Your Opinion on BFBC2 physics

What I mean is crysis is still the benchmark things are compared to.

Other games have used things like depth of field and god rays, hell I think the source engine was the first to use depth of field but nothing has pushed the boundaries as much as crysis or crytek I would imagine.

Someone needs to utilise gpu physics and make people want to use it.
 
personally, i love the physics. I love the building destruction! its awesome :)
 
From the horse's mouth:

AMD: We’re seen some rather ‘token’ physics implementations in some games, but large scale warfare like we've seen from DICE implies that whole buildings can be
destroyed - can a physics system really handle a situation that complex? What does
that mean for gamers?
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DICE: Agreed, physics and especially. "destruction" have been popular buzzwords lately. At DICE and with Frostbite we have taken a bit different approach than most I think. We do not care about how realistically individual pieces are simulated or how many rigid bodies or physics particles you have. Instead we try to focus on the big picture and create large destructible environments that are consistent and can truly affect the way people play our games on all platforms to experience a dynamic and chaotic ‘battlefield’.
For example, if a sniper is hiding in a building – blow up the building and the sniper with it. Or if you are in a tank and your path is stopped by trees, fences or even the side of a building – just drive through it all, no need for those puny objects to stop your big tank. All of the different types of destruction work together to create opportunities for the pure fun, emergent game play experience that Battlefield is known for. And everyone likes to blow stuff up right?
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Nice interview overall.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/content/images/play/gameassets/DICE/DICE_11Days_Interview.pdf
 
Unknown-One said:
Don't try and pull that one, I've looked over the hack carefully. They achieve playable speeds by running PhysX on the CPU by running only 1/3 the number of steps.
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Actually from what I've read this is correct. But even without the hack i was getting 25-30fps in the Batman AA demo in most areas with way less than 50% CPU usage for most of it. With 100% or close to 100% usage we could easily have playable frame rates in Batman AA maybe with just 1 or 2 key effects turned off like large sheets of cloth or where a very large amount of smoke is used, but keeping everything else.

CPUs are far more capable than people give them credit for, sure they're not as fast at floating point calculations as the GPU but the GPU is for rendering graphics not calculating physics, and some of us have a lot of CPU to spare with a lot of our games since the basic logic of games isn't stressful to modern hardware.

DASHlT said:
Exactly my point.

There is no way to measure to see if the CPU can do what a GPU could do for physx
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It's gimped in every single game I've played, as with my Batman AA example a lot of them have almost nearly playable frame rates on a fast quad core (fairly old tech compared to the i7 for example) but again we never get to see what its like with 100% usage, it's just abandoned as method of running PhysX and to make things worse we can't even selectively enable different effects in any of these games so far either.

Some PROVEABLY run well, enable PhysX in the Batman AA demo and go to an area like the section where you use the gargoyles for the first time, theres no much going on there but they've enabled breakable floor tiles with physx turned on, that + your cape plus mess on the floor and other more basic physics run absolutely fine with a quad core CPU even when the usage is really shit (<50% usage)

I really dont care how you cut it, a lot of this shit was do-able on the CPU before Nvidia trapsed in with their PhysX solution and now all of a sudden we can't have it anymore because they get their fingers into the development pie and we end up with all or nothing type options for physics, it's fucking disgusting.

schenksmill said:
I don't know where you guys are getting your information, but a lot of you on both sides are very wrong.

  • PhysX is perfectly capable of running multithreaded. Game scenes can break PhysX objects into multiple groups that then get calculated using different threads which are dealt with by the OS's load balancing. There is no conspiracy here. It is up to the developers to use these capabilities properly.
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  • Both are technically capable of doing any physics the hardware doesn't matter it's all about speed, but realisitcally you have to own up to implied limitations of the platform, you won't get good performance with psudo-liquid physics on a CPU and due to the current GPU implimentation with PhysX you cannot build a game using GPU/PPU physics (which effect the gameplay) without ruling out a large number of customers.

    If Nvidia hadn't have bought out PhysX we probably wouldn't have this problem, they don't actually lock AMD out of using GPU physics, AMD selectively chose to opt out of it themselves because they know if they support it that Nvidia will end up with a monopoly on GPU physics, and I dont blame them quite frankly in the long run it hurts the gamers.

    Had PhysX remained impartial to the GPU vendors both AMD and Nvidia probably would have supported it and we'd have much more widely accepted GPU physics. Nvidias greed basically screwed it up.

    necrophile said:
    Sorry, but if a game developer wanted to, they could fool you into thinking physx or any type of physics effects was being done properly even though there was no calculations being done in the background. As all physics effects are just graphics, there is no way to tell what is "real" or "accurate" and if you think you could tell it apart from normal smoke, or normal "particle effects" then you must be gullible as hell
    Click to expand...

