NVIDIA Shows PhysX Comparison

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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NVIDIA Shows PhysX Comparison - I am not going to lie to you, I am not a fan of PhysX technology and really never have been. Hopefully that will all change soon. The best thing I have ever seen out of PhysX is the Cell Factor game it put together oh so long ago. The PhysX technology truly made the game and was not just treatment to make the game look better. That was a couple years ago. Even today we are still seeing PhysX being used for little more than window dressing; that being that the PhysX technology being applied really is not changing the gameplay but rather being used to hopefully help deepen the immersion qualtity with better eyecandy. Below is an NVIDIA supplied video that shows the new Mirror's Edge game with and without PhysX features applied, side by side. You be the judge.
 
Hmmm. The one on the right seems to slow down at a lot more when the physics objects are interacted with - eg. shooting the flag banners.

Overall, the physics didnt blow me away .. no where near.
 
lewchenko said:
Hmmm. The one on the right seems to slow down at a lot more when the physics objects are interacted with - eg. shooting the flag banners.

Overall, the physics didnt blow me away .. no where near.
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It slowed down on purpose to"show the effects of PhysX"..I really hope they start to do a little more with PhysX..I guess if they got EA to get on board,more may follow..My 9800GT SC needs something to do..:p
 
It's nice that that stuff is possible in real time, but unless you are telling me it doesn't have a hit in performance, the fake stuff of even Left 4 Dead has is satisfactory physics for me.
 
Some particle effects here, some cloth effects there, not very impressive IMO.
 
I think the physics are WAY overdone. A dab will do ya. Too many tapestries and cloths flying around distract from the real objectives. It slows everything down for the sake of "bling."
 
Monkey God said:
less "Ohhh shineys!" and more games that dont suck please.
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mirrors edge does not suck 0.0

on topic, I think it looks good, its a lot more immersive! The real problem is allowing people to just drop in a second video card(9800gt 9600gt etc) just for physics without having to use SLI
 
I would much prefer to see difference such as:

1) With PhysX ragdoll physics is much more realistic.

2) Volumetric water behaves realistic and can be manipulated. i.e. Throw a barrell into a pool and water splashes out and water level drops. (Can make for some interesting puzzle games)

3) Projectiles (bullets, knives, etc) behave more realistically. Weight, speed, inertia alter their impact upon an object. (Brick, wood, drywall)


Many of the capabilities of physics in games would not be eye candy and this is where NVIDIA loses their path. A company dedicated to eye candy is trying to implement something fundamentally designed to deal with behavior, not eye candy.

It is the behavior of the world that would add immersion and the benefit is it "should" not impact framerate performance. The only problem (for NVIDIA) is not knowing how to market something that has nothing to do with their core business.
 
I too saw that the frame rate dropped quite a bit during heavy physics scenes. Also these videos are pretty crappy quality so we can not tell what resolution they are actually running. This could be 800x600 and still choppy for all we know. The other thing is how much could they do in software on a quad core system (or realistically any DX10 card)?

One thing that makes a lot of this mute is that the programming costs of games are getting too high to the point where most games can not turn a profit unless it is a massive hit. Adding features in general will just make it cost more to make games. This ultimately means that the more features they add to these cards the less likely they will be used by most games. Tools and engines are nice, but when nVidia only has what 20% of the market, why would most game developers use this feature. Everybody has a CPU and as time goes on more people will have multi-cored CPUs. Within 10 years pretty much 90% or more would be quad cored or more. Few CPUs sold now are single cored already.

If MS wanted to do something good for DX11 they could include a physics engine to handle this in hardware or GPUs and CPUs. Maybe then they could get gamers to actually want Windows7.
 
I am always open to more eye candy, as long as my hardware can push it. That being said, I will be fine with this if Nvidia is going to integrate Physx into their graphics cards. I have never liked the idea of having another card install in my rig just for handling real time physics. Yes the added effect is nice, but I do not think it is enough of benefit to buy another peripheral. Also another peripheral in my box also means I now have one more component that could cause problems/conflicts with games that I would have to give attention to.
 
its not really introducing eye candy, its making the environment more realistic and immersive(not sure if that's even a word!)

ok so you have curtains, but wouldn't it be cool if the curtains reacted properly when someone is hiding behind them aka a little bump in the curtain, etc or if the window was open and the curtains fluttered in the wind to show u the that window was open? it can REALLY add to the atmosphere of a game to have realistic physics =)
 
anywayz, wudnt it be better to just run all physics just on a gpu ?
if this stupid tech really is a good thing, which i really havnt seen yet, ohh we use the gpu to do physics so we load the videocard even more, the videocard have already been a bottleneck.

but anyways, I dunno if the thing is good or bad, licence it away cheap enough that they can earn abit on it, make ati go for it, and when both sides have the damn tech and all games support it, turn up the licence price for intel when they come with their " super videocards" dunno how good they can do with little experience.

anyways, didnt blow my mind this stuff, and i was rather upset, this is physics less impressive than the videos i saw years ago.
 
physics is a good thing. it adds more datail. games in future might depend on physics and you use a wacking ball to make a hole into a building.
 
