AGEIA is a company that, over the course of the last two years, has gone from a virtual nobody to one of the front runners in the hardware world. They have accomplished this task thanks in no small part to their one-of-a-kind physics processing unit (PPU). The PhysX PPU is, by all accounts, a technological marvel. However, what use is the cutting-edge technology when it can't really be used to its utmost? AGEIA's CEO Manju Hedge sat down with us to answer this question and more.

After the conversation, Thomas and I were pretty impressed with what AGEIA had to say. So much so that we couldn't just let the other write the article. Hence, we will both be writing this article, which is an overview of our conversation, and providing you with the latest information from the first and only physics hardware company.

New Features
First, I want to tell you a little bit about AGEIA's latest advancement in their physics engine. This update is SDK version 2.6 and includes a plethora of new and exciting physics capabilities. These features range from the deformable metals, impact retention, self-collision prevention, Vista and Linux support, and more optimizations of existing features. I was actually able to see a demonstration of some of these new features while I was in New York for the DigitalLife event. Allow me to break this down by feature:

Deformable Metals

This is a revolutionary feature in physics. This is not a texture based, rendered deformation, but a complete deformation of the object/wireframe itself. For example, in Counter-Strike: Source you can shoot at barrels and rendered debris will fall from it. In addition, marks will be left from each bullet impact. These marks, however, are merely a change in texture, or the image layered on top of the barrel object. Using extreme detail and a bit of light magic, this can appear as 3D and give the illusion that the barrel is actually deformed. The problem lies in the fact that this can only remain for so long. These "decals", the bullet holes, have to be tracked and recorded, but once a certain number are created, they start disappearing in the order at which they appeared.

Here is where deformable metals completely changes the way we interact with the environment. Now these barrels actually deform before your very eyes. No decals or texture manipulations are necessary. You may remember that I posted a demonstration video that I received from AGEIA. Click here to view that now. As you watch the video, note how the barrels are hitting each other and the objects around them and deforming accordingly. However, one thing to note is that there is no end to the deformations. Most games will start deleting decals when you reach about 100. However, while at the AGEIA booth, I created an infinite number of deformations to the barrels, a car object, and several other demonstrations. Not once did any of these objects snap back into place after creating a deformation elsewhere. This is because of the fact there is a dedicated processor in charge of not only calculating the deformations, but keeping track and calculating further deformations. It truly is an amazing feature. Now you may complain that the objects in the demonstration deformed too easily. Well, the AGEIA staff showed me specifically that a developer using the SDK can actually change the density, metal strength, and other variables to be able to simulate the entire metal spectrum.

This kind of calculation can only be handled when offloaded to a PhysX processor. Pretty Amazing.