    Pre renderd physics work well actually, valve used them in HL2 Ep2 and with TF2 and allow for complex large number of objects to be rendered by a proper physics engines and then copied/stored as an animation. They're obviously not truly dynamic but in these games the maps are largely static anyway so the effect is good enough to cause the illusion of a more realisitic explosion, not perfect but a good approximation.

    XMAN245 said:
    I'd say if you can't tell the difference, you'd be the fool. Just as people can tell teh difference between 30, 60 and 120fps, there are those who can tell the difference between scripted, preprogrammed crap and stuff that acts realisticly.
    Click to expand...

    Scripted physics like for example the TF2 ones are "recorded" from an actual physics engine so the effect is accurate up until something dynamic in the environment trys to interact with the pieces...now if this was to happen in the background in a part of the level you cannot get to (can't interact) then no, you would not be able to tell the difference, except in frame rate loss of doing it dynamically compared to scripted.

    XMAN245 said:
    Its fricken scripted, there is no real physics going on. its all pre rendered to do exactly that after x amount of damage. How is that physics? it isn't.

    Physics would be if you destroyed one side of the building and it colasped in that direction or if you took out the corner supporting structure then then another and it fell down according to what you did. Hell, call and air raid on the building and I'll bet it still falls in on itself instead of blowing up and out like it should with whatever is left falling.
    Click to expand...

    It's an approximation, exact physics is not required to make the game fun. As the quoted DICE developers interview says, they've focused on doing things that effect the battlefield and it works, it's not just a cheap effect or novelty it actually matter to gameplay and tactics, I know, I've played the beta for a large number of hours.

    Who cares that a wall crumbles realistically, what matters is the tank thats just trundled through your cover and now you're face to face with a tank and you need new cover...this is important to gameplay, and it's something most modern PCs can play, rather than needing all this extra gumph.
 
litte bit of physics talk from a developer interview http://www.gamephys.com/2010/02/19/...-technical-background-qa-talks-about-physics/

PCGH: Frostbite Engine uses Havok physic engine. Why do you decide to work with a middleware solution? Does Frostbite support an advanced destruction system [yeah, we know it do so ;-) “Destruction 2.0”] like terra forming or other physic that influences gameplay? What is your personal opinion about GPU-accelerated PhysX or physics in general?

Anders Gyllenberg: Havok is a good base for us and we have built many layers of our own on top of it to support destruction and our large-scale multiplayer worlds. One interesting feature and quite unique feature is the destructible terrain – it actually affects gameplay and allows the player to take cover in the craters created. We are currently performing all our physics computations on the CPU cores in parallel. CPU/GPU hybrid solutions are an interesting future prospect.
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DASHlT said:
Since BFBC2 uses havok. To me this shows us that you dont need Nvidia physx.

So my question is, IF you played BFBC2 do you now think its still a marketing gimmick using Nvidia Physx?

And please keep this on topic and no swearing (shuttleluv).
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BC2 uses preprogrammed prescripted rail based nausium induced physics. no matter what you do, the effects you see are exactly the same, there is no varience what so ever. very boring and very unoriginal. PhysX on the hand is an attempt to make things in games behave just as they would if it was real. IE non-scripted preprogrammed rail based crap.
 
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XMAN245 said:
As i have said in the other thread you started, BC2 uses preprogrammed prescripted rail based nausium induced physics. no matter what you do, the effects you see are exactly the same, there is no varience what so ever. very boring and very unoriginal. PhysX on the hand is an attempt to make things in games behave just as they would if it was real. IE non-scripted preprogrammed rail based crap.
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Now if only PhysX changed gameplay... Oh wait, nvidia only pays game devs to tack on PhysX effects as an afterthought so they just add a shit load of fog, flags, and just shit flying everywhere like a million tornados just had sex with a land fill. YAWN
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Actually from what I've read this is correct. But even without the hack i was getting 25-30fps in the Batman AA demo in most areas with way less than 50% CPU usage for most of it. With 100% or close to 100% usage we could easily have playable frame rates in Batman AA maybe with just 1 or 2 key effects turned off like large sheets of cloth or where a very large amount of smoke is used, but keeping everything else.

CPUs are far more capable than people give them credit for, sure they're not as fast at floating point calculations as the GPU but the GPU is for rendering graphics not calculating physics, and some of us have a lot of CPU to spare with a lot of our games since the basic logic of games isn't stressful to modern hardware.



It's gimped in every single game I've played, as with my Batman AA example a lot of them have almost nearly playable frame rates on a fast quad core (fairly old tech compared to the i7 for example) but again we never get to see what its like with 100% usage, it's just abandoned as method of running PhysX and to make things worse we can't even selectively enable different effects in any of these games so far either.