The Gonz said:
I would much prefer to see difference such as:

1) With PhysX ragdoll physics is much more realistic.

2) Volumetric water behaves realistic and can be manipulated. i.e. Throw a barrell into a pool and water splashes out and water level drops. (Can make for some interesting puzzle games)

3) Projectiles (bullets, knives, etc) behave more realistically. Weight, speed, inertia alter their impact upon an object. (Brick, wood, drywall)


Many of the capabilities of physics in games would not be eye candy and this is where NVIDIA loses their path. A company dedicated to eye candy is trying to implement something fundamentally designed to deal with behavior, not eye candy.

It is the behavior of the world that would add immersion and the benefit is it "should" not impact framerate performance. The only problem (for NVIDIA) is not knowing how to market something that has nothing to do with their core business.
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that would be awesome
 
game devs shouldnt' use this.. what are all the prople with Ati cards going to do??? Microsoft should intergrated this and make it standard, so everybody can enjoy the game... what now.. i have to swap out my video card depending on what software i am using.... .. no wonder every one likes consoles
 
PhysX is not the only option for those type of 3D animation..

it can also process through CPU ..

another good example is from CryEngine 2 , and Havoc, and its even more fantastic...

so what this PhysX can do, and a hardware limit, it doesn't impress me at all...
 
Todd_a said:
If MS wanted to do something good for DX11 they could include a physics engine to handle this in hardware or GPUs and CPUs. Maybe then they could get gamers to actually want Windows7.
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I disagree. Physics is part of your middleware / game engine. DX isn't a game engine, and don't need to be.

With the new nvidia drivers you can use a second 8series or better video card and have it be dedicated to physics only.
 
Personally, I think the tapestries and the shattering glass are nice, but don't really add that much to the game. See, we're not at a point where we can apply physics to everything in a game. Some things are simply off-limits. Take the HL2 series, for example. How many times in those games do you come across a locked door and have to take the long way around, even though you have grenades, shotguns, crowbars, and other implements of destruction? If physics were allowed to apply to everything, game design would be much more difficult.

At this point, it appears that developers have hit a bit of a wall with regards to physics. They've applied it to some objects (as in HL2) and characters, and to a few carefully-selected parts of the environment, but common rules of gameplay make it impractical to apply it to everything in the environment. Let's take a mission where you have to make your way to the top floor of an office building to retrieve, say, some secret documents. If the game applies physics to everything, you might manage to knock out a few support columns and bring down the building, leaving you to sift through the rubble, piece by piece, for the magic briefcase.

Games rely on some structure in order to "work." Extending physics too far can give the player so much freedom that he/she can effectively destroy the game. Granted, in Mirror's Edge, the relatively low power of the weapons means that you're unlikely to be blowing holes in walls.
 
I would be game if it wasn't liked to just Nvidia cards. I would rather it be on the cpu I guess, especially as i7 becomes more mainstream, you have 8 cores....
 
not impressed really. I would rather have the extra horsepower go to better graphics, the curtains were really all that was added (the glass was overdone, and you don't need physX to do that) If I was playing that game I would easily pick using more AA then physX.

I hate to say this as I own a GTX280 but I would have rather have had Nvidia support DX10.1 instead. better performance would have gotten farther and with both green and red supporting it developers might make better use of it.
 
Modred189 said:
I would be game if it wasn't liked to just Nvidia cards. I would rather it be on the cpu I guess, especially as i7 becomes more mainstream, you have 8 cores....
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You currently have 4 physical cores and 4 HyperThreading cores.
 
So I guess in terms of Physx, fancy cloth and broken glass effects are like what flaming barrels in a dark room were to the first video cards that sported enhanced shader effects. I'm sure eventually dev's will become more creative with the tech.
 
mjz_5 said:
game devs shouldnt' use this.. what are all the prople with Ati cards going to do??? Microsoft should intergrated this and make it standard, so everybody can enjoy the game... what now.. i have to swap out my video card depending on what software i am using.... .. no wonder every one likes consoles
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If GPU-accelerated physics becomes widespread enough, some kind of standard will be established. Remember in the beginning of 3D acceleration there were proprietary APIs and techniques like Glide, quadratic texture mapping etc. but eventually we got Direct3D and OpenGL. Same thing is going to happen with PhysX even if it doesn't become part of DirectX itself. There's nothing preventing ATI cards from doing PhysX other than drivers/software. Plus, they're already working on stream computing.
 
