The physics "claims" thread...

[notty22]

Those added , needless little effects fall right in to the same category as not needing very high details over high. Or not needing shadows, or AA. Keep going and you can talk yourself in to not needing anything more than a 8800 gt.

 

[Skurge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRMdv21q9Cw

Mmmmmm, very impressive.

I think ME was the best implementation of physx as it fit nicely into the game, it wasnt much, and it was barely noticeable, but it was nice.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Those added , needless little effects fall right in to the same category as not needing very high details over high. Or not needing shadows, or AA. Keep going and you can talk yourself in to not needing anything more than a 8800 gt.

Not really. AA/AF can be used in almost every part of every game to create crisper, more aesthetic imagery. Physx in it's current state? It is used in very few meaningful ways that other physics layers (Havok) can reproduce without such a performance hit.

For example, Batman's cape in Batman AA. Enable Physx? Enjoy the performance hit. Or, enable HQ player models in NBA 2K11? No performance hit as long as you have 3+ cores and doesn't require a certain brand of card installed.

Look at CryTek's and Havok's physic layers. Both offer realistic physic effects without the performance hit.

The way I see it, physics effects shouldn't have to be a category like choosing very high over high details. It is more like choosing MLAA over SSAA, except in this case the supposed inferior display option is right on par with the more demanding option without the poor performance that goes along with it.

 

[Skurge]

Those added , needless little effects fall right in to the same category as not needing very high details over high. Or not needing shadows, or AA. Keep going and you can talk yourself in to not needing anything more than a 8800 gt.

I would agree with this, if those added effects actually made the game look better. Most times, they don't and you incur a huge FPS hit.

As I said, I think Mirrors Edge got it right. The bullets cutting through cloth was a little overdone (they wouldn't make holes that large), but it fit into the game well and didnt cause any performance hit at all. Unlike the other games.

 

[zerocool84]

Claim #69

Has Physx changed the way games are played?

No, but other "inferior" physics API's have done that. Physx was touted years ago to change the way games are played, right now it's limited to things like smoke and falling bricks made to be artificially slower on competing hardware which has already been done on many other games before without the need of a proprietary physics API.

 

[Lonyo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzlormXx_as
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9aNEo7l0XQ

Here's a game where PhysX is used to change gameplay!
Oh, it's also available on Xbox 360. No GPU acceleration required. So it's just like Havok or any other physics engine.


http://physxinfo.com/news/4724/how-physx-is-used-in-breach-interview-with-atomic-games/

 

[Skurge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzlormXx_as
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9aNEo7l0XQ

Here's a game where PhysX is used to change gameplay!
Oh, it's also available on Xbox 360. No GPU acceleration required. So it's just like Havok or any other physics engine.


http://physxinfo.com/news/4724/how-physx-is-used-in-breach-interview-with-atomic-games/

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2011/02/05/breach-review/1

Breach is not a very good game. In fact, it’s just plain awful – to the extent that we’re not even sure where to start, other than that our position should be stated clearly and concisely. Breach is a bad game. It is not enjoyable.

The destruction system itself is the most noticeable weakness, if only because Breach makes such a big deal about your ability to knock down buildings. Bluntly, Breach handles destruction in the same way as PhysX demos from five years ago, with most scenery behaving as if it were built out of marshmallows. If you plant a grenade in a building then you can easily send most of the ceiling to the moon, although moving debris is still capable of instantly killing anyone it touches.

There’s no consistency to much of the destruction system either, nor any depth to the physics beyond the fact that the buildings are made of little, movable pieces. A few sniper rounds into a single wooden beam is all it takes to pull an entire building apart, as if it was built by a carpenter who’d never heard of nails or weight distribution. Similarly, while a high-powered rifle round can be used to knock bricks out of walls or chip away at cover, there’s nothing beyond that – bullets don’t deflect to damage anything more than their immediate targets.

 

[Jacky60]

It's great when people state their opinions as fact, it just warms my heart

Claim #1 - GPU's probably have more horsepower when calculating physics, but how much of that is actually available when you're pushing maximum quality graphics at high resolution with 4x+ AA? Oh, right, very little. However, generally two of my four cores are doing jack when I'm playing a game, so proportionally there can be a lot more horsepower there that is readily available. Unless, of course, this is advocation for buying a "physics only" card is the best solution to get enhanced physics adopted into the mainstream, which we all know how that worked out (i.e. Aegia).

Claim #2 - People talk about BF: BC2 and Ghostbusters because the physics actually changed the gameplay in a meaningful way and catapulted gaming physics forward in a way PhysX couldn't touch despite it's four year+ effort. When my squad and I are huddled on the top floor of a house hiding from a hail of bullet fire when suddenly the wall next to me blows up from an RPG, I'm not counting the bricks to see if it was the same as last time, my butt is already parachuting out the opposite side to escape the inevitable next round. Anyone who's arguing "oh, it's prettier/more realistic" has lost just as much focus as NVIDIA has on actual, meaningful implementation, and this is why PhysX on the GPU is a failure. Another great example is the "interactive steam" in Batman: AA. Great, the steam moves with you at a 50% performance drop. Volumetric steam would look 90% the same with a 5% of the performance penalty, and no one would care as they're trying to chase down and knock out this bad guy.

