Ageia PPU...maybe not so great after all.

[Golgatha]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060428/tc_nm/games_physics_dc_2

During a demonstration at Ageia's head office in Mountain View, California, Hegde showed off "CellFactor," an upcoming game in which rival combatants can use mental powers to move, break and fling nearly everything they see.

The chip's power was obvious as a maelstrom of debris whirled about, piling up against walls and scattering across the arena.

But before starting the demonstration, Hegde had to lower the resolution of the game.

The reason? The chip can generate so many objects that even the twin graphics processors in Hegde's top-end PC have trouble tracking them at the highest image quality.

Not sure I like the sound of having to lower my visual quality to be able to realistically sling around some debris. I was excited about the PPU until I read that. I suppose maybe the next gen graphics cards will eventually handle it, but by they I'm sure Ageia will have competition from nVidia and ATI in this arena. Makes it hard to swallow a $300 card, when it slows down your $1000 SLI/Crossfire setup IMO.

 

[VisceralM]

Yea, someone pointed this out in another thread as well. In effect, it becomes a graphics decelerator. In other words, it's DOA because no self respecting gamer is going to lower *anything* to get a $300 card to work.

 

[The Dome]

Over at XS the benches show it doing nothing, even in 3dmark with is supposed to use ageia's library.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: The Dome
Over at XS the benches show it doing nothing, even in 3dmark with is supposed to use ageia's library.

Could you post a link please? I'd like to read that article.


I think Cell Factor is a bit of an extreme case, but if Ageia is touting destructable environments, splintered wood, hundreds of falling rocks, etc., then they better be able to add that without killing graphics performance. Maybe this is just coming out at the wrong time, because for lesser effects I would think a PPU on a graphics card or the second core from a dual core system would suffice.

 

[Munky]

Maybe if the game devs actually used it properly it wouldnt decellerate the graphics. Of course things are gonna get slow if you have 10000 flying objects in the scene. But does anyone need all that debris to have a game with good physics? If the PPU can provide effects like cars blowing up or getting damaged with realistic modeling, I'd be happy. But then again, with less extreme physics, you may be able to do the same effects on a fast modern cpu, so it's unclear yet to which extent should the PPU be used. But I was skeptical about all the hype of this thing before it lauchched, and nothing I've seen has changed my mind since then.

 

[Nextman916]

Future drivers from Ageia should fix this, i hope. Or maybe new drivers from Nvidia and ATI will cooperate with the physx card better.

 

[xtknight]

I think they need to suspend development in terms of graphics for a year or so just so video hardware can catch up. The problem is the value of "minimal FPS" is getting lower and lower every time new stuff comes out. The PhysX PPU can probably just barely handle that stuff. Why don't they make it mediocre but playable? I don't want something that looks good but is too slow to play and unadjustable. I would like some wiggle room without having to buy the equivalent of an IBM BlueGene just to play the latest games. Maybe I'm just too picky, but I barely find the 7800GT adequate for gaming in Battlefield 2 at 1280x1024/high/4xSSAA. Add flying debris to a game that probably already runs at 40 FPS even on the latest SLI system, then it gets even worse. I want graphics cards and games industry to "resynchronize" so that the latest system can always handle 75 Hz for graphics. Right now games are miles ahead of the hardware and it's a big pain.

 

[Polish3d]

They need to find a balance. I saw the cellfactor demo and it was stupid anyway. Who cares about 10k flying barrels

 

[xtknight]

I thought it was awesome but they need to make it playable on a regular person's system! Even the lower stage of alpha geeks won't be able to play that one at anything reasonable.

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

Shouldn't be a surprise. Maybe the physics card can handle its calculations for 1000 flying objects, but the video card still has to render them. They missed that small point.

The question is, is it worth it to sacrifice resolution/AA/other details & effects so that the video card can render a vast numer of small objects in motion? At what point does the human eye cease to notice the difference? Can you perceive a difference between 200 and 300 flying objects, or are you too busy to notice because you're focused on the enemies shooting at you?

Fully destructible environments/high density damage modeling are going to require much higher polygon-count meshes because of the increased number of vertex break-off points. Even more burden for the GPU. It also means a lot more work for the modelers, since every object needs to be deformable/breakable.

