LoL@amp

What is HVS talking about specifically? The visuals standpoint or interface, gameplay standpoint? To be completely honest, the visuals don't really mean squat to me, they are just the cherry on top. If Galaxy or Prime were duds in the gameplay department I doubt anyone would really praise the games as highly as they do, even though the look phenomenal.

The best part about the Conduit was their Control customization. Games like RS2 will also implement this feature and I'm sure other FPS' in the future on Wii will have this feature become standard practice as well.

We know Wii can get some great looking games, but I am more interested in great playing games and innovations that the motion controls can bring to the table. If HVS is attempting to tap into Wii's vast potential from this standpoint then they have my attention.

They go hand and hand. Resistance: Fall of Man wasn't great visually but the added physics of active explosions and environmental destruction physics added to the look and feel of the game.

And then after we release that game, we will show you the true TRUE potential of the Wii!

You are confusing graphics with the feel of the game. Red faction Guerilla has pretty bland graphics, but the physics still add an immersive feel to the game since everything is so destructible. Graphics and physics affect the feel of the game, but they are two different things.

There is a reason why a GPU, Graphical Processing Unit, controls physics. While yes there was a PPU, Physx, it didn't take off. Explosions and other physics are all graphics based events. You need animations to make a fire burn properly. You need physics to allow a character to interact with the environment and for you to know your doing it.

The term graphics covers physics of all types and visuals because physics are all visual based interactions. This is why the Source Engine, one of the best known game engines in the world, is a physics engine while the CryEngine 2 is a graphics engine. They both manage game visuals. One is just more physics based while the other is all about push polygons.

...you really confused me, ssj12.

Some reasons I find your post confusing:

* Aegia PhysX was a software (i.e. CPU) physics middleware engine, which is now NVidia PhysX, and runs with (not "on", because the work is shared between the CPU and GPU) modern NVidia GPUs only.

* Its usually a waste of GPU horsepower to do physics with it -- namely because math in only part of the issue with physics, and accessing large amounts of collision data is really the majority of the time.  The CPU (or SPUs) is/are often better than the GPU in this regard.  In most games, the physics expenses are minimal, because no one wants to waste the horsepower on simulating all that stuff, or the manpower/money on creating efficient physics geometry and data for it.

* NVidia (owns PhysX), and Intel (owns Havok), are both looking into providing hardware physics solutions, in new chips. 

* "Explosions" have nothing to do with physics, unless they impart forces to physics objects, or fluff objects (which the game characters cannot interact with, like debris objects), which is rare, outside of games like Red Faction.  They almost always incur a particle/GPU fill hit, however, for their visual representation, unless they are offscreen.

* CryEngine is complete and handles physics, or physics middleware, as well as graphics, etc.

* The Source Engine is complete, and handles physics and graphics, and a host of other stuff.

Back on topic:  Certainly animation, physics, etc. all play into the look and feel of a game.  Perhaps HVS is commenting on how they intend to up the bar, in this regard, with future games... although I doubt games like their upcoming gladitoral fighter? would need much in the way of physics.

Physx wasn't just software... it was hardware. What is pictured is an Aegia Physx PPU producted by BFG. It is a dedicated physics processing unit.

You seem to not understand some tech history. Let me explain.

Valve designed the Source Engine to handle physics as best it can. Yes it has amazing graphics behind it but the main design is the physics part of it. This is why Half-Life and Portal are littered with physics puzzles.

Crytek designed the CryEngine 2 to create the most realistic graphics possible on current PC hardware. They accomplish this. They also made it so physics reacted realistically but their original intensions was the visual realism that we all know Crysis and Crysis Warhead are known for.

Now for your other arguements I want to point out that explosions have just started making much more of a physics impact in the last few years. Before the age of physics, just what I'm calling the dawn of real-time physics interactions, explosions were only effects like you said that if your hit you died. Now we have environmental destruction, object based physics, fluid physics, etc. All that impact the game both visually and how a game is played. If you want to throw a brick at someone's head you can and the toss will fly as if you yourself threw it. Destroy a building, you just made it so you need a new route. Shot a explosive barrel floating in the matter, after it starts catching on fire it will continue to float down and blow the hell out of anything in its way.

Without physics graphics now a days wouldn't look correct and things wouldn't be possible today. We wouldn't have flared bullet holes in Killzone 2, you wouldn't have vehicle destruction in MotorStorm or Dirt, you wouldn't have basic gernade physics because a nade would hit the dirt and stop cold where it landed instead of bouncing.

@ssj12
You seem to be confusing graphics with gameplay. Graphics are a representative of numerical game state. A suddenly destroyed object isn't so much graphics as it is a representation of a new state of an object. A game can run without any graphics what so ever, though it would be unplayable since there is no cues as to what is being represented by the world. So this comes down to that in a Physics World the world can still exists without graphics.

You are right though there are new techiniques that allow mass object physics to use a GPU. But physics are not reliant on a GPU. Physics engines have been in use for years. A GPU is not a graphics component. It is a CPU reserved for Graphics processing. A requrement for GPU Physics processing has been the problem of having the gfx sending data back to the system ram. This issue was over come a few years ago.

Your fourth paragraph is not so much about graphics as it is a representation effect of game state. "Destroy a building for a new route". That's a state/world change that has a graphical effect.

Wow really? I thought the Conduit showed off the power of the Wii. Pointless developer talk trying to 'big up' their next title.

The TRUE power of the Wii will be unleashed after the next game is released!