Ageia Announces APEX Physics Platform

Author: by Staff

Physics hardware manufacturer Ageia has announced APEX, a new "Ageia Adaptive Physics Extensions" platform that it says will provide developers and modders with a set of libraries and tools to streamline in-game physics implementation, set to be included with Unreal Engine 3.0 in early 2008. Ageia says the platform "saves engineering time and increases efficiencies throughout the development of next-generation titles, regardless of the platform, and enables designers to more directly utilize Ageia’s powerful physics engine." The platform will be made up of three parts. First, the pipeline offload component will "reduce the GPU and CPU bottlenecks for physics" and ensure "computationally extensive tasks are performed as efficiently as possible by offloading the majority of physics processing task and also some of the associated game engine code onto the Ageia PhysX processor." The "scaling level of detail system" uses the platform to "dynamically scale the amount of physical simulation performed in the game to best utilize the processing capabilities of the system." Ageia says the system supports single and multi-core processor environments, including those on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Finally, the "pre-built verticals" libraries will "enable developers to quickly enable specific advanced physics features" with scenarios specified and developed for game environments to be used by designers as-is or customized. Said Ageia CEO Manju Hegde, “Physics is the future of gaming and AGEIA is committed to enabling as many developers as possible to deliver on that promise more quickly and effectively than ever before. We believe that all games should have great physics and every developer should have the tools to be creative in this realm. With Ageia APEX, physics-based game design just got easier.”