Actually that is a common misconception that is only going to get worse, unless consumers are edumacated about the differences.

CURRENTLY, yes, the quoted block above holds true. However the Ageia card allows for much more than that. It allows for PERSISTANT physics, not just “effects” physics, which is the only type you’re likely to see for a while until game devs get their acts together. With Ageia’s physics acceleration, the CPU actually knows what’s going on, so if some physics happens to intereact with something else (like a building collapsing over characters to kill them), then falling debris could potentially kill characters.

Not so with with the current level of physics adoption. And certainly not so for the Graphics card accelerated physics solutions (a la Novodex API) via ATI and Nvidia. These will only be effects physics because there is no way for the CPU to know what effects are being accelerated and what effect they could possibly have on other objects. So these effects will most likely be limited to bullet explosions (Ghost REcon A.W), flying mailboxes, blood splurts, etc etc.

True physics that are part of the game’s core are likely a ways down the road (see Cell Factor) etc.