New Mafia II PhysX ON/OFF video.

[Lonyo]

What are the only pieces of hardware than PhsyX will not run on, and what do all these have in common? I'm not talking sound cards or SATA controllers here. All CPU's can run PhysX. Which means any PC can run PhysX. The only pieces of hardware that cannot run PhysX, are AMD based GPU's. This, does not make PhysX proprietary. It makes AMD the only one who won't run it. I didn't say "can't", mind you, but won't.

Don't be that guy.
You know full well that when people say "PhysX" here they mean "GPU accelerated PhysX".
You're the one continually talking about how amazing additional PhysX effects are, and you know full well you are talking about the ones that almost always won't run on the CPU.
In the case of Mafia 2, they will run on the CPU without having to use the GPU.

As far as "AMD won't run it", why 'won't' AMD run it? Because they are too lazy, to inept? I mean, it's not like NV deliberately block PhysX when an ATI graphics card is present, so the 'won't can't have anything to do with NV, right? I don't quite get what that comment was aimed at.
The GPU acceleration of PhysX is proprietary. Those effects which run on the GPU can also be run on the CPU, but if you want to run them on the GPU, you have to have a specific GPU type running your graphics, and others are locked out.

 

[Kenmitch]

This is when you need to reference the console version. If you see anything missing from the console game in comparison to the non PhysX (PhysX OFF) PC version, then you'd have a point. But, if the PhysX off PC version is just like the console version, then what is your beef?
I remember people complaining that things were stripped out of Batman Arkham Asylum when PhysX was off, but in actuality those things were never in the console version and only "added" or "augmented" effects for the PC version. Nothing was stripped.

That makes sense to me as I can think logicaly. Not like I'm gonna run out and buy a console version of Mafia II and a PC version to boot and compare them.

In the console version do guns not expell casings and do objects not fragment like the initial video you posted?

Maybe somebody can find a console vs pc version video for all of us to compare

Now as a member of the nvidia focus group have you or anybody ever ask'd why nvidia intentionally disable the use of a dedicated physX card when a ATI is detected as primary? I've never tried it but from what I've read online it worked fine without issues.

If you've ask'd what did they tell you about it?

The only reason I'm asking is that it seems like from a biz standpoint it's a shot in the foot. Or one of those moves that goes back to my earlier " That's the way rich kids play " comment you questioned me on.

 

[WelshBloke]

I can understand that people who own GPU's that cannot run PhysX are annoyed. But I can't understand that because of this, they do not want any technological advancements to happen. It really doesn't make much sense for a technical oriented community. Ordinarily, you'd see a techno geek, such as myself say, "Wow, this is really cool, or has potential to be very nice." Not, "We don't need no stinking PhysX."

That just doesn't really happen.

How about the people who have GPU's that can run Physx but are really, really, really jaded about the amount of hype and marketing but lack of decent content?

 

[ModestGamer]

I wouldn't bet my ass on that at all. It's a form of advertising. Why does intel pay computer makers to include intel inside stickers or to have it in their advertising? Because it helps to establish the brand and increases sales overall.

The truth is that almost all games are developed on the console first, with the console being used as the baseline. Some developers spend extra effort to take advantage of the extra capabilities of the PC, most don't.

If the pc would have looked the same w/o nvidia's intervention then no, it's not detrimental to the consumer because s/he gets extras because of Nvidia's dime.

I'd like to see nvidia liscensing shceme myself becuase I have serious doubts about them just opting to pay for all this extra code work which costs money without a return.

Secondly it really screams that games need some form of unified code design.

Define developer. Who is doing the developing ? Its one thing for a company to provide a tool kit to write code for hardware its a whole other animal to expect them to write royalty free code. Which BTW never happens.

Secondly why are we having multiple driver interfaces from games to hardware.

We need standardization and OpenGl is it. It doesn't serve us the consumer by locking us into hardware to get specific features. It makes no sense.

Essentially it is nvidia trying to bully the market. ATI is no different but they do a better job of playing victim.

 

[Lonyo]

How about the people who have GPU's that can run Physx but are really, really, really jaded about the amount of hype and marketing but lack of decent content?

