by Guest Writer Joe Keefe Introduction Although Matrox has developed run-of-the-mill video cards in the past (e.g. the G400, a contemporary of NVIDIA’s GeForce2), they are best known for hardware that caters to the multi-monitor user. Three or four years ago the Parhelia line of triplehead graphics cards (supporting simultaneous 3D output to three monitors) caused […]
Back to Page 3 Conclusions Parallelism is undoubtedly the future, with post-release patches for titles such as Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 showing the beginning of dual-core support by developers as they optimize games to take better advantage of multi-processing. Next-generation consoles and their multi-core processors will certainly help evangelize the need […]
Back to Page 2 Synthetic Testing Windows Media Encoder 9 was used for SimHQ’s content creation test. The application is a free download from Microsoft and greatly benefits from systems capable of accelerating its multithreaded design. Falcon 4: Allied Force’s intro movie, a 91 MB AVI file, was converted into a WMV file with […]
Back to Page 1 Benchmark Scores While the vast majority of PC game and simulation developers do not yet support SMP, the situation will hopefully change in the future as both Microsoft and Sony’s next-generation consoles help evangelize the need for the programmers at larger development houses to learn multi-core support. For simulation fans, […]
by John Reynolds Introduction The battle between AMD and Intel for dual-core dominance continues as both companies ready follow-on processors to last year’s initial offerings. As noted last summer in SimHQ’s first dual-core duel article, there are significant architectural differences between these parts: for Intel’s design, each core uses the front-side bus to the memory controller found […]
Back to Page 4 And the Rest… No, not Gilligan’s Island, the other simulations I mentioned. I flew the TIR3 and TIR4 in Strike Fighters P1 (the Korean Campaign), Wings over Vietnam, Jane’s F/A-18, IL2/Pacific Fighters, and BoB2. Both units performed well. The biggest difference to me was the TIR4’s ability to keep the […]
Back to Page 3 The Sims No, not those Sims, our comparison simulations. Before we look at individual results, I’ll give you some overall opinions. First, performance hits: There aren’t any, in my opinion. Not with TIR3, and not with TIR4, or if there were they were so small I didn’t notice them. NaturalPoint says that […]
Back to Page 2 Protocol As I said, I determined the best method of judging the TIR4 was in comparison to its predecessor, the TIR3 with Vector Expansion, which is what I happened to be using previously anyway. NaturalPoint’s web site has a really nice comparison page of the units, and their respective capabilities and prices. […]
Back to Page 1 Installation As with all the rest of my computer gaming gear, I had no patience whatsoever while awaiting the arrival of the latest addition to the family. When it was finally delivered, I tore into the box like a kid at Christmas and soon the contents were spread out across […]
by Tom “20mm” Hayden Introduction A familiar phase says that good things come in small packages. True for things like diamond rings, but what about tiny technology, in particular the new TrackIR 4 Pro just released by NaturalPoint? We’re going to take a look at this little gizmo and do some comparisons between it and it’s […]
Back to Page 2 Q. How could a flight simulation developer really take advantage of the AGEIA PhysX processor? Improved complexity for flight and damage models come to mind, but could a developer add the impact to an aircraft’s flight model that variable weather and air conditions might have? Could damage models include complex ballistics […]
Back to Page 1 Q. How exactly is AGEIA working with developers to add support for the PhysX chip to existing games? Can you list a few titles that are seeing retroactive support for the new PPU and how specifically they are taking advantage of its hardware support for physics? And how are developers who’re […]