Claim #5 - Proprietary isn't bad. Proprietary and useless is.

Claim #6 - Ask most people on this forum, never mind an average Joe, if they've heard of Cellfactor and Warmonger, and you'll most likely get a blank stare. Meanwhile, you can go up to any person on the street aged 10-30 and ask them if they've heard of Battlefield: BC2 and you'll get an affirmative. See the difference? To claim that PhysX has done anything for gameplay is just marketing speak or wishful fanboy thinking. If PhysX was worth more than crap, we'd all have NVIDIA GPU's right now. Guess what, we don't, because it's worth crap. All the ridiculous marketing speak, elitist write-ups, fanboy ranting, and flat out hissy fits aren't going to change that.

This is a fair and accurate portrayal of physx unlike the OP.

 

[SirPauly]

I don't understand how someone can offer PhysX is crap and offer four + year attempt when nVidia purchased PhysX in Feb 2008 and needed some time to port it to PhysX and get drivers ready. In reality it's more like 2 + years.

If one feels it is crap, there is not much one can do for someone, and just as extreme as someone saying PhysX is a must-have for all in its current form -- just polar opposite extremes.

PhysX to me is an engine, library, tool-set to try to bring Physics to multi-platforms, devices and attempt to innovate in this field.

My nit-picks are, would like to see some movement to OpenCL if possible and a desire to see more compelling GPU Physic content, and for developers to take advantage of CPU cores more efficiently.

 

[BFG10K]

This is really comparing apple to oranges.
BC:BF2 uses Havok CPU physics and thus is limited in the perfomance is can apply to physics and thus resort to scripted physics.

This means that:

- every single wall explosion looks the same.
- every single wall explosion creates an identical hole in the wall time after time.
- every single wall explosion creates the same dead, inactive debris.

Uh, no. Just because something uses software physics it does not mean it’s scripted. Back in 2001 Red Faction was using dynamic physics so you could make holes in walls and floors. You could even dig your own tunnels if you kept firing at the same spot. What PhysX game allows that?

Also Far Cry 2 uses software physics and the events are definitely not scripted; they’re calculated on the fly.

Here’s a great example: I was sitting in some dry savannah and I decided to hit the Ranger Station with a rocket launcher. The rocket exhaust set the grass on fire around me. I started taking damage and the enemies spotted the smoke/fire and started shooting at me. Then I had to sprint to my jeep and drive it off the grass because the propagated fire was getting close to it.

Can you name a single hardware PhysX game that has done that?

Far Cry 2’s physics add meaningful changes to gameplay, they’re dynamic, and they run fast on the CPU.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I don't understand how someone can offer [ hardware ] PhysX is crap ...

Who said it was? The "haters" are just saying it's not very useful yet.

Software physics have had noticeable and fun effects on game play, with things flying through the air, sliding down hills, allowing physics-based puzzles, etc. but hardware physics haven't added much on top of that yet.

Maybe hardware PhysX will matter someday, or maybe Microsoft will step in and add a GPU-neutral physics layer to DirectX for Windows 8 and the xbox 720.

If that happens, hardware physics might take off, but even then developers will have to decide whether to ignore all the people without "good enough" GPUs, or make their games still be fun with and without hardware physics.

 

[Grooveriding]

4 years... 15 games : http://physxinfo.com/data/vreview.html

4 of which were even worth playing. Of the other 11, one was a free tech demo download, one only used physx in a few addon maps. So in fairness, 13.2 games :thumbsdown:

Failure to launch.

/thread

When/if there is a universal physics standard that runs on the gpu and is part of a DX API, and does not hammer our framerates, it will go somewhere.

Or, we'll just continue to enjoy the physics run on the cpu offered by games like BFBC2 and Crysis that have done more than gpu physx and not cut our framerates in half :thumbsup:

 

[Lonyo]

4 years... 15 games : http://physxinfo.com/data/vreview.html

4 of which were even worth playing. Of the other 11, one was a free tech demo download, one only used physx in a few addon maps. So in fairness, 13.2 games :thumbsdown:

Failure to launch.

/thread

When/if there is a universal physics standard that runs on the gpu and is part of a DX API, and does not hammer our framerates, it will go somewhere.

Or, we'll just continue to enjoy the physics run on the cpu offered by games like BFBC2 and Crysis that have done more than gpu physx and not cut our framerates in half :thumbsup:

Give it more time!

