Clarkson – BLOG! » PhysX in all EA’s games: revolution or expected?

PhysX in all EA’s games: revolution or expected?

By admin, December 11, 2008

: Image by Chokma via Flickr

I am the happy owner of an “old” original PhysX PCI 100 card, which still works flawlessly with the new NVidia drivers. When I received it as a sample I was really hoping to be able to see, in a very near future, this technology adopted worldwide, how stunning it was. Seeing real world physics applied to games was a step beyond to what the actual gaming world was offering at the moment. And I am only referring to two years ago…

Since then, NVidia, the “Green Goblin” of Graphics World, managed to buy the company, and put the employees at a choice point: either you stay and work by our own rules, or you leave.

I don’t know how many of the PhysX development staff accepted to have their paychecks with the NVidia logo on them, I really hope none of them was really forced to leave the company. But aside this, what we have seen in the past few months was the integration of the PhysX technology in the latest NVidia’s video cards, enabling this extraordinary technology via software (drivers) and hardware on the biggest and most expensive video cards to start with, and then consequently the support for mid to low end cards too. This is just what I was hoping for two years ago, when I assisted, attending the Games Convention at Liepzig, a live demonstration of the PhysX technology applied to UT3, with my friend Theo Valich, who introduced me to the original AGEIA PhysX company’s Director of European Channel, Peter.

Now the news that EA, the “BIG” name in computer and console games, decided to adopt this technology for all their future games (they started with their latest creation, “Mirror’s Edge“). I hope all PC and console games developers will adopt the same technology, giving it finally all the attention it deserves.

Nice move, EA. Way to go, Nvidia. Even if I’ve always been an ATI fan. BTW, where’s ATI in this?