Aspyr Media announced today they will publish LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game, with an anticipated release in August 2005. LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game is licensed by Lucas Arts and will be developed for Mac
by i5works.

In LEGO Star Wars, compete in action packed lightsaber duels against Darth Maul. Experience mind-blowing space battles in your starfighter. Use the Force - accessing secret areas and overcoming obstacles - to construct and play as more than 30 of your favorite characters such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda and more!

Battle, build and brainstorm all the fun, action and adventure of Episode I, Episode II and the new movie, Star Wars: Epidsode III Revenge of the Sith! Play alone or with a friend as you battle the forces of the dark side.

For more information on LEGO Star Wars, follow the link below.

Aspyr Media

Lego Star Wars

Ageia, a semiconductor company which specializes in physics processing has announced a Physics Processing Unit (PPU). It operates in a similar way to other processing units like Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) by offloading physics data onto a dedicated chip, leaving the main CPU free to carry out other tasks. The new chip is called the PhysX and claims to offer substantially greater physics processing compared with conventional CPUs.

Today Gamespot.com posted a Q&A session with Epic Games' Tim Sweeney on the subject of Ageia PhysX. Epic Games is listed as one of Aegia's featured partners and will be using the technology in Unreal 3. Interestingly, on the same Aegia page that lists Epic as a partner, Aspyr Media is listed.

In the interview, Sweeney regards PPUs as important as the addition of GPUs to speed up 3D games performance. He believes that Physics Processing Units will usher in a new age of "realistic dynamic environments" and "large scale particle simulation".

From the interview:

GameSpot: Can you give examples of how a game might be able to increase realism with the help of a PPU?

Tim Sweeney: When people talk about physics in recent games, they mostly think of Unreal Tournament 2004's vehicles or Half-Life 2's dynamic objects. There, you have 10 or perhaps 100 big objects interacting physically in an otherwise static environment. Knocking chairs and tables around is fun, but that's hardly the apex of physics simulation.

The next steps are realistic dynamic environments, fluid simulation, large-scale particle simulation, and other very large-scale physical phenomenon. If you look at a modern action or sci-fi movie, and what's possible with the non-real-time computer graphics effects there, it's clear that major new physics innovations will be introduced into gaming as hardware performance increases 10x, 100x, and more.

Aegia Technology: PhysX (Aspyr listed as Featured Partner)

GameSpot Q&A with Tim Sweeney

Aegia Press Release

Aspyr Media

Click to enlarge

Macologist and Barefeats.com have collaborated to update their impressions of Doom 3 with the nVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra.

Macologist has updated its review of the game with benchmarks of the game in action on the NVIDIA card. Previously the game was tested with an ATI Radeon 9600XT and a nVIDIA 5200 Ultra. Increased framerates compared to these cards were gained with the addition of the 6800. However, the G5 on which the 6800 was tested was a top end 2.5GHz compared to a 2GHz model for the 9600XT and a single 1.8GHz model for the 5200 Ultra.

Barefeats.com updated its popular Mac versus PC gaming page with the addition of the 6800 Ultra benchmarks. This test was a fairer comparison since an ATI Radeon X800 XT was tested on the same 2.5GHz G5 as the nVIDIA 6800 Ultra. Very similar framerates on the two systems were achieved, with only 1fps difference in both Doom 3 tests. Both graphics cards on the Mac lag by a large margin compared to performance on PC systems tested.

To read the Doom 3 review at Macologist or the Mac vs PC test page, click on the respective links below.

Macologist: Updated Doom 3 Review

Barefeats: Updated Mac vs PC Test

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Aspyr Media

DOOM 3

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