NVIDIA Gameworks FLOW DX12 Demo

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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I think one thing that all gamers can agree on is that while fire and smoke effects have come a long ways in the last two decades, those still have a long way to go. NVIDIA has been addressing this in it GameWorks catalog for developers for a good while now. GameWorks FLOW has been in beta for about a year now, and yesterday NVIDIA pushed out a video of a demo of FLOW in action using DX12. No matter what you think of GameWorks, this video is worth a look.

NVIDIA Flow is GameWorks' latest offering for combustible fluid, fire and smoke simulation, following in the footsteps of NVIDIA Turbulence and FlameWorks. The Flow library provides DX11 and DX12 implementations, and will run on any recent DX11 or DX12-capable GPU. The fluid simulation in NVIDIA Flow is modeled on an adaptive sparse voxel grid for maximum flexibility with the least memory impact, and is optimized for use of Volume Tiled Resources when available. NVIDIA Flow-1.0 is available today via Github repository through the NVIDIA Registered Developers Program.
 
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That is pretty incredible. And it's totally unsurprising that effects like these take high horsepower. They're so complicated that it's taken 25+ years of 3D modeling to get to this point of realism.

But even then, I'm pretty 'meh' on the thing. Wake me when they have holodecks.
 
PhysX is the coolest thing I seen in Borderlands 2 I like when games add so much movement in the environment like with the Witcher 3 Speed Trees flaying about.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Fix'd it for you.
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If your frame rate sucked before turning on the new "feature" then that's a different issue.

Unless you're jumping on the edgy-teen bandwagon and saying (without evidence) that all GameWorks titles have crappy frame rates.
 
BrotherMichigan said:
My point is that Fluid3D is... six years old now? I'm just a little underwhelmed to be honest.
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By the fact that most game developers don't bother with stuff like game engines and just work with what ever pre-packaged thing they can get to do most of the work for them? Far from the old days where you just had a guy who could do it all in assembly.
 
Looks pretty rad, actually. Granted that the smoke seems like it disappears a little too quickly and looks a little off, but other than that the effect is pretty cool.
 
Semantics said:
By the fact that most game developers don't bother with stuff like game engines and just work with what ever pre-packaged thing they can get to do most of the work for them? Far from the old days where you just had a guy who could do it all in assembly.
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Just because you use a licensed game engine doesn't mean you can't add features to it if you want to. And there is no other way to do things these days. Game engines have become so complicated and huge, that you need dozens of games at least to be developed on an engine to make the investment worth it.
 
Isn't this the one that they were showcasing before the release of the 1080ti? This one was actually pretty impressive. I've not been a fan of Gameworks because of the past lock-down tactics and poor performance but this demo looked surprisingly good.
 
Those smoke effects are absolutely terrible, just vanishes? This would be a lot better if they were showing some crazy fog effects in a horror game or at leas ta build up of smoke rather than magic vanishing smoke, before you correct me on this imagine a house fire demo using the above.
 
M76 said:
Just because you use a licensed game engine doesn't mean you can't add features to it if you want to. And there is no other way to do things these days. Game engines have become so complicated and huge, that you need dozens of games at least to be developed on an engine to make the investment worth it.
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Doesn't stop Blizzard or CD Projekt Red or id. Gameworks shows that most developers don't want to touch game engines all that much. Yes game engines are an expensive investment, which is why most large publishers have their own sets of proprietary engines that subsidiaries can use.
 
M76 said:
The point is that the technology to do it was available for years. Just nobody bothered to actually implement it in games.
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The point is that NVIDIA packages these effects libraries so those are EASIER for game devs to implement. Hence the entire reason behind GameWorks. NVIDIA did not claim to invent anything, just the fact that they allow "easy access."
 
Semantics said:
Doesn't stop Blizzard or CD Projekt Red or id. Gameworks shows that most developers don't want to touch game engines all that much. Yes game engines are an expensive investment, which is why most large publishers have their own sets of proprietary engines that subsidiaries can use.
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I didn't know CD Projekt used their own engine. There are always exceptions. That doesn't make the rule invalid.
Blizzard might as well not exist as far as I'm concerned. MMOs and MOBA titles with cartoony graphics is not my idea of what modern gaming should offer.
 
