Physx - Are you interested in it? Have your say! VOTE!

[AnandThenMan]

Nvidia removes basic visuals, then puts them in using PhysX and tells everyone how great the whole deal is.

 

[Zanovar]

Nvidia removes basic visuals, then puts them in using PhysX and tells everyone how great the whole deal is.

Erm,what?

 

[Carfax83]

Directcompute is developed by MS yes, however it does not require outlandish licensing fees in order to use. It is included as part of the DirectX API.

And how much does it cost to license CUDA?

According to this article, NVidia claims it would cost AMD "less than pennies" per GPU shipped.

NVidia obviously isn't out to make a killing from licensing PhysX, as PhysX is available for absolutely no cost to developers; even for commercial use.

PhysX on the other hand is only available for nVidia hardware. And after nVidia bought PhysX, they purposed decreased the performance of PhysX on CPU's (Which was excellent before hand) to force people into using their hardware.

That's not true at all. Remember, Ageia was trying to pimp it's Physics Processing Unit aka PPU on all of us, so PhysX was never properly optimized for the CPU even before it was purchased by NVidia..

At any rate, this doesn't matter anymore as PhysX has been SIMD and multithreading optimized for years now.

The fact is proprietary API's that are not licensable for reasonable prices are *BAD* for consumers, period.

You're insinuating that CUDA is not licensed for reasonable prices, but as I've already shown with the article I linked to, it is..

And don't forget that nVidia did not create PhysX, they bought it, just like they bought SLI.

NVidia did not create PhysX, but if you think the PhysX we have today remotely resembles what it was like when Ageia owned it, then you're sadly mistaken.

The PhysX SDK today is so far above what it was originally, as to not even be the same product.

if nVidia really wanted PhysX to be successful, they would license it to Intel and AMD for reasonable cost, and consumers everywhere would be better off for it. And I would like to stress the "reasonable" part, as nVidia did offer it to AMD, but it was at a purposely obscenely high amount so that they would be the only ones that supported it.

Again, here you're insinuating that NVidia does not license its IP for reasonable costs, but you have provided no evidence of this.

Show us some evidence pertaining to NVidia's "unreasonable" licensing costs, or drop the argument

 

[FiendishMind]

And don't forget that nVidia did not create PhysX, they bought it, just like they bought SLI.

Ageia didn't really create "PhysX" either, they bought NovodeX AG in 2004 and then just rebranded the NovodeX Physics SDK to the "PhysX SDK". Ageia made very few changes or updates to the x86 based CPU portion of the SDK the entire time they had control of the standard (which is probably why, prior to 3.0, it still relied on x87 to the degree it did) instead focusing almost entirely on their PPU based portion of the SDK.

 

[crashtech]

...nVidia did not create PhysX, they bought it, just like they bought SLI...

3dfx's Scan-Line Interleave and Nvidia's Scalable Link Interface have only their initials in common, so this does not add to your point either.

 

[MrK6]

Nvidia removes basic visuals, then puts them in using PhysX and tells everyone how great the whole deal is.

Nailed it. The fact that nvidia has owned PhysX for 6+ years I believe and still done nothing with it says a lot. It hasn't changed anything because it does everything wrong. Proprietary, inefficient, and unimpressive, all things that make it difficult to market.

 

[Carfax83]

Nailed it. The fact that nvidia has owned PhysX for 6+ years I believe and still done nothing with it says a lot. It hasn't changed anything because it does everything wrong. Proprietary, inefficient, and unimpressive, all things that make it difficult to market.

So difficult to market that it's come/coming out on 4 games this year, 3 of them blockbuster titles (Metro Last Light, Batman Arkham Origins, Call of Duty Ghosts) and 3 MMOs Hawken, Planetside 2 and Everquest Next.

Yeah, whatever NVidia is doing, must not be working :sneaky:

 

[boxleitnerb]

Nvidia removes basic visuals, then puts them in using PhysX and tells everyone how great the whole deal is.

