The last independent physics simulation company, Ageia, was bought by Nvidia recently. Part of Nvidia's strategy was not to continue selling the PPU, a custom piece of hardware that the Ageia engine runs on. Rather it is to convert it to run on Nvidia's hardware of choice, video cards. Intel, never being one to miss a bandwagon decided to start working seriously on getting physics to run well on their multicore cpus. Both companies’ goals are clear: to sell more hardware to their existing customers.

It looks like Nvidia's winning. Their physics simulation is currently running roughly 30 times faster than Intel’s. Go Green Team!  

What does this mean for you and me? Well, the good news is that research and development dollars are being spent to make our games even better. That’s always a good thing. Another good thing is that the initial results are really good. Some of these physics demo just rock and have the potential to really change the games we play IF the developers start taking advantage of it.

 Now for the bad news: None of this is coming for free. The companies behind these technologies are both mainly in business to sell hardware. Nvidia's thinking that any serious gamer will need to buy, not one, but TWO video cards next time they upgrade, one for the video and another for the physics processing. Now, the second card could certainly be a lower cost option, but we're still talking about needing two cards, an SLI capable motherboard and the software to put it all together. That’s not going to be cheap.

And if Intel has their way we're looking at 8 core CPUs. I don't know about you, but most of us at OCW are running quads, at best. So, again all the gamers will need serious upgrades to newer processors, motherboards and at least one gaming capable video card just to start playing with these new technologies. It makes me miss the days when you could get a top of the line video card for less than $200. Those were the days.

But, I just took another look at the graphics coming out of these new games. Maybe it is all worth it after all. 

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