AMD sponsors release of free Open Source DMM Physics engine.

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I guess it depends - I guess some people want reality simulators, but having something that is completely impossible in a game isn't exactly bad either. Depends on the game type, on the implementation, etc.

But so far the stuff that is out there isn't exactly astonishing - sure the technical and accuracy aspect is quite interesting, but many things we have seen so far with GPU accelerated physics can be accomplished in different ways.



Physics will most likely take off when it can use all the resources available on someone system, make you open your mouth and have no cost in frame rate.

It is a question of timing and so far, and for different reasons, GPU physics hasn't take off.

Sure, things need to start at some point, and it is starting, but it is far from mainstream atm and we can be excited by the future of it but we (or some of us) aren't exactly excited with the present of it.

I agree with this. I bought my first video card because the games I wanted to play no longer worked with integrated graphics. I bought a sound card because I wanted real music and speech and no longer wanted to hear the screeching beeps from my PC. I'm not going to go out and buy a dedicated physics card because it's not required and doesn't change a major part of my gaming experience.
Thus I don't think hardware physics will take off until developers start making it required (which they will never do until a large portion of their target audience has the necessary hardware already), or until the hardware for it's adopted for other purposes (which seems like the direction things are going as everyone has multi core CPUs and the latest GPUs have the processing capabilities).

 

[Dribble]

Bullet seems to be AMD's way into hardware physics. It should run ok on nvidia too - there are developer quotes that said bullet was developed on nvidia cards, that was all they used till Ati started throwing money at them, and is probably still what they use behind the scenes because their opencl drivers are better (devs were working on macs).

Tbh I wouldn't expect too much in the short term, they are all fighting to become the defacto physics solution for the next gen consoles imo. e.g. I wouldn't be surprised if the PS4 and the xbox 720 have hardware physics support. At that point all bets are off - nvidia may well port physx (it'll have to if it wants to run on xbox 720 which is gonna support directx compute), MS might finally bring out a hardware accelerated havok for the xbox, ...

 

[tviceman]

I've said that if they provide meaningful games and change the way it's play like they said they were going to I'm all for it but of course for some reason you forgot about that but it's ok cus it doens't help your argument at all

Do you realize that if devs implement GPU-physics in such a way that it "alters" gameplay, the vast majority of GPU's won't be able to deliver enough horsepower to adequately run these games at reasonable detail levels? With the performance hit that GPU-physx games take now, just for eye candy, you are talking about everything performance wise 5750 and lower will not be able to run the games well, if at all. And so that means probably 90-95% of the the target market essentially not being able to buy the product because the developer decided to create a game that uses hardware accelerated-physics in such a way that it's required to play the game and *needs* a powerful GPU. I just don't see developers shooting themselves in the foot like that.

Of course you probably knew that though, but while waiting another 1-2 years for enough powerful GPU's to penetrate the market, you'd rather bitch and complain how adding extra graphical features is stupid and meaningless. Yes, lets all go back to 2005 and play initial xbox 360 releases.

It's not my fault your Nvidia lords haven't had Physx do anything meaningful at all and given gamers a reason to think it's important.

My nvidia lords! You got me! ????? But tell me this: is it your fault that not one single gpu-physics accelerated game as been released to run on AMD hardware?