Some PROVEABLY run well, enable PhysX in the Batman AA demo and go to an area like the section where you use the gargoyles for the first time, theres no much going on there but they've enabled breakable floor tiles with physx turned on, that + your cape plus mess on the floor and other more basic physics run absolutely fine with a quad core CPU even when the usage is really shit (<50% usage)

I really dont care how you cut it, a lot of this shit was do-able on the CPU before Nvidia trapsed in with their PhysX solution and now all of a sudden we can't have it anymore because they get their fingers into the development pie and we end up with all or nothing type options for physics, it's fucking disgusting.



Both are technically capable of doing any physics the hardware doesn't matter it's all about speed, but realisitcally you have to own up to implied limitations of the platform, you won't get good performance with psudo-liquid physics on a CPU and due to the current GPU implimentation with PhysX you cannot build a game using GPU/PPU physics (which effect the gameplay) without ruling out a large number of customers.

If Nvidia hadn't have bought out PhysX we probably wouldn't have this problem, they don't actually lock AMD out of using GPU physics, AMD selectively chose to opt out of it themselves because they know if they support it that Nvidia will end up with a monopoly on GPU physics, and I dont blame them quite frankly in the long run it hurts the gamers.

Had PhysX remained impartial to the GPU vendors both AMD and Nvidia probably would have supported it and we'd have much more widely accepted GPU physics. Nvidias greed basically screwed it up.



Pre renderd physics work well actually, valve used them in HL2 Ep2 and with TF2 and allow for complex large number of objects to be rendered by a proper physics engines and then copied/stored as an animation. They're obviously not truly dynamic but in these games the maps are largely static anyway so the effect is good enough to cause the illusion of a more realisitic explosion, not perfect but a good approximation.



Scripted physics like for example the TF2 ones are "recorded" from an actual physics engine so the effect is accurate up until something dynamic in the environment trys to interact with the pieces...now if this was to happen in the background in a part of the level you cannot get to (can't interact) then no, you would not be able to tell the difference, except in frame rate loss of doing it dynamically compared to scripted.



It's an approximation, exact physics is not required to make the game fun. As the quoted DICE developers interview says, they've focused on doing things that effect the battlefield and it works, it's not just a cheap effect or novelty it actually matter to gameplay and tactics, I know, I've played the beta for a large number of hours.

Who cares that a wall crumbles realistically, what matters is the tank thats just trundled through your cover and now you're face to face with a tank and you need new cover...this is important to gameplay, and it's something most modern PCs can play, rather than needing all this extra gumph.
Click to expand...

If your going to do something, dont half ass it. either do it right or dont do it at all. preprogrammed, prescripted rail based crap is exactly what it looks like to me. This thread is about physics and the use there of in the game BFBC2. Not whether or not the game is fuin to play. The game is fun I will not deny that, but the physics is crap.
 
XMAN245 said:
If your going to do something, dont half ass it. either do it right or dont do it at all. preprogrammed, prescripted rail based crap is exactly what it looks like to me. This thread is about physics and the use there of in the game BFBC2. Not whether or not the game is fuin to play. The game is fun I will not deny that, but the physics is crap.
Click to expand...

You can have the most bad ass physics in the game but it doesn't matter if you can only get it put in B rated titles.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
Now if only PhysX changed gameplay... Oh wait, nvidia only pays game devs to tack on PhysX effects as an afterthought so they just add a shit load of fog, flags, and just shit flying everywhere like a million tornados just had sex with a land fill. YAWN
Click to expand...

you really need to stop talking. Nvidia doesn't pay devs to add physx as an afterthought. Several games had physx built into the engine from the start. Cryostasis, B:AA. GRAW2 had it added afterward thru a patch and it worked quite well and made the game feel more real.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
You can have the most bad ass physics in the game but it doesn't matter if you can only get it put in B rated titles.
Click to expand...

I'd rather play a B rated game with kick ass physics than an A game with crap, preprogrammed, scripted rail based crap. Which is propably why i dont play BFBC2 more than a few hours a month.
 
XMAN245 said:
I'd rather play a B rated game with kick ass physics than an A game with crap, preprogrammed, scripted rail based crap. Which is propably why i dont play BFBC2 more than a few hours a month.
Click to expand...

If I had a nickel for every time you used the words scripted, railed-based, crap, and nauseating...
 
XMAN245 said:
If your going to do something, dont half ass it. either do it right or dont do it at all. preprogrammed, prescripted rail based crap is exactly what it looks like to me. This thread is about physics and the use there of in the game BFBC2. Not whether or not the game is fuin to play. The game is fun I will not deny that, but the physics is crap.
Click to expand...

