The effects I'm mentioning are from this
Youtube video.
There was a previous thread, forgot which part of the Anandtech forums, that pointed out different games that had similar/comparable particle effects WITHOUT needing PhysX. And yes, that was a thread discussing Hawken. Too lazy to search for it right now.
Well I'd honestly like to know, because I've never seen any non PhysX title use particle effects on such a scale, or use turbulence..
Now, it's been a while since I've seen that quote from nVidia. But it gets funny when you consider that nVidia is telling people that it can't be bothered to support its own paying customers. Yeah. Really. nVidia can't be bothered to support nVidia video cards as PhysX co-processors.
It's not just a matter of supporting their own hardware, but AMD hardware as well. If there is such a tight collaboration between the rendering and PhysX hardware as NVidia claims (and there's no reason to disbelieve them as nobody here programs drivers), then they would have to validate AMD drivers as well..
Now why should they do that?
nVidia is also took the time and resources to disable nVidia PhysX cards from working with AMD GPU's. Apparently nVidia cards as PhysX processors with AMD GPU's work pretty good (once you hack it to work), and that's with nVidia putting sabotaging support. nVidia could have easily just left the ability to use an nVidia card with AMD for PhysX. This would have greatly expanded PhysX support with nVidia selling much more low to mid range cards for use as PhysX processors.
Yes, NVidia did disable PhysX cards from working with AMD GPUs, and for technical reasons if what they say is true.
But even if it isn't, it's their right to do so. If they are comfortable with any sales losses caused by doing that, then that's on them..
You might want to look up what the original vision for PhysX was before Ageia was gobbled up by nVidia. A shame considering that PhysX now is for the most part used for nothing more than a few more shiny particles or flapping cloth. PhysX under nVidia's stewardship has been a mess.
I don't need to look it up. I remember it fairly well. I even played the Cell Factor demo on my CPU at the time. The fact that it could run on my CPU (can't even remember what I was running back then but I think it was a Conroe processor) goes to show that it wasn't very compute intensive..
And as has been mentioned several times before, the "eye candy physics" you scoff at is
STILL physics, and is in fact much more difficult to run than the kind of physics you are glorifying..
While no one will argue with Intel wanting physics to remain on the CPU, Havok is not and never was moving towards becoming a CPU only physics solution. Havok can be accelerated by the GPU using OpenCL. Havok hasn't exactly been on the forefront of physics processing but look up Havok and GPU acceleration on the Playstation 4 as well which of course uses AMD CPU & GPU.
Very well, I'll concede this point.. But still, Havok is basically dead in the water right now. The Witcher 2 used Havok for physics, but now the Witcher 3 will be using PhysX.
That's pretty indicative..
From a business standpoint, it made sense for nVidia to loosen control in order to make more money in the long run. nVidia has made puzzling decisions over the years like half-assing CPU PhysX that seem to limit adoption of PhysX
You're postulating now. One thing we can be certain of, is that NVidia is out to make money. Whether it made more business sense for them to loosen control, or tighten control is unknowable to us..
And CPU PhysX and hardware accelerated PhysX have now merged for all intents and purposes. The only difference between them now is the code path they run, and the performance..
As it now stands, I think PhysX support will start to wane. Most PhysX support was due to the fact that nVidia was practically footing the bill for developers to implement PhysX.
This simply isn't true and is a oft quoted lie being perpetuated by the anti PhysX crowd.. NVidia does not pay developers to use PhysX. That's ridiculous.. What NVidia does do, is send developers software engineers to help them implement it in their games, but no financial support is given.
What happens when it makes more financial sense to build game engines using something like Havok which will run on AMD GPU's and nVidia GPU's. Not to mention the same game engine will run on game consoles.
Is Havok even being developed for GPU Physics since it's been taken over by Intel?
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