Can anyone please explain to me why I need PhysX drivers if I dont have a PhysX card?

[shortylickens]

For that matter, why the fuck do I need .NET framework
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
2.0
2.1
2.2
2.3
3.0
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
and 4.0 Alpha?
ALL AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME!!!

Also, what is the latest version of PhysX, cuz DogFighter wants me to have it but wont give it to me.

 

[Lonyo]

Because you need the PhysX runtime to run PhysX.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Physx is an API that can run on the CPU or GPU. Many many games use the API.

 

[shortylickens]

I know what it is. That doesnt help me.
What does help me is knowing that it runs on the CPU now, which is probably what it should have always done.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

It always did. PhysX has been around a long time, and the card was always optional and barely ever used.

 

[minmaster]

if you have nvidia card, isn't physx hardware driven?

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

if you have nvidia card, isn't physx hardware driven?

No, it still will run some stuff (most I think) on the CPU. It's only the effects that CPUs can't really handle that are done on the video card.

 

[BFG10K]

You need PhysX for two reasons:

(1) To run software PhysX games on a CPU (e.g. Jericho, MoH Airborne).
(2) To run hardware PhysX games on a nVidia GPU (e.g. Batman).

 

[Ika]

software PhysX is just like Havok physics. speaking of which... I wonder what the marketshare between the two (and other software physics I don't know about?) looks like.

 

[shortylickens]

You need PhysX for two reasons:

(1) To run software PhysX games on a CPU (e.g. Jericho, MoH Airborne).
(2) To run hardware PhysX games on a nVidia GPU (e.g. Batman).

Yur about 14 hours late but thanks!
:awe:

 

[Raduque]

software PhysX is just like Havok physics. speaking of which... I wonder what the marketshare between the two (and other software physics I don't know about?) looks like.

Havok doesn't have a driver though. PhysX was designed to hit hardware for acceleration (whether a PhysX card or nVidia GPU), so the game still calls to the driver, and the driver is needed to decide where to run the PhysX thread (CPU or GPU/PPU).

 

[taltamir]

PhysX has two modes:
1. GPU accelerated physics, requires an nvidia card capable of DX10 or above.
No games exist in the market which take advantage of it and are worth playing.

2. CPU accelerated physics
The most used physics engine in the world by a big margin because nvidia made it completely free... in the hopes that companies would implement it and then say "well, we might as well spent a tiny bit more effort to implement the system we already use and are familiar with on the GPU"...
unfortunately for nvidia its not as simple as it should have been, and as such very very VERY few companies have done so. Most just use physX as a free CPU physics engine.

It also has crippled performance, as nvidia limited it to one CPU core only (it was multi core capable when they bought it) in order to maximize the disparity between it and GPU physX... this is why some companies still choose to go with havok and the like, which actually costs money but can do physics calculations on all cores on the CPU in parallel.