AMD says Game devs only use PhysX for the cash

[gitano]

http://www.thinq.co.uk/news/2010/3/8/amd-game-devs-only-use-physx-for-the-cash/

Readed interesting comments at slashdot also http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/03/08/1636259/Game-Devs-Only-Use-PhysX-For-the-Money-Says-AMD

 

[evolucion8]

That would explain why developers never used PhysX for nothing more than eye candy, lacking of the motivation to do something that would be the killer application for PhysX.

 

[NoQuarter]

Thought this was pretty well established, nVidia actually writes a lot of the PhysX effects for them while paying them through TWIMTBP.

 

[mhouck]

interesting in the bit-tech article the author linked to that nvidia is providing pyshx as an open platform.

"Nvidia’s director of product PR for EMEA and India, Luciano Alibrandi, told Custom PC that ‘We are committed to an open PhysX platform that encourages innovation and participation,’ and added that Nvidia would be ‘open to talking with any GPU vendor about support for their architecture.’"

Guess we'll see what comes of it later...


http://www.bit-tech.net/custompc/news/602205/nvidia-offers-physx-support-to-amd--ati.html

 

[dguy6789]

In other news, the sky is blue.

 

[Lonyo]

The other thing is that the base SDK is free.
Nothing screams "use me" like something that's robust and free.

 

[v8envy]

This spew of Huddy's is going to backfire. All NV has to do is dig up some developer to say "Hey, we wanted PhysX because it was easy to use, and hardware acceleration was a free bonus. You are full of crap."

His point is valid, though. For a studio it's not a good idea to limit their flagship title to high end product of a single vendor. So PhysX gets used for meaningless fluff which could run just as well on CPU. But refutation of his bogus quotes will nullify everything he said right.

 

[GaiaHunter]

interesting in the bit-tech article the author linked to that nvidia is providing pyshx as an open platform.

"Nvidia’s director of product PR for EMEA and India, Luciano Alibrandi, told Custom PC that ‘We are committed to an open PhysX platform that encourages innovation and participation,’ and added that Nvidia would be ‘open to talking with any GPU vendor about support for their architecture.’"

This is the last thing AMD wants - to be dependant of NVIDIA. While NVIDIA provides physX free to developers (actually it even pays some to use it) providing it free to AMD is a completely different story.

AMD probably will have to take a more aggressive stance to interest devs in open-standard physics.

Or maybe stuff will only change with next console gen.

 

[tviceman]

“I’m not aware of any GPU-accelerated PhysX code which is there because the games developer wanted it with the exception of the Unreal stuff,” he says. “I don’t know of any games company that’s actually said ‘you know what, I really want GPU-accelerated PhysX, I’d like to tie myself to Nvidia and that sounds like a great plan.'"

That's a load of shit.

 

[Jovec]

For a studio it's not a good idea to limit their flagship title to high end product of a single vendor.

This is why PhysX is a marketing tool. No ATI, no low/mid Nvidia cards, and high-end cards would have trouble running extensive PhysX on a graphically demanding game (i.e a triple A title). This is why we get graphical PhysX instead of gameplay GPU PhysX.

GPGPU processing is a good thing, but I doubt that at the rate games are advancing graphically, while being displayed on higher resolutions and extra AA/AF/etc, that the majority of a GPU vendor's product line is going to be able to satisfy both the rendering and physics processing requirements. This is no different from ATI promoting DX11 on the 5450, 5570, or 5670 - those cards don't have the power to make full use of DX11.

The reality is that game consumers will be able to spare a core for (lesser) CPU physics much easier than GPU processing power.

 

[mhouck]

This is the last thing AMD wants - to be dependant of NVIDIA. While NVIDIA provides physX free to developers (actually it even pays some to use it) providing it free to AMD is a completely different story.

AMD probably will have to take a more aggressive stance to interest devs in open-standard physics.

Or maybe stuff will only change with next console gen.

I thought it was an interesting that nearly two years running from the date of that article where the state of physx is now.

P.S. It also talks about support for the ageia's ppu and we know what happened there.

