Oleg Maddox's Room #1

[Flyby]

Originally Posted by proton45

I don't know a lot about the physics cards, but don't they calculate collisions (gravity effects & inertia) and things bouncing around? I'm not sure what kind of calculations a physics card would be useful for in a flight sim? It seems to me that the bottle necks in processing power are in visual calculations and damage calculations...

Well, the damage calculations, and other special effects like drifting smoke, bomb blasts and the sort might all benefit from PhysX implementation. NVidia now makes PhysX a software implementation on it's GPUs. This link sort of explains it, and does so much better than I.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2340015,00.asp
As I recall, AMD/ATi have their own version, so once again here we go with the Crossfire vs SLi thing. No common standard except maybe OpenCL. I bet sim developers are way behind the curve on this stuff.

Oh, Flyingbullseye, I agree with you. Too many cpu-cycle-sucking ground objects may have a negative effect on smooth gameplay. I know some guys are building their core i7 systems in preparation of the release of SoW, among other sims. I'd hate to read of how SoW just brings the latest and the greatest to it's knees. But I guess they won't have to turn down quite so many settings as less-than-topnotch gaming rigs might. Good thing Oleg is making it scalable. I'd much rather spend my cpu cycles on complex weather, and clouds and stuff. A good sim is hard on a good cpu. Ain't it?
Well. can't worry about every thing.
Flyby out