AGEIA has finally got its PhysX cards out to the public through ASUS and BFG’s expansion cards. These cards will together with games that support PhysX result in physical effects we consumers have never seen before. The first reviews of PhysX haven’t been entirelly positive, mainly because of the lack of compatible games and the people least impressed are, for obvious reasons, Havok. Havok is namely AGEIA’s perhaps biggest opponent and has been working with physics acceleration for games for a long time. It is also the company NVIDIA and ATI’s support for physics accelerations with their respective graphics circuits.
Havok apparently felt urged to send out a mail to the media after AGEIA launched PhysX where it does its best to trashtalk AGEIA’s solution. Primarily it focuses its criticism on Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, that has become somewhat of a “launch title” for PhysX, but Havok claims that Ghost Recon actually use Havok’s API for handling physical effects, both the PC and video console games.
AGEIA has aready replied to these claims in an interview at Firingsquad which is rounded off with an announcement of new drivers that will lead to better performance when using PhysX.
This has turned into one big mess and it will just keep growing for some time, but on the other hand it proves what capabilities there are for physical effects in games.
