Ageia Physx card?

hi i just found out about this add on card that proccesses the physic's and i think they have there own 3d/physic's core or what ever you call it but i would think this would be a lot better than havok if it were possible to use if you wanna see real time footage to see the diffrence with and with out the card go to they're site. www.ageia.com

Won't happen. Havok and Ageia have a good old fashioned blood feud going on and their software/hardware are incompatable. Plus switching from Havok to Ageia would break everything in SL because of the incompatabilities. Besides, all physics are run server side and with some servers running as many as 4 sims, you'd need as many as 4 of those Ageia cards (one for each sim) to take advantage of it. Not very practicle. Even if physics were to be done locally on our PCs Havok would still be the better choice in my opinion since Havok FX is coming out wich will utilize your series 6/7 nVidia GPU for calculating phsyics.

And from what I've read on their site, it'd require an extra card in your system, most likely PCI-E. NOW- try to convince people around here to update that old Pentium 4 they're using to use SL. Plus it'd have to come out for Mac's as well which probably wouldnt be the case as most hard core gaming seems to be on the PC side.

far as i know it's just a pci card but anyway surly the card should improve the fps of sl without any modification to the programing of sl i'm gonna get one since it is an add on card not a stand alone graphics card and proccesses physic's what most games are using in they're games now i'm not saying get the card i'm just saying it could solve the fps problems most users experance yes i know most of you are saying that's more money to spend but i think of it this way since it's an add on card you can use it with any graphic's card you buy.

It will do nothing to improve the performance of anythng you run. Buying one now would be a complete and utter waste of money.

Especially since physics in SL is NOT calculated client side.

Once again I point back to my post that its pointless to switch. Doing so will cost LL more money to install cards for each sim and would BREAK EVERYTHING THAT USES PHYSICS in SL because Havok & Agea are INCOMPATABLE. I know many would care less about weapons not working, but I do care if my custom Dominus Shadow or other vehicles become broken as a result of this. I also know of a few thousand scripters who would be pissed that they'd have to rewrite everything they ever made with physics. Not to mension the tech support nightmare LL and ingame content creators would face.

While I agree this PhysX card is probably not the right way to go (especially if Havok and nVidia are creating a competing product), I don't understand why SL's physics has to be calculated server-side.

There's no reason physics calculations can't be given a start/inital position/velocity/rotation/whatever from the server and then left up to the client to calcuate/render it smoothly, giving intervalled updates to the server for readjustments as necessary. So what if the calculations aren't exactly perfect for each user. How do multiplayer games with Havok physics do it? I doubt they're as anal as SL is!

SL needs more client-side functions for most, if not all, functions. Not everything needs to be server-side. Everyone doesn't need to have everything in-sync with everyone else. Movement, rotation, scaling, prim parameters, sun/moon movement, lights, etc, could all be animated much smoother if client-side (and no stupid delays!). Active Worlds does this and it works well--and AW4 even has a new "global" command where everyone (in visible range, of course) sees/hears the same smooth effect. Interpolate server-side values so the client always sees things smoothly.

Don't know if the PhysX card is any different, but apparently the latency on the nVidia/Havok is too great to do actual world physics - it's more for graphics effects like explosions.

I totally agree with you Eep - Second Life really needs better client side prediction. Would be a bitch to impliment though - with scripted movement you're not going to know what values are going to be checked/generated until it happens and anything using pushes and the like wouldn't be known by the client until after they'd happened.

If they implement client side physics it'll be after the instalation of MONO wich is suppose to bring script exicution to the client side.

It's gonna let us do client side scripting?!? I hadn't heard that, but if it's true that's even better news than HTTP requests. Have you got a link with details?