Physics Games and Physics-Based Game Downloads

ASUS has inadvertently announced that NVIDIA is planning to create a dedicated physics acceleration card. In this press release for their P5N32-SLI Premium motherboard, ASUS mentions:

Taipei, Taiwan, September 20, 2006 — ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (ASUS), the worldwide leader of motherboards, today introduced the P5N32-SLI premium/WiFi-AP, which leveraged Quad-SLI technology, Intel’s Core2 Extreme support, and a third PCI Express x16 slot for Nvidia’s upcoming Physics card to deliver superior gaming realism. Teamed with SupremeFX and DTS connect, P5N32-SLI Premium/WiFi-AP-powered systems provide gaming experiences that look, feel and sound real.

Whoops!

The excellent Trackmania series of games includes a beefy replay editor. The obvious use for a tool like this is to edit spiffy camera paths for your replays. But, you can also merge multiple replays into one. You could use this to scrutinize lap times among your racing buddies to improve your route. Or, you could merge 1,000 replays from the Trackmania community into a single video. Someone did just that, and the results are amazing. Must-watch video!

Watch 1K Project II Video @ GameTrailers

[via GSW]

Toribash, the amazing strategic turn-based physics fighting game, has updated to 1.98. The changes include:

• Right mouse controls camera (or alt+mouse)
• Added a safe wrists/ankles mode to the servers (used in Judo now)
• Fixed multiplayer scrolling and added all US/Asia servers
• Initial mod support for beta modders and TB hackers

(Toribash Sword Mod)

More information is available over at the Toribash forums. Congrats to Hampa on another fine release!

As an aside, I’m insanely busy this week and next, and then I’m going on vacation for a week. I’ll try to attack the review queue just as soon as I can, but things might be sparse here for a bit. Sorry!