physics
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Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, father of LCDs, passes away
We'll admit, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes didn't exactly get the ongoing credit he deserved for spearheading discoveries that gave us the liquid crystal display, and it's with regret that we convey the news that he has indeed passed away at 74. Pierre-Gilles was born in Paris where he graduated from the elite Ecole Normale Superieure school after working in "neutron scattering and magnetism before moving to the realm of supraconductors and later to liquid crystals." He went on to take home the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1991, and was even dubbed the "Isaac Newton of our time" by some of the judges. Thankfully, much of his brilliance can still be enjoyed via his 1974 book "The Physics of Liquid Crystals," and while we're sure the context is way over our heads, we can certainly appreciate the end results of his unwearying work.
Penumbra indie horror adventure makes its 'Overture'
Penumbra is a 3D horror game by Frictional Games created to show off the studio's proprietary physics engine. It plays like a Resident Evil meets Half-Life 2 mashup -- which is reason enough to give it a try -- but also offers something new in the realm of interactivity. Almost every object you see can be moved, carried, and used. If you can't reach the vent on the ceiling, try piling some junk on the floor to stand on. Steam blocking your path? Cover the open pipe with whatever's lying around. Set in an abandoned factory, Penumbra provides a deliciously dark, spooky atmosphere filled with mystery. The indie gaming community ate up the initial offering, so Frictional Games immediately began work on a commercial-sized helping.The demo for Penumbra: Overture has finally been released. Three episodes are planned over the next year with the first installment hitting March 30 for $19.99. In addition to a longer adventure, Overture promises even better visuals (which were excellent to begin with) and deeper interaction with the game environment. A combat system is also in place, though the focus is on solving environmental puzzles, not shredding baddies.[Via Independent Gaming]
Clowns falling down stairs: the ultimate physics game
Yesterday, in his talk at the Independent Games Summit, Matthew Wegner beat up clowns. To be specific, he showed a physics sim clip of a dozen full-costumed clown ragdolls tumbling helplessly down a spiral staircase. Wegner, head of the physics game site Fun-Motion, called clowns falling down stairs "the ultimate physics game." Why? Because it's a lot easier to identify with clowns in peril then, let's say, a bunch of shapes. Besides, it's just hilarious. Later on, Wegner also showed a sim of a few hundred cows falling through a mess of painful looking barriers. Also very excellent.The thing that Wegner didn't mention though is what's up with all this sadism? Physics games are definitely fun, but what's most fun is destroying stuff--clowns, cows, ragdoll fighters, whatever. So why the connection? Regardless, if I were a clown at GDC right now, I would probably be in hiding.
Tower of Goo evolves into World of Goo, 2D Boy is born
The Experimental Gameplay Project has produced a number of crazy, unique, and surreal games, such as On a Rainy Day, Attack of the Killer Swarm, and probably the most famous, Tower of Goo. Recently project founder Kyle Gabler stepped up with buddy Ron Carmel to start a brand new indie game studio, 2D Boy. The bubbly had barely been popped when they announced their first project, World of Goo.What is World of Goo? According to the 2D Boy website, "it is extremely mysterious." Let's go out on a limb and say it will be a lot like Tower of Goo but inflated to full-game proportions.[Via Independent Gaming]
Mini-Z T-ray imaging device takes home the gold
We're all about giving golf claps where they're due, and a healthy round is certainly in order for Mr. Brian Schulkin. The doctoral student in physics developed a breakthrough terahertz imaging device, dubbed a T-ray, that has already demonstrated its ability to "detect cracks in space shuttle foam, image tumors in breast tissue, and spot counterfeit watermarks on paper currency." The Mini-Z marks the first time such a powerful device has become portable in nature, weighing just five pounds and taking up about as much space as your average laptop. Taking home the first Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize ($30,000), Schulkin explained that this device didn't pose the same health risks as typical X-rays, and unlike ultrasound, terahertz waves can provide images and spectroscopic information without contacting an object. As expected, the patent-pending technology is already up for licensing, and has already received quite a bit of fanfare and commercial interest from larger companies. So while you may never personally encounter Brian's earth-shattering invention, we're fairly sure this young lad's working days are already drawing nigh if he so chooses.[Via Physorg]
New Havok release supports PS3
Havok has officially unleashed Havok 4.5, the latest version of their comprehensive animation and physics toolset for developers. The update adds full optimization for the PS3 and its Cell architecture, and is derived from Havok's cooperation with Evolution Studios in the construction of Motorstorm's physics system. Upcoming games utilizing the 4.5 variant are expected to handle Havok instructions between five and ten times faster than the previous release."Havok 4.5's ability to allow developers to massively scale game content will make it possible to develop even more compelling, realistic and complex worlds that harness the full power of new generation architectures," says Havok's David O'Meara. Though the emphasis remains on crafting "realistic" worlds, one might also consider the impact that robust physics and animation have on "unrealistic", fantasy games. When objects and clothing behave as you expect them to, it can lend even the most unusual world a sense of believability and cohesion. It's not all sliding crates and rolling barrels, you know.
