John Carmack: Not a big fan of PhysX
- Thread starter thilanliyan
- Start date
He has been clear on his perspective with physics for a long while now, but it isn't quite how people are taking it at the moment. He always disliked the idea of a dedicated PPU, his stance has been that those calculations should be handled by either the CPU or GPUs when they were capable of it. The comments he made in that portion of his keynote don't change anything he has said in the past, he makes mention again of how a dedicated unit isn't what he thinks is the best direction and we are better off using hardware with more integrated compute resources.
I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding what he says for some reason, he seems to speak perfectly clearly to me.
I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding what he says for some reason, he seems to speak perfectly clearly to me.
Sylvanas
Diamond Member
- Jan 20, 2004
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He hasn't made a 'killer game' since 'the good old days' so I don't get the messiah attitude people take with what he says. There are plenty of developers that continually make class act games or take games in a new direction in art style with new engines (think Bioware, Valve or Crytek). PhysX is here to stay, and IMO we have yet to see it being put to good use with a AAA game that makes the use of PhysX compelling as a gamer to enable and not just a tacky add on for more sparks in explosions.
Almost all of the fundamentals we use for the current 3D pipeline were determined by Carmack. Every one of his engines has proven to be incredibly scaleable and defined their respective rendering technologies in terms of performance/visuals. He is not a game director, he is a technology director/programmer. In his position, there is no singular person who has built the level of credibility that he has.
I love Bioware games, as a development house noone in the PC space can come close to matching the quality they push out with every single title IMO. To be as kind as possible, their engines are a travesty and an embarassment to the industry. Valve is mediocre if we are very kind(they took a basic engine and added some shader effects with some weak physics effects, the only engnie they ever did, it was outshined almost immediately upon release and didn't offer any ways to remain competitive- although at least it was relatively fast). Crytek and Epic are the only people that really belong in the same conversation as id, and neither of them have proven they can make an engine that can scale as well as Carmack's. Epic's has proven quite scaleable, just not to his level, Crytek isn't even in the same ballpark yet(not saying their engine doesn't look incredible running on ideal hardware, but it scales horribly). We will see with Cryengine3 if they can truly compete with the big boys for overall engine performance.
^ right, Carmack is a graphics/engine expert not a game designer or art director. He's been a driving force behind true 3D, hardware 3D, dynamic lighting, dynamic shadows and more.
The main reason Epic's texture-pop engine is currently more successful than id's is they had the business sense to target the consoles while id was still specializing in PCs.
The main reason Epic's texture-pop engine is currently more successful than id's is they had the business sense to target the consoles while id was still specializing in PCs.
Sylvanas
Diamond Member
- Jan 20, 2004
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I am aware of his history, thats not what I'm saying- it's been and done and we have new devs that are driving games. Valve and Bioware make hugely successful games, we are talking Kotor, Mass Effect, TF2, Left for Dead etc.. These are some of the big players these days in making quality fps games (games not engines), not id. As for game engines, yes id has a big track record, but today the driving force being licensed for a multitude of games and platforms is UE3, and in demonstrating what is possible graphically in a DX9 setting, Crytek are leading the way.
I don't mean to imply that UE3 is not a sophisticated engine, but Renderware dominated licensing last gen and that certainly did not prove its technical superiority. Commercial superiority matters, but it belongs a different discussion.
If i understand him correctly,
his answer was about hardware physics (dedicated hardware like the PhysX board)
vs
software physics (software that takes advatntage of traditional hardware parts like multicore CPUs or GPGPU DX10/DX11 enabled GPUs)
his answer was about hardware physics (dedicated hardware like the PhysX board)
vs
software physics (software that takes advatntage of traditional hardware parts like multicore CPUs or GPGPU DX10/DX11 enabled GPUs)
I'm playing through Wolf currently, they may have overpaid a bit for their physics engine
Physics still isn't at the point where it makes or breaks a game, but it certainly is obvious it is very, very dated in the physics department. Even by software standards, the game isn't remotely close to the better software PhysX games or in house physics solutions like the one used in Ghostbusters.