I didn't care for the dissipation at the end when the gas turned off, otherwise, I'm all about bells and whistles. Direct x 12 was supposed to be the revolutionary freedom for particles and other post process, effects driven eye candy. Essentially we were told that there would be universal headroom for these types of additions at virtually no additional footprint. Unfortunately, until now there simply hasn't been an overwhelming addition anything close to what was expected. A lot of it is the lack of 100% commitment to DX12, and the splintered development pipelines between consoles and low end pc graphics power. I'd really like to see more of these types of features easier to implement and less resource heavy in the future. Building an immersive atmosphere for a game is often times enough for me to sign on the dotted line.
 
Ahhh, another lock in tech from nvidia.

If anything, they are persistent with their monopoly dreams.
 
Actually in a way it reminds me of the 3D explosions from Quake2.
 
DooKey said:
The fanboys are never going to agree with you. I don't know why you keep trying. The energy people put into defending and attacking the two video card companies is amusing.
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I could care less for any corporation and didnt mention anybody else, yet, real fanbois will come out to defend their beloved corporations and ignore facts.
 
grtitan said:
Funny that you are always defending them and ignoring the fact, as already mentioned, that nvidia only does this type of thing to lock games and by consequence, customers to their hardware.
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QUICK! EVERYONE MAKE THE SAME EXACT HARDWARE!!!!! Lol, you're a silly moose.
Good thing you're not a businessman. Money would have flown by you, and you'd then be without a business.
 
alxlwson said:
QUICK! EVERYONE MAKE THE SAME EXACT HARDWARE!!!!! Lol, you're a silly moose.
Good thing you're not a businessman. Money would have flown by you, and you'd then be without a business.
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And did i said that it was a bad business move?

All I said that they are doing this to lock customers to their hardware, is up to you to either decide that is ok for you or not.

I hate being locked into anything and try to avoid it, simple as that, but fanbois dont see that.
 
grtitan said:
And did i said that it was a bad business move?

All I said that they are doing this to lock customers to their hardware, is up to you to either decide that is ok for you or not.

I hate being locked into anything and try to avoid it, simple as that, but fanbois dont see that.
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I think fanboys are the ones that do the most finger pointing and bitching about it. It's pretty evident.
 
Holy shitballs that looks amazing, especially considering it's still in beta stages.

Just imagine: in 5-7 years, this will look archaic in comparison to cutting edge graphics effects tech we'll experience then. Much like how we ooh'd and aah'd over the perceived realistic graphics of games series such as Unreal, Far Cry, Crysis, Quake, Doom, Half Life, Duke Nukem 3D, F.E.A.R., X-Wing/TIE Fighter, Max Payne, Jedi Knight, [insert other past gaming franchises here]...but look at them now compared to more recent titles. :)
 
grtitan said:
As your first comment shows.
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First nVidia card I've ever owned, bro. I buy what performs. I don't care by what methods are used. I buy for the best experience at whatever budget I have at the time.

Don't cry because your system can't run extra pretties.
 
grtitan said:
Funny that you are always defending them and ignoring the fact, as already mentioned, that nvidia only does this type of thing to lock games and by consequence, customers to their hardware.
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Wow. Got some sand up there somewhere?

You are fully ignoring what I typed. Game developers are the ones using these effects in their games and can very well make the decision not to use NVIDIA-exclusive technology in those games. That said, your beef is with NVDIA spending millions on game effects that only its cards can run?

I wish it was all unicorns and rainbows too, but you to realize this is a business, not a let's help our competitors use our technology.
 
grtitan said:
Funny that you are always defending them and ignoring the fact, as already mentioned, that nvidia only does this type of thing to lock games and by consequence, customers to their hardware.
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"Lock" games.. You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
 
grtitan said:
As i stated before, as a business decision, yes, it works for them, but not for me, the customer, as i was "forced" to buy a nvidia card if i wanted all the bells and whistles in the games that i was very interested in playing and if i ever buy a gpu from another company, i will lose that, hence why i hate things like this.

And developers are not stupid, they get additional help and money from nvidia, so thats why many of them end up using gameworks.
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1st world problems right there buddy. I want to see the cape move cool in batman! WAAAAA! NVIDIA IS FORCING ME TO BUY ITS PRODUCT!! Sounds like you need a new hobby given how much hate it is causing your over a video game.
 
