I want PhysX but I want 5870x2!

[LoadsaMoney]

Pmsl at all those AAA titles, Sherlock Holmes, Speedball 2 etc...

 

[Ludomudo]

Its been a gimmick all its life!
And it will always be a gimmick!
RIP PhysicX

 

[hohum]

I don't think Physx will ever take off in a big way. Nobody likes proprietary stuff that ties you into a hardware vendor for no good reason (yeah, also looking at you, Creative).

Slightly off-topic - got Mirror's Edge recently, and can't use the Physx features anyway! The game just moans that my graphics card doesn't support hardware physics (I have a 8800GTS 640MB), and if I choose to ignore the message and enable it anyway... the game just crashes at the same point very early in the game. This is with the latest driver and Physx package, and Physx GPU acceleration selected in the Nvidia control panel aswell. Daft.

 

[Rroff]

Pmsl at all those AAA titles, Sherlock Holmes, Speedball 2 etc...

Actually the sherlock holmes game if its the one I'm thinking of is actually quite good... tho I have to admit I only played about half an hour coz its not really my thing... too slow paced.

 

[Mr Paul]

What about hunting down an Aegia PPU card? Would that still work with an ATI GPU?

The latest drivers and runtimes do not use the PPU

 

[kylew]

Don't think that works any more - pretty sure nVidia are being gay and locking out physx unless the main renderer is an nVidia card.

Only on new drivers. There are older drivers where it'll be fine.

But yeah, they are being really gay about it.

Also, I'd imagine a 9600GT should be the minimum people want for PhysX rendering, and Windows 7 is a must.

 

[Quixote]

There has not been one game yet to make any useful use of physx. At it's very best it has offered some extra eye-candy on incidental elements.

I don't personally care about whether hardware physics on pc takes off or not but i'll repeat what I said nearly 2 years ago - it needs 1 - just 1 really great killer app - it needs a mario 64, where the physics simulation is essential and central to the gameplay.

I've got an ATI card and I can't say I care about NVidia phsx exclusivity and wouldn't even on Batman (which I don't own) or Shift (which I do).

The best physics based games where physics really mattered to gameplay are things like world of goo where only quite basic hardware is needed. I just question whether physics needs hardware. I think not.

 

[Rroff]

The physx stuff on batman is kinda nice but as always they've had to gimp it so they don't lock out a moderate slice of their audience... which is also what for the most part is preventing that one "killer" hardware physics app from materializing.

 

[chaparral]

Screen shot of Difference between physX and no physx in batman game

PhysX even on normal does ideally need dedicated PhysX hardware like a spare 9800GT (as the installer states during update installation) in the 2nd PCIE slot.

I found that...

...

(PhysX on HIGH, 4xFSAA)
25-35fps in areas with smoke
60fps in all other areas
Only difference I see is that it adds smoke particles to the game, explosions look as they did before with same particles, batman's cape also waves around nicely like a cloth which is the same as it was without the patch...

...

:
(PhysX off, 4xFSAA)
60fps everywhere

BTW I use Vsync in this game.

So really all the patch seems to do for me is enabled smoke and halve the framerate

Fail!

 

[Quixote]

The physx stuff on batman is kinda nice but as always they've had to gimp it so they don't lock out a moderate slice of their audience... which is also what for the most part is preventing that one "killer" hardware physics app from materializing.

I accept everything you say but I don't think it changes what is required for a game to kick start hardware physics. And I suspect that such a game could be done on Havok or simliar.

 

[Rroff]

Screenshots really really don't for the most part show the difference between physx on and off in most games... need a video to compare and contrast... i.e. what you can't see is that the smoke deforms to the environment realistically... not sure why they couldn't have written an alternative routine that just used plain old noclip smoke sprite particles for systems without hardware physx tho.

EDIT: TBH tho this isn't a very optimal useage of hardware physx... I could create a software routine to do the amount of smoke they have in batman with less of a performance hit...

