[Kevin]

Earlier this year Nvidia acquired Ageia Physx and has created a driver to allow Physx technology to work with all Geforce 8 and 9 series of cards and beyond. Nvidia has recently released their first driver with the software built in and they also released a few various goodies like some free games, tech demos, video editing tools, etc. In the mix they also rereleased the three Unreal Tournmanet 3 Physx enabled maps that now support the Geforce cards.





Also released was the new Unreal Tournament 3 patch v1.3. Anyways I decided to try out the three new maps. One was for deathmatch and the other two for capture the flag. While the maps do not offer full fledge physics found in stuff like Battlefield: Bad Company and Red Faction: Guerilla it does offer some neat new effects. One map had a tornado in it that swept up debrees and chunks of rock and such. Parts of the buildings could be destroyed in some maps but not every map and not everywhere. One map featured hail instead of rain in which the hail would stay on the ground for a portion of time. Other features included physics added to objects like dumpsters and rocks. You could also destroy some of those neon signs hung up.

As for CPU usage, without the new physics stuff the game usually gets at least a stable 60fps on the Geforce 8800gt but with physics enables, that framerate is cut down in half to about a stable 30fps. So is it worth it? Well it's certainly a nice feature to have and the physics stuff is only built into three maps designed for the physics and not your regular maps. If your computer can handle the physics processing then I would say it's worth it. I mean it's a simple free update. It's nothing incredible but it does add a little to the gameplay. I found myself shooting through a wall to get inside an enemies base quicker. I'm sure gamers can make use of the physics in terms of gameplay.

For those interested, you can check out the Nvidia power pack which includes the new display driver and a bunch of free content including the three Unreal Tournament 3 maps here:

http://www.nvidia.co...us/download.asp

You will find some interesting content in there including a free physics based game. Also, if you have Unreal Tournament 3, you can download the new patch here:

http://utforums.epic...ad.php?t=620465