Bandalo said:
So you're saying a new, cutting-edge technology requires more graphics horsepower to keep the same framerates?
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Actually, no that's not the point.

Before any of yall start calling me up on my next point, know that I'm a 3D and effects artist for videogames.

We've had really awesome smoke, liquid and voxel effects renderable in-game for decades. The issue is that the developers have never quite managed to make them render fast enough to be worth it. Look at Hairworks in the Witcher: nobody uses it because the added detail just isn't worh the performance hit: even really high-end cards dripped below 60FPS with the feature enabled, and there wasn't much point to take the hit when the static hair detail was "good enough". Yeah, hairworks looks great, unarguably better than static, but it isn't rendered fast enough to be considered "revolutionary ".

Take SSAO and other 2.5D Ambient occlusion techniques: rendering realtime AO was considered a pipe-dream in 2006 because the only known way to do it well was to render it the old-fashioned way with raytracing and CPU-intensive opperations. Then one day Crytek figures out a really simple way to do all the calculations with only 2D data, and entirely in the GPU using post-processing, and the resultant effect runs quick enough to be rendered on mid-range GPUs of the day with decent performance. Now literally every gaming engine available has a decendant of Crytek's SSAO built into their post-process chain and the effect is considered a REQUIREMENT for decent, modern visuals; you wont find a modern gamer who turns off AO unless their system is woefully underpowered. Even then, Epic was able to get a derivative of the effect running on a godamn Xbox 360!



The same thing is happenning with screen-space reflections: now nearly every engine has seemingly impossible realtime, pixel-perfect reflections because someone figured out how to render them quickly.

Gameworks has not revolutionized the industry in any way because the effects are not "holy crap" quick, nor do they make these effects or details revolutionarilly easy to render. They are all brute-force software opperations done on CUDA so they can run at 60FPS on the highest-end cards when nothing else is on-screen. That is not industry-changing: Nvidia has been showing off their cards doing crap like that since the GTX 480.


That's why it matters a lot when people say that the effects are not worth the performance hit.
 
KazeoHin said:
You may have missed the point: if gameworks effects were truly amazing, like the effects I mentioned earlier, they would be an integral part of every game engine available... like the techniques I mentioned earlier. Developers would be chomping at the bit to integrate them in order to be competitive and attractive.

As i said before, gameworks effects are really just the same-old brute-force software effects used in 1980s movie SFX. they arent figuring out anything new.
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OK. Then don't put those in games and all the butthurt about people being "forced" to buy NVIDIA cards will go away. But I think you are missing my point, this is on the devs, not NVDIA. They are responsible for what they put in games. And yes I fully understand your opinion of NVIDIA GameWorks.
 
grtitan said:
Hmm, the only one that I see altered and bothered is you.

But I guess that expressing my opinion about your favorite company ruffled some of your .feathers
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Sorry for forcing you to read my opinion. I just get tired on the incessant whining by people that do not expect to be challenged on those.
 
Consider this: where would the state of non-Gameworks engine effects be if nVidia didn't ever invent Gameworks effects to motivate competition?

Much in the same manner as AMD inventing Mantle to spark DX12 and Vulkan?

Thank you, nVidia and AMD.
 
KazeoHin said:
Actually, no that's not the point.



That's why it matters a lot when people say that the effects are not worth the performance hit.
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I totally get it. My original point was more about people complaining about things like Hairworks than anything the devs or Nvidia is doing "wrong". Computer graphics are REALLY good these days. Improvements of any kind are going to take tons of horsepower. When you're already rendering individual blades of grass with dew drops, how are you going to improve it? Start rendering aphids and ants in the grass too? Make the grass grow too? All this stuff takes TONS of GPU power and dev time, and yet it really doesn't add a bit to "immersion" in the game.

Hairworks on = Witcher 3 is a great game. Hairworks off = Witcher 3 is a great game, and unless you do a side-by-side compare, you'd probably never notice. If you DO compare, you can say that yep, the hair looks better. It's just not worth it unless you have the extra GPU cycles laying around.

But my original point is DON'T hammer Nvidia or the devs for that..it's just a fact of life.
 
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