[ODE] Havok and NVIDIA present Havok FX at GDC 2006

[erwin@erwincoumans.com]

> The hardware is very different. There is not enough conditional flow 
> control in the ATI/NVIDIA hardware to do "all" of physics (collision 
> detection; friction models; etc) at a sufficient detail level, except 

Shader Model 3 gives enough control flow for interesting convex rigidbody 
physics, not just particle systems: 

An ex-collegue at Havok told me that GPU physics does run the entire physics 
pipeline (apart from the the broadphase) on the GPU. This includes collision 
detection, friction and constraint solver. The details about the collision 
detection are not to be disclosed yet, but it allows for stable stacking and 
thousands of convex objects on a static mesh. Also Havok GPU physics allows 
for gameplay physics already, the CPU side can request feedback from the GPU 
on a per-body basis. So it doesn't require to send ALL the body information 
(which keeps things fast). 

The Playstation 3 supports both Havok and Ageia accelerated on the Cell/SPU 
(and potentially GPU), no Ageia add-on. 


Jon Watte (ODE) writes: 

> steve1011 wrote: 
> 
>> I believe nVidia and ATI are responding to Ageia's h/w by showing how 
>> physics can be accelerated using GPU's.
> 
> The hardware is very different. There is not enough conditional flow 
> control in the ATI/NVIDIA hardware to do "all" of physics (collision 
> detection; friction models; etc) at a sufficient detail level, except 
> for things like scary-big particle systems. 
> 
> Graphics really is all about pushing things through a pipe of a 
> pre-determined length (although the length is re-configurable with 
> shaders); physics is more interdependent. That's what Ageia has going 
> for them. That, and the fact that you're not likely to throw multiple 
> $1,000 CPUs at the problem (if you were using x86 physics), when you can 
> throw a $200 add-in card at it instead :-) 
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
> 			/ h+
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