And people don't care because it's taking us back to the old days of OpenGL vs Glide vs D3D vs Rendition, plus proprietary extensions like Truform or S3TC. All in the name of "progress".
Yeah, going back a decade is progress.

Like you say, hype wise it's overrated, and it doesn't do anything but add to graphics (so why not call it GraphiX? It would be more appropriate since the physics part is pretty meaningless).
The only "decent content" is through additional graphical niceness, which is non-standard and not open for all players. In this way it's taking us back the decade to the time when some cards could do some things, and others could do others not because they hadn't added such features (e.g. being a DX version behind) but because they were locked out from it.
Thankfully things like S3TC got added to DX, and Truform became tessellation, while most of the niche proprietary renderers died out along with their companies. But bringing that back is "progress" and anyone who dislikes it is a luddite.

Maybe one of the 3DFX guys is in charge of PhysX ^_^

 

[Red Storm]

What are the only pieces of hardware than PhsyX will not run on, and what do all these have in common? I'm not talking sound cards or SATA controllers here. All CPU's can run PhysX. Which means any PC can run PhysX. The only pieces of hardware that cannot run PhysX, are AMD based GPU's. This, does not make PhysX proprietary. It makes AMD the only one who won't run it. I didn't say "can't", mind you, but won't.

Actually you did say "can't", just look a few sentences back in your paragraph.

Showcasing (intentionally?) unoptimized CPU performance to make your own GPU's current implementation look artificially better is an awful lot like, oh I dunno, saying it can't run on the competition's hardware when in fact it can and is often able to with the slightest of tweaks!

There's a difference between not offering support for certain hardware and implementing measures to outright prevent it from working with said hardware. Saying "You need a card at X level of performance to run this" is nothing at all like the reality of the matter, which is more like "You need to not have our chief competitor's product in your system to run this."

Remember when AMD cards suddenly gained the ability to run PhysX with new nVidia drivers? Remember their response? "Yes, this is a bug in the latest build of PhysX that was packaged with the driver. We'll be fixing this issue ASAP - the WHQL driver launching in early June won't have this issue. -NVIDIA"

You're right, it's AMD who can't/won't run it.

 

[bryanW1995]

You should probably watch the video again if the only extra things you saw, were gun shell casings.
It's a video to demonstrate Mafia II with PhysX on and PhsyX off. Of course Nvidia is going to show it off, along with the makers of Mafia II.
Why wouldn't they?
Try to run PhysX ON with it running on the CPU. I'll try in a little bit, but I don't know if I can force that while having an PhysX capable GPU in the system.
Maybe somebody with an AMD GPU setup can try it and see. I'll give it a go in a few.

Nvidia control panel has a setting for physix to set it to auto/gpu/cpu on my gtx 260, I'm sure you can do it with your card as well.

 

[SirPauly]

@ lonyo,

I don't know, Cuda helped bring OpenCL and Compute Shader. Proprietary is not bad; it's just not ideal. Where is it written that everyone has to have the same choice at all times? Competition creates value but also drives innovation and choice. If PhysX succeeds, will help create demand and awareness and motivate the industry to create an open standard. All GPU PhysX is to me is a vehicle to get the ball rolling and raise awareness -- not the end-all-be-all vehicle. Eventually there will be open standards and much more ideal for all by why should all consumers and customers have to wait right now?

 

[bryanW1995]

looks like bullet casings and rock/debris when firing weapons
i'm almost done with the game and while firing a weapon, honestly i am watching
enemies die as opposed to what's falling on the floor LOL. and i move past to the
next area right away so i don't even look at the ground.

while cool, i don't really see a need for it (unless i already have an nvidia card i mean, i wouldn't buy one just to have physx tho)

it's not difficult to hack physix onto an amd card, just do that and you will have the best of both worlds.

 

[blckgrffn]

it's not difficult to hack physix onto an amd card, just do that and you will have the best of both worlds.

I now try to keep my PC as "hack" free as possible, though. I think that the mass majority of PC gamers would be in the same boat.

Buy the video cards to, you know, play games. Not fart around

Thanks for the tip, Ben. If I ever get some time to play Mafia 2, I'll give it a shot. *loved* the original.

