Ageia PhysX hits the market

With the Game Developers Conference (GDC) under way in San Jose, Ageia Technologies has taken the opportunity to trumpet a series of developments regarding its PhysX processor.

First and foremost, as of today, the chip is now available in new systems from Alienware, Falcon Northwest, and Dell. Add-in boards featuring the physics processing unit (PPU) are expected to be widely available starting in May. Ageia has designed the chip to handle complex real-time calculations that will allow games to have more varied and impressive visual effects, from explosions that never blow up the same way twice to environments that react appropriately to the natural physics of force, speed, volume, pressure, and density.

Fancy hardware doesn't mean much without games to play on it, and Ageia also announced a bunch of PhysX-supporting titles across major genres today, including Ubisoft's tactical shooter Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Epic Games' multiplayer first-person shooter Unreal Tournament 2007, and Big Huge Games' real-time strategy Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends. Other titles in the works using the PhysX Accelerator include Sigil Games Online's massively multiplayer title Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Black Element Software's space shooter Alpha Prime, and Metropolis Software's third-person action game Infernal.

Console gamers aren't left out in the cold, as Ageia PhysX technology will also be incorporated into Sony's PlayStation 3. The company today announced that the latest version of its PhysX software development kit will be made available to PS3 development teams at the end of the month.