It’s been a very long while since I last visited, so I was nearly blinded by Elysiun’s new colours. At first I thought this was the wrong site, then I thought this was an April Fools’ joke that nobody has bothered to clean up. Anyway…
The idea of Blender and Physics Processors, like this one from Ageia. Pros, cons, possibilities, incompatibilities, personal opinions, anything. Just discuss.
physics processcors are a chicken/egg problem
a) games will not significantly change until everybody has one
b) hardly anybody will have them until games significantly change
It’s a good idea, but I believe that the community should presently concentrate on more pressing matters. Such as a working OGRE plug-in, and getting the bullet engine as stable as possible.
I don’t think that PhysX processor compatibility should be a priority now. (for the BGE at least)
Ageia PhysX hardware is closed source and not multiplatform. I think it’s best to focus on Open Source physics engines for now, like Bullet or ODE.
Also, PPU physics acceleration has competition from the GPU (www.gpgpu.org), or multi-core CPU’s, like Intel, AMD and IBM’s Cell used in Playstation.
http://www.blendernation.com/2006/04/22/blender-and-physical-processing-chips-ppus/
We are adding more Physics / Rigid Body capabilities to Blender, and we make sure we use a Physics Abstraction, so PhysX can be support if it actually catches on. ALso, Collada Physics is being added to Blender.
See this Blender project we are working on:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/RigidBodyPhysics
Erwin
Don’t you mean multi-“core”?
Thanks, I did, it’s fixed 