If the universe is a strange place, our interpretations of the universe are even stranger. Our planet alone has gone from being a flat board floating in space with a big star revolving around it, to a slightly oblong sphere, itself revolving around the same star. I blame physics. Our attempts at applying the scientific method to the phenomena we observe in nature, a practice we know as "Physics," is inherently flawed. Not so much flawed in the sense that the laws it produces are illegal, but flawed in the sense that the laws it produces are not always upheld. I suppose it is a natural human instinct to be skeptical of taking the word of a bunch of guys draped in white lab coats as the truth.

Whatever the case, physics has been and will always be one of the driving forces of our technological progression as a society. We see physics being emphasized in school classrooms today, now more than ever, in an attempt to catch up with the more scientifically astute minds on the other side of the globe. While a more rigorous approach to physics as a way of advancing the world technologically is a very worthy endeavor, the most important characteristic of the subject is its ability to enforce and uphold the principles of reality.

It is these principles of reality that an imaginative bunch of game developers are most interested in. Over the last three years we have seen in-game physics effects grow by leaps and bounds. We’ve gone from holy unrealistic interactions between objects in a world in games such as DOOM and even Counter-Strike, to games like Half-Life 2 and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 2007, where realistic physics take the main stage. It is upon this reflection that I can’t help but sit back and be very proud of the game developers who, in about seven years, have been able to go from cartoon-looking worlds to some of the most realistic environments ever produced on screen. I blame physics.

Unfortunately for the end consumer, the physics in video games is often limited by modern technology, and performance in games that utilize these realistic physics engines usually gets hit pretty hard. That is why, not too long ago, a company called AGEIA began development on what they were calling a Physics Processing Unit (PPU). This unit, designed to be implemented as an add-in discrete board, would be able to handle all of the complex physics calculations that were traditionally carried out by a system’s CPU. This would potentially allow the CPU to do its own thing, completing what would be called the “Gaming Power Triangle,” whose vertices are the CPU, GPU and PPU. Now all of a sudden in games where you would have seen the same explosion time after time, you see highly dynamic and unique explosions with individual particle collisions on a scale never before imagined, well, except for maybe in real life. This is all provided, of course, that the game you are playing supports the AGEIA’s PhysX PPU.