Mass Effect and KoTOR are RPGs, TF2 sure is fun, but it is very dated in terms of visual presentation. Left4Dead at least enters into this genre with somewhat modern visuals, but the games that are in this segment and should be compared are those like CoD5, Crysis, KZ2, GoW- and yes, those games all handily outshine the Doom3 engine- but that is 5 years old. Compare those titles to Rage, a very different comparison. Maybe the game will suck, but the engine technology is looking extremely impressive. It appears that Carmack is going to have the best multi platform engine from a performance/visuals perspective yet again when Tech5 hits later this year or early next.
Yes, that is pretty much exactly what he is saying. When we talk about hardware physics we lump GPUs into that category, he has in the past made it clear that he considers hardware physics to be PPU based, GPU based physics he thinks of in terms of it being a software based solution.
Only problem is that ID used to make great games. Now their games seem like Tech demo's to sell the engines. And didn't valve beat them handily in the engine licences dept last go round?
ID haven't really been big since quake 3 - that engine was used in everything, perhaps the most successful engine of all time. The doom 3/quake 4 engine was a complete failure in comparison as hardly anything used it. Everyone switched to using UE2.5 and then UE3 if they wanted an off-the-shelf shooter engine. The ET: Quake wars engine with its mega textures was as also a failure in that no one much used it.
I hope the rage engine is good, but it's a bit late to the game. It's a console engine and there are lots of them that work really well and look really pretty already (e.g COD 4 engine, UE3, etc). Hence I doubt it'll get much traction again. He needs to be developing for the next gen console and have an engine ready when that console comes out - which is basically what EPIC did with UE3 and it allowed them to corner the market. Same is true of crytek tbh - they are only now developing a console engine, they should have done that years ago.
I hope the rage engine is good, but it's a bit late to the game. It's a console engine and there are lots of them that work really well and look really pretty already (e.g COD 4 engine, UE3, etc). Hence I doubt it'll get much traction again. He needs to be developing for the next gen console and have an engine ready when that console comes out - which is basically what EPIC did with UE3 and it allowed them to corner the market. Same is true of crytek tbh - they are only now developing a console engine, they should have done that years ago.
Interesting.
I still don't understand the allure of PhysX, either. I'm really not interested in having a second card just for particle physics. They don't add much realism to a game, to me at least.
At this moment the real barrier to suspension of disbelief when I'm playing a video game is the facial expressions. Your game can have the best voice acting ever, but if I'm looking at a figure who only has 10 different expressions, that voice acting doesn't mean anything because my brain is still having trouble immersing itself in the world due to the terribly unbelievable [game/cg-model] actors.
Half Life 2 / the source engine /whatever it was that they used to automatically map facial expressions and lip/mouth movements based on an audio clip (even different languages worked) was and still is the best I've seen yet. If they could get the models to be able to open their mouths a bit wider, and show a bit more strain/stress on the face (for example when the voice is yelling but the facial expression doesn't appear nearly as strained) then I couldn't ask for anything more. Shoot, some of those G-man videos look better than even pre-rendered clips in games.
I'd buy an extra card if it could add that realism to a game the second it came out. Until then, movies are still better for story telling, and gaming's great for action, but I still haven't seen any action sequences or games that make PhysX look anywhere near essential to me....not to mention that games like Burnout Paradise have shown even a simple dual core machine can handle crash phsyics and tons of showery sparks flying all over the place no problem-- and there's no PhysX required...
I still don't understand the allure of PhysX, either. I'm really not interested in having a second card just for particle physics. They don't add much realism to a game, to me at least.
At this moment the real barrier to suspension of disbelief when I'm playing a video game is the facial expressions. Your game can have the best voice acting ever, but if I'm looking at a figure who only has 10 different expressions, that voice acting doesn't mean anything because my brain is still having trouble immersing itself in the world due to the terribly unbelievable [game/cg-model] actors.
Half Life 2 / the source engine /whatever it was that they used to automatically map facial expressions and lip/mouth movements based on an audio clip (even different languages worked) was and still is the best I've seen yet. If they could get the models to be able to open their mouths a bit wider, and show a bit more strain/stress on the face (for example when the voice is yelling but the facial expression doesn't appear nearly as strained) then I couldn't ask for anything more. Shoot, some of those G-man videos look better than even pre-rendered clips in games.
I'd buy an extra card if it could add that realism to a game the second it came out. Until then, movies are still better for story telling, and gaming's great for action, but I still haven't seen any action sequences or games that make PhysX look anywhere near essential to me....not to mention that games like Burnout Paradise have shown even a simple dual core machine can handle crash phsyics and tons of showery sparks flying all over the place no problem-- and there's no PhysX required...
HL2's facial animation is straight up lol bad compared to something a bit more current- this is game engine and been out for years. Too bad you can't see the level of fine details that are in their faces, the details in the wrinkles with each expression etc, still you should be able to easily tell the vast progress that has already been made on that front. Still, that isn't quite where we want to be quite yet(the King is clearly much better then the others). This is out for developers now too. That is being used in at least a couple of upcoming games.
Really, the level of progress we have made since HL2 in terms of facial expressions is huge- but they aren't used very often.
That is a big burden on the CPU and GPU to reach those levels of complexity, although with DX11 that should be almost all moved to the GPU- still not likely to see it in too many PC games, they don't go for the same kind of cinematic experience their set top counterparts strive for so often(mainly Japanese developers in particular).
Using Burnout for a physics example is like saying SF4 will train you to be a MMA fighter
Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Using Burnout for a physics example is like saying SF4 will train you to be a MMA fighter
Every time someone gives an example of a game with as good or better looking physics effects than a hardware PhysX title, some pro-PhysX person comes and gives some reason for why that title doesn't count.
cmdrdredd
Lifer
- Dec 12, 2001
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Originally posted by: dguy6789
Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Using Burnout for a physics example is like saying SF4 will train you to be a MMA fighter
Every time someone gives an example of a game with as good or better looking physics effects than a hardware PhysX title, some pro-PhysX person comes and gives some reason for why that title doesn't count.
It's a simple fact that Burnout physics are NOT on the same level as cryostasis or Batman Arkham Asylum.
Physx can do much more complex computations and faster I might add. It just takes a talented developer to do it.
The future is Physx/physics on the GPU. It's here today in a limited form to Nvidia card owners in some games. It will be important in the future to keep the complexity and realism available via this to drive games forward I think. In time I'm sure we will have a more unified way of doing it across various hardware and not limit to Nvidia only. Until then, Nvidia is pushing developers to use physx and it seems that there are a handful that find it worthwile to pursue. I like it, I use it and I hope it remains a focus for developers to have realistic and complex physics calculations going on in the engine. Dynamic effects that never occur the same way twice etc.
Again, this will in my opinion be in future games but it remains to be seen whether physx takes off or if some open source/unified API becomes available.
While it may be true about Burnout, I haven't played it myself so I don't know, I was speaking in general. Every example that doesn't use PhysX is usually countered by some kind of subjective argument such as "although they give the same visual result, the way PhysX does it under the hood is technically more impressive". What about Ghost Busters physics? That looks better than Cryostasis and Batman physics to me. I don't think anyone cares if a developer is "cheating" or using "fake" or "not as good" physics if the end result looks good.
My stance is that I am against PhysX becoming a standard, not physics on the GPU. In current games with PhysX, it seems as if they are using PhysX just for the sake of saying their game uses it, not because it is required on any level for the physics calculations their games do. I haven't seen anything in a PhysX game that just blows me away visually or looks like something that simply can't be done without hardware physics.
My stance is that I am against PhysX becoming a standard, not physics on the GPU. In current games with PhysX, it seems as if they are using PhysX just for the sake of saying their game uses it, not because it is required on any level for the physics calculations their games do. I haven't seen anything in a PhysX game that just blows me away visually or looks like something that simply can't be done without hardware physics.
he IS a nerd
of course that doesn't have to be a bad thing. The fact that you're posting on a message board about computer game physics makes you (and the rest of us) a nerd as well.
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