I think these cards are way ahead of their time.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

its no suprise it slows the graphics down

the ability to calculate physics for 1000's of objects means the GPU now has to render those 1000's of units, whereas before the cpu was maybe doing only 10's of objects

i dont see why people thought it was going to be a performance booster of somesort. yeah it takes the physics load off the CPU, but then in turn dumps the load back on the GPU which has to now render many more objects.

personally if it cut frames from 120 to 60 id be happy taking a much more realistic world over a un-noticably faster one

 

[imported_Crusader]

In games that use PPUs, the graphics are going to be better.
So of course its going to slow down the game as it has to render more.

Why is this shocking?


Someday its possible in games where having the environment be destructible will be just the way the game is (cant turn it off).. and you either use your CPU+GPU to run the game, or your CPU+GPU+PPU..
the people with the CPU/GPU/PPU will be much better off in an online match.

So its really inevitable, for games to progress in realism we need better physics like Havoc.. to get there we need more power either from the GPU, CPU or tossing in a PPU.



In future games you are not going to get away with running the game "faster" just because you dont have a PPU, its going to be slower if a core element of the game is highly physics based.

As of TODAY, yes you can get away with "not slowing down your game" by not enabling advanced physics. More than likely will not be true in the future.. it will just run dog slow or maybe not at all.

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

Even with top of the line hardware, games like Oblivion aren't running anywhere near 60 fps. More likely you'll be going from 30 fps to 2 fps. I can understand why Bethesda dropped most of the physics from the game. GPUs have a long, long way to go before they can match these kinds of demands.

 

[JAG87]

^^ completely agreed.

maybe some of the geeks circulating in these forums will start realizing that a PPU is a generation ahead, and thus it is money wasted right now. but hey if you must absolutely have one, buy it and go play GRAW by yourself. When something good like UT 2007 comes out, and the physx card makes a big difference in the gameplay, then maybe ill pull my wallet out.

 

[The Dome]

Here you go, take the time to read the whole thing. LINK

 

[Noema]

Interesting. I do believe dedicated physics processors have immense potentiial, just as integrated video revolutionized gaming almost in the late 90's.

I however agree with xtknight: today's hardware (GPU's being the bottleneck) can barely run the most demanding games on a $4000 rig. The last thing we need is more things trying to squezee through that bottleneck.

Maybe the touted video optimization that will supposedly come with DX10 will help alleviate this problems. We'll see. I just hope this doesn't mean will need SLI'ed dual core GPUs and quad CPU-cores for the PPU to be able to do its job without wrecking havoc on the game.

 

[the Chase]

I like munky's thoughts on this. How much phyx do you need in a game to make it fun/immersive? 10,000 flying barrels is neat and maybe fun to mess around with for 10 mins. but hardly realistic and will choke any graphics card out there. There are a lot of phyx effects that are more subtle (water movement, the way cars, boats, etc. move in relation to their enviroment, etc.) that won't take so much graphics power to make work. But is this using the PPU to it's full extent and/or could a dual core proc. handle it alone? Dunno.

I do feel though that this puts a serious crimp in the notion of having GPU's calculate phyx. If they can barely handle Oblivion now, and are totally choked with 10,000 barrels that a PPU creates, how are they going to calculate the phyx of the 10,000 barrels (or even 500 barrels) and render them at the same time?

But yeah buying a $300 card so I have to go buy $1000 worth of GPU power to play at decent framerates doesn't sound to appealing....

Edited for spelling.....How many l's are in barrels?? Barrels or barrells?

 

[the Chase]

You guys can still post even if you don't know how to spell barrels.....(bump).

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: the Chase
I like munky's thoughts on this. How much phyx do you need in a game to make it fun/immersive? 10,000 flying barrels is neat and maybe fun to mess around with for 10 mins. but hardly realistic and will choke any graphics card out there. There are a lot of phyx effects that are more subtle (water movement, the way cars, boats, etc. move in relation to their enviroment, etc.) that won't take so much graphics power to make work. But is this using the PPU to it's full extent and/or could a dual core proc. handle it alone? Dunno.

I do feel though that this puts a serious crimp in the notion of having GPU's calculate phyx. If they can barely handle Oblivion now, and are totally choked with 10,000 barrels that a PPU creates, how are they going to calculate the phyx of the 10,000 barrels (or even 500 barrels) and render them at the same time?