Havok to power Fable 2 physics & animation
Havok announced today that Molyneux and company have licensed Havok Complete for Fable 2. 'Complete' rolls Havok Physics and Havok Animation into one integrated package.As Molyneux iterated, relying on Havok allows Lionhead developers to focus on the team's lofty aspirations, most-simply defined as dynamic regions, unconditional love, wealth accumulation, constrained combat, and an as of yet undisclosed uber-feature. As with the original Fable, at this stage it's hard to distinguish fantasy from reality (what gameplay elements will and won't make it into Fable 2's final release). But there is now at least one certainty: ragdolls.[Via 1UP]
Nanomagnetic vortices could lead to bigger hard drives, faster RAM
You know, we were sitting in our editors' meeting the other day, and we all came to a very serious consensus about our reportage these days. There's been a serious dearth of vortices in our articles, and so we're going to do our darndest to bring you more coverage of these truly awesome swirling clouds. Fortunately for us, those egghead physicists down at Rice University know how to read our minds. A team over in Houston used a scanning ion microscope to create and measure "ultra-thin circular disks of soft magnetic cobalt" ranging in diameter from one micron to 38 microns. According to a press release issued by the university, the six micron wide (about the size of a red blood cell) magnetic vortex is "a cone-like structure that's created in the magnetic field at the disk when all the magnetic moments of the atoms in the disk align into uniform concentric circles." (Whatever that means.) Lead researcher Carl Rau, professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, said that this new advance may lead to storage densities "in the range of terabits per square inch," and went on to say that "magnetic processors" and "high-speed magnetic RAM" may also be in the works. Now that we think about it, this is probably what would happen to the offspring of Storm and Magneto too.
ATI announces CrossFire physics platform
Today ATI says Ageia's PhysX engine be damned, as they're about to spit some new competition in the burgeoning hardware physics engine market. When you take that newish Radeon X1900 XTX physics adapter and combine it all Voltron-like with twin SLI graphics adapters -- and then throw in Havok Physics API support, which they announced today at Computex -- you get what they're calling CrossFire, a 2+1 graphics configuration bent on pushing more pixels and polygons than any of us sad little Engadget editors would ever know what to do with. Being that few motherboards would support this triple PCI-E configuration (and the fact that ATI is pimping Intel's forthcoming Core 2 Duo processor platform, which is expected to be announced in the very near future), it seems like you might not yet have to worry about whether the 10,000 in-game object boost this rig will provide is actually worth handing over your hard-earned bucks for.
Physics acceleration: hot or not?
Physics is becoming the new buzzword when it comes to hyped-up hardware. Ageia's PhysX processor has been touted as an important step forward -- the add-in card, which is already available in Alienware's machines, goes on sale this month, though it will be some time before the games which support it are released.However, Ageia hasn't sewn up the market. NVidia is also getting on the bandwagon by supporting Havok (as announced at GDC). Ageia claim that their card can generate more objects than a high-end graphics rig can cope with, so it will be interesting to see how a dedicated graphics card handles the task of physics too. Microsoft is jumping in the fray as well -- not much is known about DirectPhysics, but if history repeats itself then a firm hand from Microsoft could do the hyperbolic world of physics accelerators a world of good. Ultimately, physics acceleration has a lot of potential, but the cost of an additional card is off-putting; as more emerges about the alternatives to PhysX, it'll be easier to make an informed decision.