 

[notty22]

Epic unveils "next generation" Unreal Engine tech

DICE's Frostbite 2.0-powered Battlefield 3 will be a tough act to follow in terms of visual quality, but today Epic is showing off the latest improvements to its Unreal Engine 3 calling it their proposal for what the next generation of gaming will look like. And the company is probably right considering the wide-range of games currently using its graphics engine, with licensees gaining access to these enhanced tools later in the month.

The footage shown at GDC wasn't any game in particular but rather a tech demo featuring several slick new visual-processing techniques such as image-based reflection, improved depth-of-field and anti-aliasing, dynamic tessellation and other DirectX 11 goodies. Epic says it has collaborated with Nvidia to make use of PhysX and APEX technologies, including destruction and clothing modules, which enable realistic character interactions with the environment.

 

[SlowSpyder]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRMdv21q9Cw

Mmmmmm, very impressive.

I think ME was the best implementation of physx as it fit nicely into the game, it wasnt much, and it was barely noticeable, but it was nice.

That is pretty cool. But it was cool in a 'tech demo' sort of way. I am not convinced anything I saw in that video could not be handled by a modern CPU. That's not to say hardware based physics isn't the direction things should go. But, I just do not see hardware based physics as gaming's holy grail as some people seem to think it is. It will be another feature that we turn on/off in our menu, like AA/AF. I do not see it as the be all end all of immersive gaming.

This reminds me of HDR/AA in Oblivion...

 

[WelshBloke]

I think its just time for Physx to put up or shut up.

No matter how good it 'could be' or how much better the GPU is at doing physics calculations, without the games to back it up its fairly meaningless.

Its not anything worth getting worked up about one way or the other.

I vote we just ignore it until it does something worth talking about.

 

[SirPauly]

Who said it was? The "haters" are just saying it's not very useful yet.

Software physics have had noticeable and fun effects on game play, with things flying through the air, sliding down hills, allowing physics-based puzzles, etc. but hardware physics haven't added much on top of that yet.

Maybe hardware PhysX will matter someday, or maybe Microsoft will step in and add a GPU-neutral physics layer to DirectX for Windows 8 and the xbox 720.

If that happens, hardware physics might take off, but even then developers will have to decide whether to ignore all the people without "good enough" GPUs, or make their games still be fun with and without hardware physics.

If PhysX was worth more than crap, we'd all have NVIDIA GPU's right now. Guess what, we don't, because it's worth crap

I don't think PhysX is crap and has upside to improve, evolve and mature.

 

[Skurge]

That is pretty cool. But it was cool in a 'tech demo' sort of way. I am not convinced anything I saw in that video could not be handled by a modern CPU. That's not to say hardware based physics isn't the direction things should go. But, I just do not see hardware based physics as gaming's holy grail as some people seem to think it is. It will be another feature that we turn on/off in our menu, like AA/AF. I do not see it as the be all end all of immersive gaming.

This reminds me of HDR/AA in Oblivion...

Actually I was being sarcastic about it being impressive.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Actually I was being sarcastic about it being impressive.

Well, it looked cool to me, how the flags flowed and the environment was fairly interactive. But like I said, it's certainly a tech demo, it means nothing for game play. And also as I said, I don't think anything in that video couldn't be done with CPU physics.

 

[Idontcare]

I vote we just ignore it until it does something worth talking about.

You wants it to make ya a sammich or a little sumpin sumpin?

 

[WelshBloke]

You wants it to make ya a sammich or a little sumpin sumpin?

I would pay large amounts if my computer could get the ability to make me sandwiches, I'm not sure what 'sumpin sumpin' is but it sounds dirty so maybe I'd pay even more for that. :sneaky:

 

[zerocool84]

I don't think PhysX is crap and has upside to improve, evolve and mature.

I see Physx as Windows Phone 7, looks cool and can potentially do cool things but we have yet to see any of it in any meaningful way.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I see Physx as Windows Phone 7, looks cool and can potentially do cool things but we have yet to see any of it in any meaningful way.

The difference is that Win7 phones are still pretty new to the market. That's not to say Physx won't take off, but it's been out a while and hasn't yet, so... I guess we'll wait and see if that killer title comes out or not.

 

[3DVagabond]

If physX, as it has been implemented, was of any value to gaming, we wouldn't need threads like this in the 1st place. All anyone would have to do is turn it on and it would speak for itself. Do we have to debate whether animation, transparency, 3D game play (not to be confused with 3D display), AA, etc... are of any value in gaming? Of course not. People look at it and want it. No marketing, spin, or sales pitch required.

Now, does this mean that there's no potential for PhysX? Of course not. We need better implementation of it though to sell it to the masses, not spin and marketing.

 

[Idontcare]

I would pay large amounts if my computer could get the ability to make me sandwiches, I'm not sure what 'sumpin sumpin' is but it sounds dirty so maybe I'd pay even more for that. :sneaky:

Yeah...me too :hmm:

Nevertheless our computers won't be able to do either, realistically, without physics :awe: