Posted 08/22/2008 at 08:22:54am

I strongly disagree with you, gator, and your lack of understanding of the software/hardware behind everything shows a bit of ignorance.  I will give you that JC hasn't really made a "killer" game in a long while, he does build the engines, which sell and are usually used for some of the great games out there.

 JC is a pioneer and one of THE guys to go to as far as graphics development.  His predictions about things outside of 3D models and the like, I take with a grain of salt, but he's usually dead on with those.  Does he understand how to make a good game?  Eh...  not exactly.  Does he know how to make a game pretty?  Definitely.  His random psychobabble took a long time for me to understand, but after coding in 3D for a number of years, I can appreciate and understand his insights.

One of the BIGGEST problems with the PhysX cards is that you're adding another processor/card to be used through the system bus.  Why waste $300 or have an extra video card do this all when you have multiple cores in your computer?  It's pointless, in my opinion.  So, we can either use a framework that is dependent on an additional "card" (just like how you need a great video card to play a good game), or you can build it into the actual machine itself, utilizing EXISTING hardware.

His biggest complaint/issue with PhysX (if you read), is that it's going to make a huge gap between people who can play a game and cannot.  He's in the industry to advance the technology, but also to make money -- if you start knocking out one of your demographics, it's not a good business decision.  Have you noticed how a lot of people are griping that the Wii has so many damn accessories?  It's getting more expensive than just the PS3 or 360 alone.  Furthermore, you use like an accessory per game.  Mario Kart Wii has its steering wheel and you use it for that one game.  How about the tennis racket?  Or the Wii blaster?  All of those are pointless things.

The huge things that Carmack is talking about right now is using multiple processors for HUGE performance, and you can kind of infer that he sees Physics going this way.  That way you're not limiting people to needing the extra card for PhysX.  He's really building off of the common trends, namely the PS3/360's multiple core support, as well as the direction of PC's right now (although we don't have 8 cell processors in a computer... yet... but still, we have quad cores and 2 sockets, so 8 equivalent cores if you're bleeding crazy).  And the only way we're able to utilize the CPU's good anymore SCREAMS that we need to use multiple cores, since we can only go so fast on one core.  Have you noticed a single cored processor hasn't really gone past 4-5 gHz on its own?  The way to increase speed = more processors.  This is EXACTLY what he's talking about.

Carmack is *not* the best game developer and you shouldn't see him as that.  You should see him as someone who understands the mathematics and other technical psycho-babble that you'll never want to learn to make this game.  He helps advance the technology and directs it, truly as a futurist which explicitly comes to rendering.  If he weren't around, we would NOT have the games we do today.