Gamespot Interview with AGEIA

[Titanio]

As someone said earlier, the equivalent of lens-flare.

What's wrong with eye-candy?

Is everything that helps graphics simply "the equivalent of lens flare"?

The question of physics as a gameplay-enhancer or whatever is a seperate one. But physics has a role in the purely aesthetic too (and the loaded lens flare comment is misplaced imo)...and we could start getting into arguments then about the role of the aesthetic in the "experience" (e.g. for some games, style is substance, or a large part of it..)

 

[silhouette]

The math power has been there unless you want to stack things up excessively. The games haven't, physics is physics, it's inherently unpredictable in that small changes in the input forces can have massive effects in the final outcome. That makes it difficult to test and verify.

As pointed out throwing a table at a zombie, can be cool, and you can limit it to add to the coolness factor without breaking the game. But you can't really use it ubiquitously, when you commit something to be driven by physics, you have to design around the consequences.

Excellent points. As far as I remember, Gabe Newell told that it took a lot of time to debug and test Half-Life 2 just because of the physics simulation (e.g. objects/characters stuck to a place where they should not and the player cannot continue because of that). Now, if you try simulate more objects that can interact with each other in an environement, that may make the tests even more time consuming.

 

[one]

eyecandy

No no, it's about 'Reality' (Synthesizer)

Exploding gas station
This is a gas station exploding in the middle of the desert. Check out how much physics calculations have to be involved to do something like this. People would love to destory a building like this and have it explode in a realistic fashion. THIS IS PART OF A REAL GAME TOO!!!
http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/748/...tion_wmvlow.wmv

Thx for reminding me of that, yes, he said it's from an actual game of which name is not yet disclosed...

 

[ERP]

Oh please stop trying to down everybody that cares about physics in games. I'm going to quote something that I posted in another forum.




Q just because you have such a limited scope on how physics can change how videogames look and play doesn't mean everybody else does too. If you are a dev I hope your fellow employees help you out in the future to open your eyes.

These examples pretty much reenforce the point I was making.

Physics isn't going to be core to the gameplay, you'll get lots of it, but it's there to improve visuals, or used in other ways that do not break the core experience.

When I say it'll be the next lens flare, I mean it will be everywhere whether it adds anything or not. It's an easy way to burn CPU cycles so marketing can claim you're using 90% of the system..

 

[mckmas8808]

None of those game demonstrations show how physics affects gameplay. Unless there's a chance that she'll trip over her dress or she'll be so busy brushing the hair out of her eyes...

They're all eye-candy.

As someone said earlier, the equivalent of lens-flare.

Jawed so you are telling me that from those examples you can't figure out how that can change gameplay? The cannon balls going through the sails can be used for example. I don't think its that hard at all.

What about the motorstorm video? That video should be obvious to everybody. The exploding gas station is a good example too to me. If one of the boards hits the player, the player could lose a little bit of life. A game could force you to shoot off pieces of a the gas station to access it to gain a health pack.

I don't think its as hard as some people here is making it.

 

[one]

And more from PS Meeting 2005...

Ken Kutaragi explains the new version of Duck Demo
http://media.ps3.ign.com/articles/635/635625/vid_1180302.html
http://media.ps3.ign.com/articles/635/635625/vid_1180292.html
Ken Kutaragi explains the Doc Oc demo
http://media.ps3.ign.com/articles/635/635625/vid_1180294.html

The use of physics (and shader) in everywhere...
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/636/636028p2.html

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Jawed so you are telling me that from those examples you can't figure out how that can change gameplay? The cannon balls going through the sails can be used for example. I don't think its that hard at all.

Not sure that's a good example. How does this build on existing gameplay? In the demo, the balls hit the sails and damage them. What impact does this have? Do the boats move slower because they're damaged? That can be simulated now without needing complex physics...

If (Ball hits ship){
Ship speed = ship speed - 1.0
}

What the physics added in that boat demo was damage, which is a visual effect. What Physics could add is realism. Instead of an arcadey representation of sailing and firing cannonballs, physics can offer a realistic experience. Have wind, and have the boats move based on the wind's action, and so damage to the sails affects their performance realisitcally. How much real improvement would that add to games over the simplified fakes we have now though?

I think there's plenty of scope of simulation BASED ideas where it's essential (like Mercury cirrently on PSP, and I have a few of my own!), but overall I think it'll be used mostly to add realism to existing gameplays. FPS's will still be FPS's and play the same, but with more realistic bodies and barrels getting thrown around. GT5 and PGR will race more realisitically than prevous incarnations, but they'll still be racers and play the same. FIFA will still be a football game even though on next-gen it might have inverse kinematic skeleton controlled players and look more natural. The difference might be pretty intangible. eg. A fluid dynamics model could be used for a knock-out gas grenade thrown into a building, where the gas finds it's way upstairs and into other rooms. But the realistic results would be not much different in gameplay terms from just knocking out all enemies a room at a time spreading from the one with the grenade.

I think the main advantage of off-the-shelf physics engines is the dev doesn't need worry about game basics like collision routines and slow projectile movements; bread and butter components to games.

 

[Almasy]

Am I the only one here that feels that, even if physics are just used for aesthitics, that´s pretty damn fantastic? Just seeing Aeris dress moving according to her body impressed the heck out of me, and that alone makes it much better looking than something incredibly rigid like UT2007 or GoW.

 

[Squeak]

The biggest issue with physics in games, is that it's unpredictable.
I hit the boulder 1 inch to the right and the avalanche I cause though spectacular doesn't clear the entrance to the cave the designer intended and I have to restart.

In the short term at least it'll be more like lens flare, the leatest cool thing with little impact on gameplay.

A number of people have tried to build games around physics over the last 5 or so years, none have really worked. It's somewhat odd really dropping a few "physics" objects in a world and playing with them is fun all on it's own, but no-one has really managed to extend that fun into a game without it simply becoming frustrating (tresspasser anyone?).

I can mention more than a few games where physics was an intergral part of the fun.
Games like Thrust, Mario 64 and Rocket: Robot on Wheels come to mind.

 

[Titanio]

Am I the only one here that feels that, even if physics are just used for aesthitics, that´s pretty damn fantastic? Just seeing Aeris dress moving according to her body impressed the heck out of me, and that alone makes it much better looking than something incredibly rigid like UT2007 or GoW.

I agree. If the dynamics look right, if the world appears to respond to interaction more realistically, it helps an awful lot with that coveted concept of environment "solidity". How "solid" the world feels is fairly critical imo. Nintendo games have always captured this well IMO..it's more than a function of just physics of course, but good modelling can help here!

To take the cannonball-tearing-sails example..isn't it just much better to have that happen than the cannonball to clip through the boat as if it weren't there? It just seems more "real" that way, it feels more like you're playing in a solid functioning world, and that certainly helps the "experience", if not by extension the gameplay.The devil's in the detail, these things will start to count as the fidelity of the rendering increases.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I agree. I think it's a definite step toward realism. I look forward tothe day when swords stop passing through plate-mail clad orcs as easily as they pass through air. But I agree with ERP that it probably won't make for life-changing improvement to the way most games play.

 

[Almasy]

Well, it´s not as if a complete overhaul of how games play is a requirement. Look at racers for example, the essence of the genre has remained the same, but through an acumulation of small (and not so small) additions, we have now racing games that are far more advanced on every term. Even if the objective is still to reach the finish line in first place, things such as

Physics can be yet another addition that improves our perception of the game world. Even if the game plays essentially the same, physics could provide vividness to the game world we play in. I don´t know if anyone else has played Sly Cooper, but in that game, there´s plenty of activity around the world on some instances. That alone makes the world feel plausible, allowing you to let yourself go, because you are there. It looks as if it could exist, even for a brief moment, and that´s where physics could help immensely.

 

[Jawed]

Let's not forget Worms and Lemmings, two great physics-based games.

Jawed

 

[onetimeposter]

From: Andy Keane <xxxxxx@ageia.com>
To: xxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Date: Sep 2, 2005 5:13 PM
Subject: RE: Clarification of Comments made by your executives concerning Xbox 360 limitations
Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Add sender to Contacts list | Trash this message | Report phishing | Show original

Hasan,

We’ll be in touch later today.



Thanks, Andy Keane

VP Marketing, AGEIA

Ill send any emial Andy sends me by tonight.

 

[ERP]

Let's not forget Worms and Lemmings, two great physics-based games.

Jawed

Err what did lemmings have to do with physics?

 

[Titanio]

Ill send any emial Andy sends me by tonight.

How can you expect to have any credibility here when you've been banned from TeamXbox for making up emails previously?

If anyone else with a little more history and credibility here wants to get in touch with AGEIA to corroborate onetimeposter's claims, it could be an interesting experiment. But something tells me few Veeps of marketing will respond to a forum-poster's emails for "clarification".

 

[Jawed]

Err what did lemmings have to do with physics?

Building stuff and blowing stuff up.

Jawed

 

[onetimeposter]

How can you expect to have any credibility here when you've been banned from TeamXbox for making up emails previously?

If anyone else with a little more history and credibility here wants to get in touch with AGEIA to corroborate onetimeposter's claims, it could be an interesting experiment. But something tells me few Veeps of marketing will respond to a forum-poster's emails for "clarification".

how about I fwd you both the emails and you make a thread publicly apologizing to me. are you upto the challenge?

 

[Titanio]

how about I fwd you both the emails and you make a thread publicly apologizing to me. are you upto the challenge?

If you have been banned for making up emails previously I make no apologies for questioning your credibility in this instance, whether you are making these up or not. It's perfectly natural to be sceptical. And no, I'm not in the habit of handing my email address out on public forums.

 

[onetimeposter]

If you have been banned for making up emails previously I make no apologies for questioning your credibility in this instance, whether you are making these up or not. It's perfectly natural to be sceptical. And no, I'm not in the habit of handing my email address out on public forums.

email a blank mail at hasanahmad@gmail.com and ill fwd you both emails.