Physics Processing Unit - The Impact on Gaming
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I’m sure you realize that this will help the physics of games, but what are exactly the physics of a game? The easiest to identify is gravity. It's constant for the most part in games, 9.8 m/s^2, provided you’re on earth. This can be handled easily by the CPU, but there are a lot more to physics. Everything has to do with physics, from how things move, interact and react. Here are a few physics processes that until this point have been left out of games, or watered down.
The first area is material properties. Stuff like elasticity, friction, and density fit in here. Sure we have some friction in games already, such as oil slicks, but we don’t really have any real properties of the materials. Things such as wood cracking when too much weight is on it or ways certain things shatter under different weights haven’t made their way into games so far.
Next area is clothing. No, Barbie isn’t getting a brand new PC game with the physics of her cloths, but other games may. Character’s clothes will react different based on the material and other factors like rain and wind. The clothes will also conform more to the characters body, if they have a massive gun on their back under a cloak, you’ll be able to see the outline of it.
Another new part to games will be the realism of things such as smoke and fog. Fog will lift as the sun comes up and warms the air, and smoke will also behave like it would on earth. It will rise up first to the ceiling, and then expand out to the windows and out the windows.
Fluids! You knew fluids would come up. Better physics means more realistic fluids. First would be that oil will now not look like black water, but actual oil. Next would be the viscosity of fluids. The best example I can think of is in the 3DMark03 nature test. The water in it was very nice. It was forced around the rocks, and it was properly transparent while still having ripples. This may soon be EVERY game, not just the 3Dmark test.
The last part deals with collisions. This has been already developed in games, but has been limited in scaling. Think of a war game where you fire bullets. Some bullets may pass through material objects. This will slow down the bullet or deflect it at a different angle. Current games have limited capabilities of this. You can fire through glass and some walls, but the amount of stuff you can shoot through is limited. Another improvement will be one of my favorite problems. When you drive a tank and get stopped by a shrub. I’m not sure what planet the developers are on, but here on earth the tank wins every time.
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