I wouldn't consider Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age crap games.
I wouldn't consider Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age crap games.
and i wouldent consider bioware to be indie devolopers.
ps3 physx: 48 games
ps3 havok: 82 games
360 physx: 63 games
360 havok: 98 games
pc physx: 165 games
pc havok: 75 games
If physx is free and the best physics engine, how come developers pay money to use havok?
It's growing among indie developers without money, pushing out crap games on the pc. If they had money they would purchase a havok license like the majority of console developers do.
That's the 1st time I'm hearing about I-Fluid. I'll have a look at that.
I assume It's based on software physx?
I think most people would agree that software physx is pretty good (Except in NFS-shift), IMO it's not as good as havok, but its pretty good. I would go as far as to say its better than GPU physx as it usually plays a larger role on the gameplay.
It's simple for me: It's really nice to see Havok and PhysX try to innovate Physics and to improve gaming experiences. There is no contest to me and desire both to evolve and mature and offer more.
If one is for improved Physics and if they feel Physics is the next frontier -- it's great to have Havok and PhysX compete and innovate.
We've gone through this many times already in other threads which you have participated in. If you forgot that's on you. There is not ONE not ONE game where Physx affects gameplay at all. We've already discussed the MANY games that use Havok and where it affects gameplay.
That is a lie today and that would have been a lie in 2006.
Destructable architehcture IS gamealtering, if you like it or not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3TU65KaPXI
I've also mentioned I-Fluid a few times in such discussions, but that was ignored completely each and every time.
and i wouldent consider bioware to be indie devolopers.
ps3 physx: 48 games
ps3 havok: 82 games
360 physx: 63 games
360 havok: 98 games
pc physx: 165 games
pc havok: 75 games
If physx is free and the best physics engine, how come developers pay money to use havok?
No advantage using NVIDIA cards vs AMD cards on those games, though.
The discussion of these kind of threads is:
a) Are physics effects accelerated by GPU any more realistic than CPU?
b) Are the physics effects accelerated by GPU faster than CPU?
c) Are the GPU accelerated physX effects worth the hassle of dropping frame rates and limiting your cards choice?
There is no doubt that physX effects that can are vendor agnostic, read run on CPU, is successful amongst developers - it is free and such.
But why is it free? What does NVIDIA gets?
Of course what NVIDIA is interested is getting physX games that actually require NVIDIA GPUs to run, not Dragon Age and Mass Effect kind of games that run just fine in a system with an AMD graphics card.
The fact that physX is free to implement for developers is just NVIDA way to try to push for their ultimate goal: GPU physX.
I don't think Havok really "innovated" from 2000 to 2006.
How do you explain EPIC and the UT3 engine then?
Or the fact that Sony bought a "free-for all-devs" PhysX license for the PS3?
But could you link me to documentation that most console developers buy a Havok license?
Because this thread is full of false claims, so it would be nice to see a real, documented one...for once.
There is no difference between "software PhysX" and "hardware PhysX", or "CPU PhysX" or "GPU PhysX".
(...)
Basically all you see is ragdolls and low amounts of rigidbody physics. Yea, CPUs can handle those, but they can handle those very well with PhysX running on a CPU as well. I-Fluid is a nice example of that.
So there is a difference.
Most games out there use physX simply as they would use any other physics engine that runs on the CPU.
So while physX is only one, the requirements to run it can vary from "having a CPU" to "require NVIDIA GPU" and that is how we split games that use physX into "uses physX but requires CPU only" and "uses physX and requires NVIDIA GPU", so while there are loads of games using the former not so many use the latter.
Dont that support my argument? the only reason physx is in a few console titles is because its free, or bundled with a game engine. The ones that pay for there physics engine chooses havok.
there is a link breaking down havok and physx used in games in this thread.
This is something that makes no sense to me. But it might give me some insight in why people can't get their head around these things.
Let me try to explain:
PhysX is an API.
There is no difference between "software PhysX" and "hardware PhysX", or "CPU PhysX" or "GPU PhysX".
There just are multiple backends ('drivers') for executing PhysX code. You should compare this for example with Direct3D or OpenGL.