 

[tviceman]

GPU physx effects are about as important as anti aliasing or anisotropic filtering. Neither of the 3 are vital to a game, but they're all welcome and make the game look better. I'll take GPU physx effects over the current alternative.

 

[golem]

And people don't care because it's taking us back to the old days of OpenGL vs Glide vs D3D vs Rendition, plus proprietary extensions like Truform or S3TC. All in the name of "progress".
Yeah, going back a decade is progress.

Like you say, hype wise it's overrated, and it doesn't do anything but add to graphics (so why not call it GraphiX? It would be more appropriate since the physics part is pretty meaningless).
The only "decent content" is through additional graphical niceness, which is non-standard and not open for all players. In this way it's taking us back the decade to the time when some cards could do some things, and others could do others not because they hadn't added such features (e.g. being a DX version behind) but because they were locked out from it.
Thankfully things like S3TC got added to DX, and Truform became tessellation, while most of the niche proprietary renderers died out along with their companies. But bringing that back is "progress" and anyone who dislikes it is a luddite.

Maybe one of the 3DFX guys is in charge of PhysX ^_^

Didn't glide come before Direct3d and opengl were wildly available or actually useful? W/O it, it might have taken much longer for 3d to take off, so it was progress.

 

[Daedalus685]

GPU physx effects are about as important as anti aliasing or anisotropic filtering. Neither of the 3 are vital to a game, but they're all welcome and make the game look better. I'll take GPU physx effects over the current alternative.

Currently I'd agree.. It is just irritating when the only "proof" is comparing sans physics in general to physX on. It does look nice, there is no need to water down the comparison with marketing 101.

Though GPU physics coudl likely be far more important than AA given time... Could be like playing a game without A.I.

Mind you, that is assuming CPUs don't get much better at simple parallel tasks.

 

[SirPauly]

There is always marketing to create awareness. Tend to look at things as in steps and moving forward.

 

[konakona]

I have neither played through a game with physx on, nor have seen a compelling video footage to go out of the way to get it. My guess is these videos really don't do much justice, you really need to play the actual games to have a final word on it.

Though I am not very keen on nv's self-exclusionist marketing strategy, I can't knock the tech itself without trying it first hand. Now that I have a very capable NV card (470gtx @780/1840) at hand, I might as well give it a shot. So is this game the best example of physx implementation out there these days? Not a huge fan of the historical setting, but I think I will probably like it better than batman AA (not into batman at all). This or cryostasis?

 

[WelshBloke]

GPU physx effects are about as important as anti aliasing or anisotropic filtering. Neither of the 3 are vital to a game, but they're all welcome and make the game look better. I'll take GPU physx effects over the current alternative.

TBH I thought the vid in the OP looked worse with Physx on (although it looked pretty bad anyway).

There wasnt a lot (any?) of actual game changing physics calculations going on and the extra graphics stuff looked weirdly superimposed or similar (the rock fragments looked like they were floating slightly of the ground).

 

[bryanW1995]

Yeah it is really silly argument. "Only eye candy". Isnt that what all the shit they do on graphics cards ends up being? If these purists want us to take them seriously, they should run the game at the lowest possible resolution with all "eye candy" turned off. 640X480 0aa,no texture filtering, and all reflections, shadowing, and shaders turned off.

But what they arerally saying is Nvidia bad, ATI good. Well that is fine, let us know when ATI is capable of finally delivering Physics on a GPU. I know they were yapping about it 4 years ago. Nothing yet......

well, ATI isn't delivering anything at all on a gpu these days, just ask wreckage.

Nvidia made a calculated gamble when they bought ageia. They have spent a lot of time and effort investing in physx, and especially over the past 12-18 months they've used it as a selling point for their cards. There's nothing illegal/immoral/etc about that, but I do think that it would be more astute for them to implement it differently.

As an example, if you could run physix with an amd gpu as the main gpu and nvidia as the physx gpu, that could go a long way to bringing physx to a greater audience. Devs would be more comfortable making physx a larger part of their game if they felt confident that most users could take advantage of it, and there are a LOT more 2-4 yr old nvidia mid/high gpus out there than there are amd cards.

