? about Unreal 3 and CryENGINE 2 games

Deviationer

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I know not much solid info is available for UT2007 and Crysis but...

Do you think either one of these games will require that PhysX card to be able to play the game with the physics on?
 
Deviationer said:
...will either one of these games will require...

No, they won't require a PPU. It's too soon for requiring it as no one even has it yet.
 
roninblade said:
um can someone give me the 411 on wat PhysX is, thanks

It's a Physics Processor chip made by ageia.
Think what the Graphics processor did for graphics, ageia wants the Physics processor to do for physics.


I'm pretty sure Unreal 3 supports the PPU, but some one have to be absolutely insane to require a PPU to run their game right now. There's not even a card out yet, they have 0% of the market is availible for the PPU. These games will be out in a few (less than 6 I image for sure) months, you'd have to be pretty stupid to release a game nobody could play.
Eventualy, if the PPU is successful, we'll see games written with a PPU in mind. We'll have sort of the OGL/D3D vs Software options we had in graphics engines back before 3D accelerators were standard issue, high detail physics for people with PPUs, scalled down physics for the riff raff.
 
I'm fairly sure the cards have been pretty much ready since November (or at least was on target for a November launch). Ageia is just waiting on some more games before they release it... AFAIK, Bet on Soldier is about the only game which supports it...

BTW, there's a really good PhysX news/info site here .

EDIT: Looks like BFG will be shipping their PhysX board some time within the next month.
 
TekSomniaK said:
Probably not, but if you have the physx card I would expect a HEFTY fps boost


I imagine it will be more of a matter of allowing you to select a higher level of physics, rather than it being a major matter of FPS. Remember we are living in a dual-core world and that's one of the easiest ways to improve performance, by splitting off physics to its own thread.
 
UT2007 uses the AGEIA PhysX SDK but does not require the PhysX hardware to run.

As far as I know (and all the signs point to it), Crysis does not use AGEIA but Crytek's own physics engine built into their CryENGINE that is multithreaded and supports multi-core CPUs. Far Cry also used Crytek's own physics engine.
 
All games based on the Unreal 3 engine support AGEIA physX acceleration. I'm pretty sure CryTek hasn't jumped aboard that train yet.
 
In any case, I think it'll be a long time before we see games which actually utilise PPUs rather than just supporting them. It'll just be too hard to justify the added development cost when so few people will get anything out of it.

I really hope it takes off though... I've wanted to see real-time fluid simulations for ages, and it'll be years before a CPU can pull it off...
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
In any case, I think it'll be a long time before we see games which actually utilise PPUs rather than just supporting them. It'll just be too hard to justify the added development cost when so few people will get anything out of it.

either you aren't saying what you think you are saying, or you really don't get it.

If it supports it, it will utilize it. It's jsut a question of having your code do the math when some option is set to one value, or having the PPU's libraries do the math if it is set to another value.

Mostly games are just going to do more of what the software based physics simulation do when a PPU is installed. However, it would shock me if a game supported it without throwing in a few bits of eye-candy that are PPU specific for the PPU crowd simply because it will make good magazine fodder and box art.

Think stuff along the lines of something far-cry like sporting a so-so waterfall for the non-PPU folks and a full on fluid simulation waterfall for PPU people. A minimum number of man hours to include, and a bunch of pretty screenshots plastere din mags, on product boxes, argued and bitched over on the internet, people trying to hack it being enabled into software mode to see what kind of FPS they get, etc...

Sounds worth the extra few days of developer time especially if it doesn't affect gameplay and play testing.
 
the game will probably require it to enable volumetrics, or real time interactable objects

i believe i remember hearing sweney say they'll add support for the PhysX card after the product has been released, putting off the development for the game until the product is in our hands
 
@raz-0: I know it'll still be used to carry out the calculations which are, at the moment, done in software. But it'll be a while before we see most of the things which are impossible on today's hardware.

You're right, fluid simulation is a distinct possibility earlier on, and other physically simulated particle effects on a massive scale are quite likely as well, as they're primarily a coding problem and require relatively little in the way of art assets. But some of the claims of the PPU's capabilities, and a lot of the things in the tech demos, are not going to be realised for a while. If you want to have 30,000 chunks of debris flying around, they've got to come from somewhere... Obviously you don't want 30,000 copies of the same thing, so either you need to create and texture dozens of different debris models for each distinct material, or cut every destructible object in the game into thousands of pieces. Either way it's going to take a lot of work ( = a lot of money), and will probably be deemed "not worth it" if only 0.5% of people are ever going to see it.
 
Devnull said:
I imagine it will be more of a matter of allowing you to select a higher level of physics, rather than it being a major matter of FPS. Remember we are living in a dual-core world and that's one of the easiest ways to improve performance, by splitting off physics to its own thread.

Well why wouldn't it boost FPS? Taking ALL the physics and putting it on the PPU wouldn't boost fps? Say HL2 had support for a PPU, that would be amazing. In Garry's Mod you could probably spawn hundreds and hundreds of props and still maintain good fps. I guess time will tell.
 
Anybody notice that BFG's site now says "Spring" for the launch of the PPU. It was saying March.

All I know is that if it doesn't come in pci-e, I don't have a slot for it.
 
anyone know when the first Unreal 3 engine games are due for release?...is UT2007 going to be the first Unreal 3 game released?...I thought games with this engine were due out in early 2006?

what about CryEngine2?...any games mentioned that will be using this?...Far Cry 2?
 
is UT2007 going to be the first Unreal 3 game released?

most likely we'll see Unreal 3 first then UT, release date was end of 2006/early 2007

the crytek2 engine will probably be released on a different game other then Far Cry2, i think crytek sold the rights off to farcry, unsure about this
 
I believe the name of the game will be Crysis, AFAIK. It looks to be very pretty.
 
polonyc2 said:
anyone know when the first Unreal 3 engine games are due for release?...is UT2007 going to be the first Unreal 3 game released?...I thought games with this engine were due out in early 2006?

what about CryEngine2?...any games mentioned that will be using this?...Far Cry 2?


i believe i read that Gears of War on the xbox360 will be the first UE3 release... followed shortly by UT2k7
 
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