Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon 3: Advanced Warfighter for PC:

Without PhysX PPU:

With PhysX PPU:

„Final Thoughts

We only had a brief time with the AGEIA PhysX processor system for now, so we didn’t have enough time to „review” the card or technology completely, and it would be too early to finalize our opinions on anything based on this short look.

In Ghost Recon, the differences between having a PhysX card and not having one are not as dramatic as I had first hoped they would be.  Honestly, it would be a hard sell to most users to ask them to pay as much as $250 extra for a product that performs only what we saw here.  There is no doubt that in our videos we see a much more complex system of physics at work — the sparks and car destruction are more detailed, the amount of „rubble” from shooting the ground or buildings is definitely more complex and realistic and the various particle systems (dirt and smoke) are more impressive — but are they $250 more impressive?  Probably not, but with other titles such as Unreal 2007 coming out with even more advanced usage models on the PhysX PPU the market will eventually get there.

Our time with the Cell Factor demo showed what a true PhysX game could potentially look like, and it is impressive.  The amount of interactivity shown in our videos is unrivaled in any other title out now or that I have seen in development.  Unfortunately, this puts developers in a bind — do they create a unique title like this and require a PhysX card to play it, thus cutting out nearly all of their market initially, or do they stick to „effects physics” like we see in GRAW that don’t push the envelope?  It’s the same issue that AGEIA and company have been having to address with developers since the technology was first announced last year.

As 2006 progresses, I think we’ll see more and more usage of the PhysX PPU in games and more depth of physics processing because of it.  Hopefully it will be enough to „wow” us all.

Keep your eyes on PC Perspective for a full PhysX card review next week!

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