 

[StevenRaith]

DX11 compute shaders should render [geddit] PhysX obselete from what I have read - just write the DX API to use forty shader engines to render smoke/destruction/etc.

Which is what Phsyx deserves - it's always been a tacky add on to squeeze more money from gamers from the get-go IMHO - the fact that games like Mirrors Edge will barely run on non-physx hardware is just stupid.

 

[kylew]

I don't think Physx will ever take off in a big way. Nobody likes proprietary stuff that ties you into a hardware vendor for no good reason (yeah, also looking at you, Creative).

Slightly off-topic - got Mirror's Edge recently, and can't use the Physx features anyway! The game just moans that my graphics card doesn't support hardware physics (I have a 8800GTS 640MB), and if I choose to ignore the message and enable it anyway... the game just crashes at the same point very early in the game. This is with the latest driver and Physx package, and Physx GPU acceleration selected in the Nvidia control panel aswell. Daft.

How odd, PhysX worked perfectly fine when I played through Mirror's edge, It didn't even make a difference until I got to the part where you get stormed by loads of armed police and they're shooting out windows after you, all the glass flying around dropped the FPS into single figures, so I had to turn it off.

It was a nice addition though, but yeah, until hardware physics is widely supported and not owned by any GPU companies, it'll be pointless.

Let's hope Havok, or PhysX, I suppose it doesn't really mater, gets ported to OpenCL to run on any GPU soon.

 

[Rroff]

DX11 compute shaders should render [geddit] PhysX obselete from what I have read - just write the DX API to use forty shader engines to render smoke/destruction/etc.

Which is what Phsyx deserves - it's always been a tacky add on to squeeze more money from gamers from the get-go IMHO - the fact that games like Mirrors Edge will barely run on non-physx hardware is just stupid.

AFAIK basic shader based physics can't do any of the real physics stuff, sure you can render smoke and some vertex/geometry deformation, but you can't do any of the rigid body collision handling, etc. through that... theres a lot more to physics engines that people seem to realise.

Physx in itself is a well rounded, stable, mature and ahead of its time, physics implementation and in no way or form deserves the slating its been getting...

 

[Rroff]

Let's hope Havok, or PhysX, I suppose it doesn't really mater, gets ported to OpenCL to run on any GPU soon.

You'd prolly have to pry physx from nVidias cold dead fingers which is a shame but the majority of developers already have more experience with havok anyhow, tho personally I prefer physx for gaming stuff as its a little less "intrusive" in the playing environment... while to some degree its a design problem, most havok implementations the player tends to stick against physics objects whereas with physx objects tend to bounce away - sure its a little less realistic but its a lot less of a pain in the arse when your playing.

 

[dom6918]

Thanks guys for the help...looks like ill be skipping PhysX..it does really hurt that i wont be able to play the game with full physics enabled etc. but if its affecting FPS that much i wont bother..

will just get me the 5870X2 when it arrives and call it a day!

 

[Duff-Man]

Hardware accelerated physics is an important step forward, and the GPU is the device to do it. However, until there is a *consistent* API which is universally compatible it's going to be impossible for developers to add more than superficial extra effects.

We need a common format. Either nvidia need to licence physX, or we need an OpenCL version of havoc. Until one of these two things occurs, hardware physics will remain little more than a gimmick. Which is a real shame. I would LOVE to see hardware accelerated fluid-physics really integrated into gameplay, in the way that half-life 2 did with solid-body physics; the possibilities are endless!

 

[alexthecheese]

Why is the GPU the one to do it? Why not a CPU core? Makes more sense to me.

 

[Duff-Man]

Why is the GPU the one to do it? Why not a CPU core? Makes more sense to me.

The GPU has orders of magnitude more floating-point power than CPUs. Most applications can't take advantage of this, since they cannot be broken down into a series of highly-parallel operations.

Fortunately, most physics-processing algorithms can be almost indefinitely parallelised, which makes them ideal for implementation with GPUs.

 

[marc512]

wait for gtx300 then

what he said.

Im waiting for then new gt300s to come out before i start thinking of buying a graphic card for my build