I strongly disagree. No one knows if GPU-PhysX games would have these effects in the first place if it were not for PhysX. I highly doubt they would. There is no evidence whatsoever that anything was "removed". Besides, particle simulations are not basic, especially if they act dynamically and react to the player and the environment.

The smoke in Batman AO is just looking gorgeous, there is nothing like this in any non-PhysX game. Not a single one:

Fast forward to 36:00
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/batma...es-further-explained-demonstrated/#more-55767

 

[Piroko]

A lot of those effects that you think are physics are really just canned animations, which is a graphical effect with baked in physics. So basically, the CPU isn't doing any real time computations to enable these effects.

The Battlefield games uses a lot of that, with perhaps a small bit of real time computation here and there to add variety. You can tell explosions and weapon impacts in BF3 uses canned animations because the rubble disappears as soon as it hits the ground, or even before it hits the ground.

Point is, I don't care as long as it is immersive. The Bureau just throws a gazillion bright particles at the screen that aren't there in cutscenes and very obviously use a different color palette. The game felt more eerie and tense for me without PhysX.

So difficult to market that it's come/coming out on 4 games this year, 3 of them blockbuster titles (Metro Last Light, Batman Arkham Origins, Call of Duty Ghosts) and 3 MMOs Hawken, Planetside 2 and Everquest Next.

Yeah, whatever NVidia is doing, must not be working :sneaky:

They've had around seven releases a year since 2006. Just as a comparison, at least 45 games are listed under "2012" here and I doubt the list is comprehensive.

 

[Carfax83]

The smoke in Batman AO is just looking gorgeous, there is nothing like this in any non-PhysX game. Not a single one:

Fast forward to 36:00
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/batma...es-further-explained-demonstrated/#more-55767

Nice find dude. I'm going to update my Batman Arkham Origins thread with it :thumbsup:

 

[Deders]

Can't imagine playing the Batman games without PhysX

 

[Final8ty]

I strongly disagree. No one knows if GPU-PhysX games would have these effects in the first place if it were not for PhysX. I highly doubt they would. There is no evidence whatsoever that anything was "removed". Besides, particle simulations are not basic, especially if they act dynamically and react to the player and the environment.

The smoke in Batman AO is just looking gorgeous, there is nothing like this in any non-PhysX game. Not a single one:

Fast forward to 36:00
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/batma...es-further-explained-demonstrated/#more-55767

5 years ago, it reacts to people and objects moving through it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5RMxO5DsPA&fm=18 watch in 720p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtfC4vlE8yU

If they were using Physx non NV users would not even get what is shown here.

 

[Qbah]

I upgraded from my HD5850 to a GTX670 instead of a 7 - series Radeon because I wanted to try PhysX and I don't regret it one bit. I really like it in Borderlands 2. There were of course other reasons too, like good price and being annoyed with some quirks with the AMD card. But PhysX definitely was a factor.

 

[Deders]

Nvidia removes basic visuals, then puts them in using PhysX and tells everyone how great the whole deal is.

This couldn't be done as effectively without hardware accelerated physics

http://thecine6.com/exv/yt/?i=9cPB_Xxc1go

 

[boxleitnerb]

5 years ago, it reacts to people and objects moving through it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5RMxO5DsPA&fm=18 watch in 720p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtfC4vlE8yU

If they were using Physx non NV users would not even get what is shown here.

Interesting, that was new to me. Yet the use in one game in all these years only shows that this effect is all but basic and that without PhysX it would most likely never have been replicated in the Batman games. It's also the question how demanding these effects were in Stalker and if there are any differences in the simulation (accuracy, amount of particles).

 

[Carfax83]

5 years ago, it reacts to people and objects moving through it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5RMxO5DsPA&fm=18 watch in 720p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtfC4vlE8yU

If they were using Physx non NV users would not even get what is shown here.

To be fair, every single PhysX effect shown in Batman Arkham Origins can be run on a CPU......BUT, the performance level would be unacceptable because CPUs don't have the raw computational resources necessary to do physics calculations at the same speed as a GPU..