If you write a game using Direct3D or OpenGL, it can run on a variety of hardware without changing anything. AMD provides a backend for their Radeons in their drivers, nVidia for their GeForces, etc (in case you still don't understand: Radeons, GeForces and other videocards have virtually NOTHING in common. It's not like a videocard 'does' Direct3D or OpenGL... no, these are APIs, high-level abstractions of operations that a GPU is required to perform. Pretty much like how websites use standard languages such as HTML, which is defined to render in a certain way. Firefox, Chrome, IE, etc... they all use their own renderer, completely independent of the others, yet they are capable of displaying the same websites, because they understand the same HTML commands etc).
This is the same with PhysX. By default, you will have a CPU backend on a PC. If you have an nVidia videocard, you will also get a GPU backend, and you can choose between the two. If you have an Ageia PPU, you will have a PPU backend to choose.
Now, the thing with GPU and PPU acceleration is that they can handle a lot more physics operations per second, because they have a lot more raw processing power than even the fastest CPUs in the world (if you read my article closely, I refer to that, the GFLOPS rating is about a factor 10 apart). They are also pretty efficient at doing physics, so this raw processing power translates well to practical situations.
So, when you use a GPU or PPU, you can process a lot more PhysX.
Game developers use this to add extra content/detail, specifically tailored for high-speed GPU/PPU processing. Obviously if you run THAT on your CPU, it's going to crawl.
Is that nVidia's/PhysX' fault? No, your CPU just is a factor 10 slower (see above), what did you expect? People who cry "yea but you can get a 6-core CPU now for less than $300, and all these cores could do PhysX", they simply don't get it. Sorry, but that's just how it is.
And people who cry "Yea, but Havok doesn't need a GPU for the same effects", they simply don't get it either... Sorry... but get a clue about what physics effects ARE, how much processing power some of them cost, and then look closely at your beloved Havok games again. Do you see realtime cloth effects? Realtime smoke/fluid effects? Soft bodies?
The answer is a simple: no.
Basically all you see is ragdolls and low amounts of rigidbody physics. Yea, CPUs can handle those, but they can handle those very well with PhysX running on a CPU as well. I-Fluid is a nice example of that.
There is one thing that gets me about physx or when devs use physx so heavily that its too slow to run on the CPU is that the added physics effects don't add much to a game.
I would like to know your opinion of how well GPU accelerated physx is used atm in games.
Well, looks like it's going to be moot anyway, Nvidia is doing the right thingAnd yeah, SSE makes huge difference (duh =p):
"The new PhysX SDK 2.8.4 comes with an optimized CPU cloth simulation path and is compiled with SSE2 option. Optimized CPU cloth simulation ? According to the test I did, this is true. The cloth sample shipped with PhysX SDK shows clearly the gain in performance. I tested on my dev system with a GTX 460 (R260.63) + Quad Core X 9650 @ 3.2GHz:
- PhysX 2.8.4: 443 FPS
- PhysX 2.8.3: 112 FPS"
Yes, but if you reverse the situation...
If we were to assume PhysX really IS 'hobbled' on CPU, and all the effects added to PhysX titles are possible with properly optimized code, then why don't we see anything of that?
Let's add up a few things here:
- Intel has acquired Havok
- Intel is the company that developed x86, SSE, and has probably the most knowledge of optimizing and compiling code for multicore x86 CPUs with SSE of any company out there.
- nVidia's GPGPU acceleration is in direct competition with Intel's high-end CPU business
Shouldn't Intel have launched a counter-attack with lots of cloth, fluid, smoke and other eye-candy effects in Havok games by now? Both to pull the rug from under nVidia's PhysX, and to make games even more demanding, and as such give people more reason to upgrade to new Core i7's and future Sandy Bridge chips.
That is a lie today and that would have been a lie in 2006.
Destructable architehcture IS gamealtering, if you like it or not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3TU65KaPXI
I just looked throguht this thread I see nothing of that sort?
If it is posted by "Skurge" I can not see it, he is on my ignore, so could you please quote it for me?
And if you continue with lies and false statments I will ignore you to...
I think you misunderstood me. What I was saying was they could do a whole lot better with the extra power of a GPU, but they haven't.
