Whatever solution is implemented, there would be serious drawbacks for consumers (us) if it were not: a) hardware agnostic, and, b) vendor agnostic. By (b), I mean a solution that is not directly controlled by any of the principal hardware vendors. I.e., the solution has to be able to be run on all hardware, and it should not be controlled by any of the hardware vendors.
The second point seems to be what is really at issue here: control of the physics implementation standard by any particular vendor would work inevitably to undermine competition. Why wouldn't the in-control vendor optimize the implementation to run best on their own hardware, at the expense of other vendors? This holds for either nvidia, AMD, Intel.
Advanced 3d games and GPU production exploded when two vendor- and hardware-agnostic standards (DirectX and OpenGL) allowed content providers (game developers) to become fully independent from hardware providers (GPU companies).
The same thing has to happen for physics to really take off. As consumers, we should be clamoring that either PhysX or Havok be set free from their hardware-vendor parents.
I agree with those that criticize AMD for not having any viable solution and for the marketing double-speak they use to hide their shortcomings. I also agree with those that criticize NVIDIA for trying to foist an inherently anti-competitive physics model (a vendor controlled implementation) on the gaming industry.
If you really care about physics in the long term, you have to decry both practices, because both practices retard physics development.
The second point seems to be what is really at issue here: control of the physics implementation standard by any particular vendor would work inevitably to undermine competition. Why wouldn't the in-control vendor optimize the implementation to run best on their own hardware, at the expense of other vendors? This holds for either nvidia, AMD, Intel.
Advanced 3d games and GPU production exploded when two vendor- and hardware-agnostic standards (DirectX and OpenGL) allowed content providers (game developers) to become fully independent from hardware providers (GPU companies).
The same thing has to happen for physics to really take off. As consumers, we should be clamoring that either PhysX or Havok be set free from their hardware-vendor parents.
I agree with those that criticize AMD for not having any viable solution and for the marketing double-speak they use to hide their shortcomings. I also agree with those that criticize NVIDIA for trying to foist an inherently anti-competitive physics model (a vendor controlled implementation) on the gaming industry.
If you really care about physics in the long term, you have to decry both practices, because both practices retard physics development.