You see this in your second link. The frame rate looks to be very poor with all of the volumetric fog which is being simulated by the CPU.

That's why hardware accelerated game physics was created in the first place, to perform calculations which are just too strenuous for the CPU.

And although modern CPUs have come a long way since Stalker Clear Sky was released, they are still far less powerful than even low end GPUs.

My GTX 650 Ti dedicated PhysX card has almost 1.5 T/flops of computational power, and I paid 94 dollars for it.

 

[Final8ty]

To be fair, every single PhysX effect shown in Batman Arkham Origins can be run on a CPU......BUT, the performance level would be unacceptable because CPUs don't have the raw computational resources necessary to do physics calculations at the same speed as a GPU..

You see this in your second link. The frame rate looks to be very poor with all of the volumetric fog which is being simulated by the CPU.

That's why hardware accelerated game physics was created in the first place, to perform calculations which are just too strenuous for the CPU.

And although modern CPUs have come a long way since Stalker Clear Sky was released, they are still far less powerful than even low end GPUs.

My GTX 650 Ti dedicated PhysX card has almost 1.5 T/flops of computational power, and I paid 94 dollars for it.

You have noway of knowing why the frame rates are poor seeing as there is no setup info, the link that boxleitnerb gave also looks like poor frame rates and seeing as the average persons GPU struggles to give high frame rates as it is PhysX will just bring it down further and as you have said you need a dedicated card to get decent results, yet more money on top.

 

[Final8ty]

This couldn't be done as effectively without hardware accelerated physics

http://thecine6.com/exv/yt/?i=9cPB_Xxc1go

It has in infernal engine used in ghost busters.

HardOCP 0:18
Apr 15, 2009

This is an actual map used in the new Ghost Busters game due out in June.

http://www.viddler.com/v/90135d36

 

[Deders]

I do remember the Physics being impressive in Ghostbusters but I didn't see it being used to that extent. Strangely enough as badly optimised as Ghostbusters was on the PC (couldn't run smoothly at anything near the minimum specs) It wasn't the physics that slowed it down.

I wonder what cpu was used to render that. Not sure if it's the P4 on the machine i'm watching that clip or the way it was encoded on but it doesn't look that smooth to me.

I'm pretty sure Arkham Asylum didn't use the same engine. It was Unreal which had hardware PhysX built in and when it was made to run on a CPU it slowed to a crawl. Probably partly due to being x87 code but even so cpu's at the time weren't able to run this well.

 

[Final8ty]

http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/32133/bigger

Bad management wasted all the development money.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Case in point, the top three PhysX games in my opinion are:

1) Batman Arkham City

2) Mafia 2

3) Borderlands 2

After playing these games with PhysX turned on, the very thought of playing them with PhysX turned off becomes almost unimaginable as the games seem utterly bland and incomplete without it..

Yeah, BL2 without PhysX feels boring and dull. Mafia 2 to a lesser extent. It reminds me of Glide which is long gone now (3dfx had made it open-source but wasn't it too late?!). Let's hope this won't follow suit

 

[tviceman]

Nvidia removes basic visuals, then puts them in using PhysX and tells everyone how great the whole deal is.

Interactive smoke/fog? Never done in a game before physx. Interactive cloth? Never done (to my knowledge) in a game before physx. 10,000+ particles with physics properties? Never that many in a game at high performance levels before physx. Witcher 3 is going to have a feature never done in a game before physx.

 

[tviceman]

http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/32133/bigger

Bad management wasted all the development money.

I could not imagine working that hard on something, and having that much to show for it, to be told "nope not gonna happen."

 

[FalseChristian]

That's a mute poll. I have hardware PhysX capability but since I want use SLI I have to set it to 'CPU' anyways.

 

[Jaydip]

That's a mute poll. I have hardware PhysX capability but since I want use SLI I have to set it to 'CPU' anyways.

Huh??