But yeah buying a $300 card so I have to go buy $1000 worth of GPU power to play at decent framerates doesn't sound to appealing....

Edited for spelling.....How many l's are in barrels?? Barrels or barrells?

i mean, no one would ever want MORE realism in their games? after all, no one has ever switched a game from 'arcade mode' to 'sim mode'

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: the Chase
I like munky's thoughts on this. How much phyx do you need in a game to make it fun/immersive? 10,000 flying barrels is neat and maybe fun to mess around with for 10 mins. but hardly realistic and will choke any graphics card out there. There are a lot of phyx effects that are more subtle (water movement, the way cars, boats, etc. move in relation to their enviroment, etc.) that won't take so much graphics power to make work. But is this using the PPU to it's full extent and/or could a dual core proc. handle it alone? Dunno.

I do feel though that this puts a serious crimp in the notion of having GPU's calculate phyx. If they can barely handle Oblivion now, and are totally choked with 10,000 barrels that a PPU creates, how are they going to calculate the phyx of the 10,000 barrels (or even 500 barrels) and render them at the same time?

But yeah buying a $300 card so I have to go buy $1000 worth of GPU power to play at decent framerates doesn't sound to appealing....

Edited for spelling.....How many l's are in barrels?? Barrels or barrells?

I know Painkiller was pretty darn immersive. A lot of the environment allowed for interaction. Not fully destructable environments, but that could have been done with programming. Havoc was very impressive for me.

 

[The Dome]

I look at the phyx card and ppu's in general as another step *forward* in gaming. Once Ageia gets their contracts cut and libraries spread we should see a nice improvement while using their product. Though I hope Nvidia and ATI's counterparts to these cards are as promising, for some reason I have a feeling Nvidia may be more inclined to this project then Ati, but that's just a hunch. As for cpu's doing the work load, they would come to a stand still at a fraction of a what a ppu can do, since they are immensely slower at calculating the "bones" the ppu was designed for.

 

[DeathReborn]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: the Chase
I like munky's thoughts on this. How much phyx do you need in a game to make it fun/immersive? 10,000 flying barrels is neat and maybe fun to mess around with for 10 mins. but hardly realistic and will choke any graphics card out there. There are a lot of phyx effects that are more subtle (water movement, the way cars, boats, etc. move in relation to their enviroment, etc.) that won't take so much graphics power to make work. But is this using the PPU to it's full extent and/or could a dual core proc. handle it alone? Dunno.

I do feel though that this puts a serious crimp in the notion of having GPU's calculate phyx. If they can barely handle Oblivion now, and are totally choked with 10,000 barrels that a PPU creates, how are they going to calculate the phyx of the 10,000 barrels (or even 500 barrels) and render them at the same time?

But yeah buying a $300 card so I have to go buy $1000 worth of GPU power to play at decent framerates doesn't sound to appealing....

Edited for spelling.....How many l's are in barrels?? Barrels or barrells?

i mean, no one would ever want MORE realism in their games? after all, no one has ever switched a game from 'arcade mode' to 'sim mode'

I could see a PPU being used in games like Armed Assault, America's Army and other "aiming for reality" games like that. Not to the extent of CellFactor but at least creating a realistic environment for some realistic DM's, lol.

 

[Jules]

Kinda firgure it wasnt gonna be that good. ill wait.

 

[dfloyd]

Yep another gimmick that doesnt really do much.... Toss this in with the rest of them. Personally I dont think Physics will come into play until they are added to CPUs as a dedicated part. In other words I dont think a $300 add in card will ever be successful, not for what it does, which imo is not needed. I dont need 300 tons of debris, just enough to realize I am getting shot at thank you

 

[Munky]

I was just playing Oblivion, and even that game has nice physics for ragdoll effects. Of course, that's about the only thing that has any decent physics in the game, but it's fun to observe as you play. For example, the way a dead mob's corpse reacts to being hit by a sword in various places. Or, just a little while ago this daedroth got the bad end of a power attack, and then he fell halfway hanging off the ledge in the oblivion tower, with his torso hanging over the ledge and arms sprawled out in the air. That's already a significant improvement from something like CS1.5, where you get a headshot on the guy from the side, but he fall over backwards.