Asus PhysX P1

The bundle also includes two demos of games built from scratch with the PhysX API - Switchball and CellFactor: Combat Training. It's the latter that holds the most interest, with its massive amounts of realistic object collisions and impressive cloth effects. But while it's undeniably fun to watch big piles of objects explode and fragment realistically, it's still hard to justify paying £180 for it. And again we return to the point that hardware physics acceleration is a hard sell unless you see it in action, hence the videos on the "PhysX in Action" section of www.ageia.com

AGEIA's aims are laudable, though, and we hope this is the first step toward more realistic and complex gameplay. With a PPU in place and games that support it, you can expect more dramatic explosions with more dust and debris, as well as richer environments and characters. And as these objects are all properly modelled, they'll cause damage as you'd expect. It also promises more actual interaction, such as foliage and cloth that sways naturally when brushed.

One of the headline features is giving smoke and fluids weight so that it billows as characters move through it. However, there's no guarantee that anything will actually be any better when created on a PhysX chip rather than when rendered on a GPU. And it's here that Nvidia might steal the show, as a GPU acting like a PPU is far more adaptable and understandable to a consumer.

This is all for the future, though, and until Unreal Tournament 2007 surfaces at least there's currently no practical point in investing in this card, unless as a future collector's item.

Author: Clive Webster