physX chip

Movies are usually made with real people doing real things in the real world, this is true even if they are pretending to be in an unreal world. While there is a much greater emphasis on CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) these days a lot of the action shots are still done with real items or at least real models (Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Matrix trilogy and War of the Worlds all did this to one degree or another). Even in fantasy or SciFi movies you are seeing very real physics in action. This physical realism does not hurt the movies, if anything it does the opposite. I don’t expect it to be any different in games.
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Historically speaking, movies have been in opposition of realistic physics. Take for instance exploding grenades in almost any movie since grenades have been shown in movies: they explode in a huge fireball. Movies have never been about simulating the real world. Movies have always been about presenting cinematic notions of reality and emotions, which was and is defined by its own grammar so to speak.

With that gripe aside, I like the idea. It does seem like it would take dedicated hardware to crunch the numbers of a huge, physically dynamic world. What I want to see from this or whatever else may come along is totally dynamic destructible environments (I think I'll refer to that as TDDE in the future. :P). Then, somehow implement that for massively multiplayer online gaming. Then make a MMOFPS.
 
the_roach said:
What I want to see from this or whatever else may come along is totally dynamic destructible environments (I think I'll refer to that as TDDE in the future. :P). Then, somehow implement that for massively multiplayer online gaming. Then make a MMOFPS.
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The problem with that would be that some idiots would get in there and deliberately destroy everything. They you would have a huge plain of rubble.

Although, setting traps would be fun. Have someone come around a corner and shoot the ceiling above them. It falls. They die.
 
One thing I have reservations about, as the author mentioned, is that it's just another upgradeable component to spend money on for your gaming rig. I also wonder how gameplay would differ in online games that were programmed to utilize the physx chip if one guy has the chip, and another doesn't. I suppose that you'd have to have matches or areas/servers set up for those who have/want to use the card.

Someone just needs to figure out how to put graphics and physics processing chips on the motherboard or something--everything on one board.
 
that footage is sweet. i think that it would be pretty cool if you could destroy everything in a map. throw a gernade into a building and have the whole building collapse.
 
But would totally destructable environments possibly ruin the gameplay? I'm all for the massive destruction, but if you're playing something like Battlefield 2 and you have the ability to level all buildings, boulders, trees and even mountains, then how much fun would that be for the ones without the tanks?

Don't get me wrong, I love the little chip. I just don't want it taken too far.
 
There would have to be explicit or implicit controls as part of the game's design to prevent or alleviate the potential for undesirable destruction. Explicit would probably be unrealistic like making certain structures invulnerable to damage. Implicit design would be better, like, for instance, limiting the amount of ordinance in the game so that it would be basically impossible to cause total destruction. Also, there would have to be a base layer of ground that couldn't be destroyed so that players couldn't keep bombing craters upon craters into the ground forever.

I'm not suggesting that TDDEs become the standard in future games or games of a certain genre, just that I'd like to see it implemented eventually. All games shouldn't strive for realistic portrayals of every aspect imaginable. There's still plenty to be said of games that present us with unrealistic, otherwordly aspects that you will never encounter in the real world.
 
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