At launch, the PPU cards will only handle rigid-body and particle-based fluid dynamics physics calculations. A driver update early in 2006 will enable both soft-body and hair/clothing acceleration as well. The cards will come with a tech demo made in the Unreal Engine 3, created by the team that made Crimson Skies for the Xbox, where the player can run around a hanger crowded with boxes, crates, barrels, and a plane, and absolutely destroy everything. We saw a video of the demo, and it looks neat, but the highlight came when the plane crashed into the hangar and realistically destroyed stacks of crates and boxes in an explosion of interactivity we simply don't see in games.