When there is an explosion in a game, I expect to see some destructions. I won't accept the destruction can only happen when a specific brand of hardware is used. I don't stare at every piece of debris to see how they interact with the environment.
XMAN245 said:
I'd rather play a B rated game with kick ass physics than an A game with crap, preprogrammed, scripted rail based crap. Which is propably why i dont play BFBC2 more than a few hours a month.
Click to expand...
When I buy a game, I buy it because of the gameplay. If I only want to see "realistic physics", I can just download a free PhysX demo and stare at the effects all night long.
 
alg7_munif said:
When there is an explosion in a game, I expect to see some destructions. I won't accept the destruction can only happen when a specific brand of hardware is used. I don't stare at every piece of debris to see how they interact with the environment.
When I buy a game, I buy it because of the gameplay. If I only want to see "realistic physics", I can just download a free PhysX demo and stare at the effects all night long.
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Exactly. I'm not playing a game and double-checking every explosion and its orientation to validate my fun factor. I think this "but PhysX is dynamic!" argument comes from people who haven't taken a single physics class in their lives (or at least I hope so). The physical world is very predictable, and "scripted" events work damn well emulating this. I guarantee you if you did a double blind test, most PhysX proponents couldn't tell a difference from the same effect well-scripted.
 
Mr. K6 said:
Exactly. I'm not playing a game and double-checking every explosion and its orientation to validate my fun factor. I think this "but PhysX is dynamic!" argument comes from people who haven't taken a single physics class in their lives (or at least I hope so). The physical world is very predictable, and "scripted" events work damn well emulating this. I guarantee you if you did a double blind test, most PhysX proponents couldn't tell a difference from the same effect well-scripted.
Click to expand...
No. you just seem to be conflating "not-PhysX" with "scripted events."

Other physics engines exist other than PhysX, just because something doesn't use PhysX doesn't mean the effects you are seeing are due to simple animations.
 
XMAN245 said:
I'd rather play a B rated game with kick ass physics than an A game with crap, preprogrammed, scripted rail based crap. Which is propably why i dont play BFBC2 more than a few hours a month.
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You remind me of that kid who records the plastic bag floating around in American Beauty.
 
mope54 said:
No. you just seem to be conflating "not-PhysX" with "scripted events."

Other physics engines exist other than PhysX, just because something doesn't use PhysX doesn't mean the effects you are seeing are due to simple animations.
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Its scripting either way.

think about it, you are paying Extra for a Physx card so you can see pretty gameplay that they add in specifically for that card?...You cannot tell me that isnt script since it only ges showed when a Nvidia physx card is installed?
 
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SixtyWattMan said:
Now if only PhysX changed gameplay... Oh wait, nvidia only pays game devs to tack on PhysX effects as an afterthought so they just add a shit load of fog, flags, and just shit flying everywhere like a million tornados just had sex with a land fill. YAWN
Click to expand...

Just, lol.

XMAN245 said:
If your going to do something, dont half ass it. either do it right or dont do it at all. preprogrammed, prescripted rail based crap is exactly what it looks like to me. This thread is about physics and the use there of in the game BFBC2. Not whether or not the game is fuin to play. The game is fun I will not deny that, but the physics is crap.
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I had this long rant planned but you know what, you're right. I absolutely cannot argue with you, if you've bought BC2 for an accurate simulation of physics you've absolutely bought the wrong game.

What you have to understand however is that most people buy games because they're fun, and a large part of the fun factor in BC2 is the dynamic environments which actually effect the gameplay, in this case specifically the fun is very much tied to the physics so can't really talk about one and dismiss the other.

The below quote I think is how a lot of us feel.

alg7_munif said:
When I buy a game, I buy it because of the gameplay. If I only want to see "realistic physics", I can just download a free PhysX demo and stare at the effects all night long.
Click to expand...

I also happen to think this is bang on the money as well.

Mr. K6 said:
The physical world is very predictable, and "scripted" events work damn well emulating this. I guarantee you if you did a double blind test, most PhysX proponents couldn't tell a difference from the same effect well-scripted.
Click to expand...
 
XMAN245 said:
If your going to do something, dont half ass it. either do it right or dont do it at all. preprogrammed, prescripted rail based crap is exactly what it looks like to me. This thread is about physics and the use there of in the game BFBC2. Not whether or not the game is fuin to play. The game is fun I will not deny that, but the physics is crap.
Click to expand...

And how do you make sure that all 32 players are seeing/experiencing the same top end accelerated physics and changing environment in a fast paced online game with clients all out of sync with each other by up to hundreds of milliseconds? What does the physics calculations? The clients? The server? How much information is shared between the two, relating to the status of the environment? How do you design one game that does all that across multiple platforms?

It's either eye candy and irrelevant to gameplay, or game changing and must be scripted to ensure all players are affected the same way and the environment is identical for everyone. BFBC2 has both. Scripted environmental destruction that can easily be send from the server to every client so that everyone sees the same environment, with some Havok eye candy when things go boom, that runs on PC, PS3 and 360.
 
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