I think it's a good step. Yeah, the physics aren't ground-breaking or anything, but they're an extra option and it wouldn't make sense for them to. What matters here is all the little detail elements that are added to the world because of the PhysX engine that make it much more immesive. The tapestries, the better glass and curtains in the windows, the papers blowing around when the chopper rises up over the roof -- all these things don't matter to gameplay, but they add a significant immersion factor to the game. It's the same as Creative's EAX technology; you get no gameplay benefits from more realistic sound other than immersion; who cares that being in a wood shack sounds like being in a wood shack gameplay-wise?

Realistically, this is the only way Physics will be used in mainstream games. There's simply too many uncontrollable factors associated with giving players full physics freedom, and traditional game design goes out the window. Carefully-constructed levels mean nothing if a player can tunnel through them.

Even Red Faction had limits, set peices of wall that couldn't be destroyed. You could tunnel up to a certain depth, at which point you hit a flat, hard boundary. Players have to be given some sort of direction.
 
mjz_5 said:
game devs shouldnt' use this.. what are all the prople with Ati cards going to do??? Microsoft should intergrated this and make it standard, so everybody can enjoy the game... what now.. i have to swap out my video card depending on what software i am using.... .. no wonder every one likes consoles
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No, you'll just be forced to use only your CPU. Should be a lot slower, but you can do it.
 
mjz_5 said:
game devs shouldnt' use this.. what are all the prople with Ati cards going to do??? Microsoft should intergrated this and make it standard, so everybody can enjoy the game... what now.. i have to swap out my video card depending on what software i am using.... .. no wonder every one likes consoles
Click to expand...

ATI was offered PhysX support by Nvidia themselves and turned it down. Don't blame Nvidia. A simple solution is to pony up $100 and buy a PhysX card, or buy one used.
 
JimmiG said:
If GPU-accelerated physics becomes widespread enough, some kind of standard will be established. Remember in the beginning of 3D acceleration there were proprietary APIs and techniques like Glide, quadratic texture mapping etc. but eventually we got Direct3D and OpenGL. Same thing is going to happen with PhysX even if it doesn't become part of DirectX itself. There's nothing preventing ATI cards from doing PhysX other than drivers/software. Plus, they're already working on stream computing.
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ATI's Stream Computing has absolutely nothing to do with a Physics API. And since Havok is owned by Intel, I doubt they'll let AMD use it to run on their GPUs.
 
Exavior said:
I disagree. Physics is part of your middleware / game engine. DX isn't a game engine, and don't need to be..
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A standard has to be set somewhere, especially if there's a hardware component. It's not really much different to using D3D to unify graphics programming across video cards from different vendors as far as I can see.

KaiserWarrior said:
There's simply too many uncontrollable factors associated with giving players full physics freedom, and traditional game design goes out the window. Carefully-constructed levels mean nothing if a player can tunnel through them.
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And while you can turn down graphical effects and still have a playable game, it's not as straightforward to design physically-driven game elements that will a significant influence on the gameplay but at the same time be scalable for people with different hardware.

There's a lots of scope for using physical accleration for explosions, smoke, fluids etc, but I don't see it being used in core game mechanics outside of niche games like Cell Factor any time soon.
 
What you guys are seeing are effects based physics and not gameplay physics. We wrote a good article about this a long while ago. Now, IMO, effects based physics are the first natural progression, an evolution in physics, not a revolution. Gotta crawl before you can walk. Unfortunately, we've been in the crawling phase for almost 3 years now. I too want to see gameplay based physics become a reality. DX11 will try to make some headway on a standard for all of this I think.
 
Silus said:
ATI's Stream Computing has absolutely nothing to do with a Physics API. And since Havok is owned by Intel, I doubt they'll let AMD use it to run on their GPUs.
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actually they have agreed to work together on this.
 
Simmonz said:
ATI was offered PhysX support by Nvidia themselves and turned it down. Don't blame Nvidia. A simple solution is to pony up $100 and buy a PhysX card, or buy one used.
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why should they have? its a propitiatory technology by a competitor. it made more sense to go with intel and havok then to support a stillborn product by a competing company.
 
Is it me... or is that video a bit off... Seems like all the physX items (banners, cloth etc_ were missing from the "off" video.

For a proper comparison shouldn't the "off" video show the items with standard CPU physics?
 
dandirk said:
Is it me... or is that video a bit off... Seems like all the physX items (banners, cloth etc_ were missing from the "off" video.

For a proper comparison shouldn't the "off" video show the items with standard CPU physics?
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I think that was the point, those are the additions it brings to the games.
 
Well that's just stupid... Its not what those additions bring to a game, there are plenty of banners etc in games before physics. They just don't move when you shoot them.

Its like hey look at this movie comparison... one with out a screen/tv and one with a 100" HD screen. See the movie with a screen is SOOO much better!

Maybe we should have PhysX removed from Star Wars I-III, maybe Jar-Jar won't be in them.
 
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