AMD Shows Off GPU-Accelerated Havok Physics

Sorry I wasn't clear I suppose. The technique Pixar and likes are using is called offline rendering. In other words, what we see on the screen is not a video capture of a realtime rendering of the animation. This below is taken directly from Pixar site:

"The next step is rendering, which is translating all of the information in the files that make up the shot -- sets, colors, character movement, etc -- into a single frame of film. Each frame represents 1/24 of a second of screen time and takes about six hours to render. Some frames have taken as long as 90 hours."

"Each frame represents 1/24 of a second of screen time and takes about six hours to render. Some frames have taken as long as 90 hours."

Sounds like Crysis on most PC's.

I think jopey understand it wasn't real-time - (s)he was saying only eight years ago it was impressive for a Hollywood studio to pre-render fabric now you can do it in realtime on a home PC, so maybe in eight years we could see monsters inc rendered realtime on a home PC.

Yes, thanks joe. I thought I was pretty clear, I guess not enough. The rendering pixar do is actually ray tracing, which is far more process intensive than the rasterization technique used on PC games... so the comparison of how long a frame takes to render isn't a good comparison. The cloth simulation like in the video is a different process and replaces the animation work with a representation of real physics. That cloth physics work was first shown in Monsters Inc... now it can be done on a home computer... so in another 8 years we might see water and physics simulations like this..
http://www.scanlinevfx.com/movie_collection.html
... on our home systems. That is of course unless we aren't all using that new "onlive" thing.