 

[Lonyo]

That's a load of shit.

He said he doesn't know of any.
That doesn't mean they don't exist, but then surely it should be easy to find someone saying "We're using PhysX because it's awesome", right?

 

[dguy6789]

That's a load of shit.

Sounds completely reasonable, believable, and realistic to me.

 

[WelshBloke]

Nothing screams "use me" like something that's robust and free.

On a different note, that exactly describes a girl I once knew.

 

[shaolin95]

That would explain why developers never used PhysX for nothing more than eye candy, lacking of the motivation to do something that would be the killer application for PhysX.

I love it when people still use the ONLY eye candy card....so what is AA or AF or many of the features you guys love so much about video cards?
Do tessellation, AA or AO change gameplay? NO yet I see ATI guys hyping tessellation as the second coming....

 

[cbn]

I love it when people still use the ONLY eye candy card....so what is AA or AF or many of the features you guys love so much about video cards?
Do tessellation, AA or AO change gameplay?

I think our gripe is that GPU Physx is not being used for essential parts of the game that effect strategy. Instead it always seems to get relegated to the eye candy role.

Tessellation and Anti-aliasing are different than Physx because they were never meant to be involved in game play strategy.

 

[cbn]

NO yet I see ATI guys hyping tessellation as the second coming....

Fermi appears to be much stronger at Tessellation than Cypress.

 

[NoQuarter]

Fermi appears to be much stronger at Tessellation than Cypress.

Let me be the first tessellation fan to say, good if it is. Then we can see tessellation get picked up pretty fast.

 

[cbn]

Is there anything about GPU accelerated Physx that could make it a real game changer in the future compared to CPU accelerated Physx?

At the moment, it seems CPUs have plenty of cores for playing games. Doesn't CPU accelerated Physx run on one of the cores? Physx is single threaded right?

 

[SlowSpyder]

I love it when people still use the ONLY eye candy card....so what is AA or AF or many of the features you guys love so much about video cards?
Do tessellation, AA or AO change gameplay? NO yet I see ATI guys hyping tessellation as the second coming....

I think what you are saying would hold up well if Physx offered eye candy that seemed drastically better than CPU physics engines. I think the eye candy that Physx has offered so far is not really any better than a good CPU physics implementation. I don't care if my sound card is handling the physics if it looks good and acts realistic, and right now CPU physics seem to be on par with GPU Physx.

 

[edplayer]

what are some good examples of the use of PhysX?


I see Batman brought up. I haven't played it but seen some Youtube videos of physX vs non. One part batman is kicking up a lot of papers. That was stupid. Another parts show some flags that can be torn vs. the non version. That looked kinda cool. Don't know if it really added to the game but it did look nice.

Why the kicking of the papers though? Was he fighting the villian from Office Space who throws around files all out of order?

 

[tviceman]

Sounds completely reasonable, believable, and realistic to me.

It's no more believable, less vague, or based on fact than me stating for a fact that I've had conversations with several developers who have said they enjoyed the support Nvidia gave them and appreciated being able to add an extra features to their game.

 

[Highmodulus]

"I like money"

 

[zagood]

Batman with/without PhysX effects was like night and day for ambiance and immersion. In that title it's a much bigger difference than AA (IMHO).

Could it have been done on the CPU? Sure.

I really don't care who "wins" the physics API battle. I want gameplay that's affected by realistic physics that costs the least in terms of overhead, no matter how it's provided.

 

[3DVagabond]

interesting in the bit-tech article the author linked to that nvidia is providing pyshx as an open platform.

"Nvidia’s director of product PR for EMEA and India, Luciano Alibrandi, told Custom PC that ‘We are committed to an open PhysX platform that encourages innovation and participation,’ and added that Nvidia would be ‘open to talking with any GPU vendor about support for their architecture.’"

Guess we'll see what comes of it later...


http://www.bit-tech.net/custompc/news/602205/nvidia-offers-physx-support-to-amd--ati.html

So, which is it? Is it an open platform? Or are they "open to talking"? Open to talking doesn't sound very open to me.