 

[Keysplayr]

How about the people who have GPU's that can run Physx but are really, really, really jaded about the amount of hype and marketing but lack of decent content?

That's pretty subjective. Some people look and say, "Meh" and others will say "Cool". You've seen somebody say in this very thread that Mafia II is (to him) a much better experience with PhysX ON, ("Cool") and another that says, "PhysX is totally useless, ("Meh"). So, there we are.

 

[tviceman]

Currently I'd agree.. It is just irritating when the only "proof" is comparing sans physics in general to physX on.

I think Nvidia would be doing themselves a huge favor in the long run to UNLOCK their drivers barring ATI users from sticking in Nvidia GPU's to act as dedicated physx cards and just have an open policy that they don't provide support for heterogeneous setups. At the same time irritates me that Nvidia is the only company that actively pursues adding extra graphical effects to games instead of waiting on Microsoft's directx team to add in functionality to new versions of directx.

Intel and AMD have no excuses and absolutely no reason to complain - they both had all the time in the world and Intel specifically has had several notable failed attempts to leverage their technology while aiming specifically at gamers (Alan Wake and Project Offset). AMD's engineering team is all the hype right now, but AMD's whole dynamic is disappointing to me. It's like their engineers are creating brand new amazingly fast and efficient cars but are then handing the cars off to amateur drivers (marketing and management).

 

[MrK6]

So, we both really don't know then. Neither of us has shot one.

Where did I say that? I stated my familiarity with the substance, and yes, I have shot it. While we're at it, I've shot wood, metal, and even plastic, too!

And about firearm laws? Do you really think I needed schooling on it? I don't own any. Don't like them.
But, try schooling the Mafia II guys about that.

Then why do you think you're an authority on them or that you can make a judgement about how or what they should look and operate like? That's just completely nonsensical.

TBH I thought the vid in the OP looked worse with Physx on (although it looked pretty bad anyway).

There wasnt a lot (any?) of actual game changing physics calculations going on and the extra graphics stuff looked weirdly superimposed or similar (the rock fragments looked like they were floating slightly of the ground).

That's how I see it. Furthermore, why didn't they use the PhysX to do something cool like fire. How come the car explosions look the same? All I see in that video, and as others haven commented, are gaudy chunk and debris effects that detract from the game, and give a tremendous performance hit while doing it. And people wonder why no one is lining up to try out PhysX .

 

[Keysplayr]

Nvidia control panel has a setting for physix to set it to auto/gpu/cpu on my gtx 260, I'm sure you can do it with your card as well.

Ok, I'll give it a go.

 

[Keysplayr]

Where did I say that? I stated my familiarity with the substance, and yes, I have shot it. While we're at it, I've shot wood, metal, and even plastic, too!
Then why do you think you're an authority on them or that you can make a judgement about how or what they should look and operate like? That's just completely nonsensical.
That's how I see it. Furthermore, why didn't they use the PhysX to do something cool like fire. How come the car explosions look the same? All I see in that video, and as others haven commented, are gaudy chunk and debris effects that detract from the game, and give a tremendous performance hit while doing it. And people wonder why no one is lining up to try out PhysX .

MrK6, just back off for a few please? Conversation is getting back to normal, why throw more fire on it? -Thanks.

 

[WelshBloke]

That's pretty subjective. Some people look and say, "Meh" and others will say "Cool". You've seen somebody say in this very thread that Mafia II is (to him) a much better experience with PhysX ON, ("Cool") and another that says, "PhysX is totally useless, ("Meh"). So, there we are.

Well of course its subjective, you started this thread and that's all you've got to say about it?

For how many years now have we been promised that Physx will change PC gaming? And where are we now? A few extra chunks of rock that look really out of place.

/disappointed

 

[bryanW1995]

Good moderating btw, keep up the good work! (sincerely)

yes, the beatings will continue until morale improves!

 

[Keysplayr]

Well of course its subjective, you started this thread and that's all you've got to say about it?

For how many years now have we been promised that Physx will change PC gaming? And where are we now? A few extra chunks of rock that look really out of place.

/disappointed

What would you "like" me to say?
/confused