It is a great idea!...the more technical innovation can get us closer to a little more of feeling of reality, I think it is always a welcome "Plus". Yet there are also drivers compatibilities problems with vista and also if you have 2 Geforce 7950 GX2 plus soundblaster Xtreme fidelity, the mother board might not have available slot for that new card. This added to the preocupations you all mentioned earlier, that card might falls unfortunatly under the chapter of the "might be doing it" in a couple of years.
GHWY

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Zoopy_T

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/...ing/index.html

An interesting article about how the game Cell Factor (made specifically for the PPU) can be run without the PPU and preform almost exactly the same (except for cloth effects).

Evo<^|SiNz|^>

I think a physics processor is a great idea, but I think it has been poorly implemented with the PhysX card. I remember reading that Tom's article quite a while ago and seeing the side by side comparison and I'm just not impressed enough to drop over a C-note on it. Or even $20 bucks for that matter.

That said, if a game like Half Life 2 were to be able to split the physics processing off to a separate processor, would it result in better graphics, fewer loading screens, shorter load times, and larger levels (even though it's a "seamless" game)? If so, it might be worth it.

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Perro

this ageia's physx is a procesor or some piece of hardware?, why this will help the performance of a game?

EDIT: oh i read the toms report and i see why this will help to the performance, too bad all the games dont suport this.

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Aspie

This kind of junk disgusts me. PhysX offers nothing to the consumer but a tighter budget. Everything I've seen that "requires" the PPU is simply coded to not run without a PPU present. The PPU-exclusive mission in GRAW 2 annoys me, as I'm sure it will run smoothly without the PPU. However, you'll have to hack it, just like with Cell Factor.

I don't mind advances in gaming technology, in fact, I welcome them. However, this is about greed. Imagine if a developer introduced "ATI-exclusive missions" for a game? Insanity. I'm disgusted. Thankfully, add-on accelerator cards have no place on the market. 3Dfx bit that bullet, and AGEIA didn't learn the lesson.

Show me what AGEIA's cash card can do that Havok can't.

Oh, and let me kill the argument that something like the PhysX will lighten the load on the GPU. The PPU relieves the CPU, not the GPU, of processing cycles, as CPUs currently handle the majority of physics calculations. Generally, it is the GPU, no the CPU, which is the bottleneck in any midrange system. So everyone expecting framerates to go up and getting highend graphics performance from a midrange card, dream on. Unless you're running on a Pentium III, this isn't going to speed up your rig (especially in games not programmed to utilize it, or in other words, nearly every game).

We all know where this is going. Just like graphics accelerators, PPUs will become integrated onto the graphics board, and add-on cards will disappear. Unless AGEIA focuses on the software and coding side, like Havok, or intends to manufacture full graphics boards, they won't survive.

A great conclusion from the Tom's Hardware article:
"This is a step forward, but we cannot conclude that a PPU is necessary, because multi-core processors could handle gameplay and effects physics in the off cycles while the graphics hardware is not rendering. Even using the specially-designed game demo gives us nothing compelling to recommend purchasing a PhysX based card."

I'm sorry, but this didn't even hit the front pages at most of the gaming news sites. Why is it so significant that it needs to glaze the front page here?

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TheBigC

After reading the Tom's harware and several reviews at other places, I am not convinced. With a Quad Core and SLI, I can't possibly see what advantage it will offer me. For the most part it is doing what SLI/Crossfire already have been doing. It is easing the burden of the GPU by giving it a seprate processor to work with, so what. Same sorta of thing goes for and multi core CPU.

Now I agree with Aspie, that is kinda crappy to design a game just so you have to buy some addon hardware. That is bad bussiness in my book, "buy this game for $50 and BTW don't forget the required addon card that is another $150+". There are plenty of titles that work fine without it, actually from the looks of it all, but maybe one.

More power to Ageia in the near future, they will get sucked up by Nvidia or ATI. Because if it does pans out to be the end all to gaming, I am sure that hardware manufacturers will include its chip on one of thier cards in the very near future.

But on top of that, it is PCI, not even PCI-E.

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