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Ageia PhysX & You

PhyberOptic said:
This lot reminds me of back when the original nVidia GeForce was released, and it was criticised by many because it was often unable to deliver better framerates than the voodoo 5's, the Kyro II and the TNT2 ultra, in many games.
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Very true - if framerates were everything we'd still be using Gourad shaded polys.

It's time to step past the framerate issue - as Kyle pointed out - and see this as a leap forward in the way games play.

Kyle wasn't impressed by CF very much, but I've been playing it obsessively and it plays much more subtley than you'd think from the big explosions:

I've used psi powers to grab some cover, deflect thrown boxes and objects, shot a thrown plutonium canister to drag a bot off the edge of a level using pipes - it really is as brass or as subtle as you play it.

Graw is a bit more so-so - but after playing both hw and non hw a lot there are other differences, for example the dust kicked up by bullets actually collapses and sticks to the ground as if it has weight, and can be disturbed by further shots - look for it closely. There are some other effects in large explosions too - like the way tanks decompose which just feels better. Both of which were outshadowed by the tacky black blocks.

There's a lot more to look forward to here than most people give credit for, and that it's not as brash as many imagined it would be is half the reason for that. :(
 
One thing about this situation that gives me pause is the real vs. theoretical bandwidth issue. The official Ageia story for the slowdown in GRAW with PhysX is all the new data that the GPU has to display, but the Havok guys dispute that contention rather convincingly. Isn't it more likely, as has been speculated in these very forums, that latencies inherent in getting the data to and from the PhysX card to the GPU and CPU are creating massive bottlenecks?
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I'd suggest the slowdown is largely based on the GPU having to render more things, the PPU doesn't render the effects it simply calculates positional data to pass back to the GPU. It takes extra rendering power to display the results, just like it takes extra rendering power if you turn up the amount of light sources in the game or any other graphical effect.

Something I think everyone wasn't really expecting and I think it will be frowned upon for a while, but eventually people will realise that you can't display all these new cool effects without some additional slowdown. Hopefuly developers will try and take this into account when building games, and gamers take it into account when deciding the graphics settings for PPU enabled games.
 
I'm not sure if this was mentioned but you can run the Cellfactor demo without a PPU. Read here. I posted pics, post #7.
 
I think there are a few misconceptions about Cellfactor, what it is, and what it will be.

Take some quotes from the CellFactor developers:

In mid-January 2006, we decided to develop a PhysX-oriented multiplayer FPS with Ageia, and worked out some interesting mechanics to allow players to use physical objects simultaneously with their gunplay.
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The entire development cycle for the CellFactor: Combat Training demo took 2 months, from mid-January to mid-March.
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CellFactor currently runs on Reality Engine, which is a middleware technology we developed over the past couple years, and was then bought by Epic Games in 2005.
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Actually, if a greater CellFactor game were developed, it would probably be done on Unreal Engine 3, which is really the best technology for this kind of game.
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Given all that, it seems a bit silly to comment on minor clipping issues, etc. For a demo that was whipped up in 2 months it is amazingly good. I wonder if using the Unreal Engine is going to solve any of the problems such as lack of internet play, etc?
 
Incidentally those of you who can play CF may be interested to know the following:

in the "systemgame" folder the following file "Realityengine.ini" contains the following line:

DisableAllFramerateCaps = False

I changed it to true and I now get 45 FPS at 70 texture and 30 shadow detail with HDR.

Mashie I'd like to see what you get with your x1900xt cos I think my GTX is hitting the texture memory wall :/
 
Frosteh said:
I agree with the article so far but It's all negatives and nothing positive (well not quite true but it's certainly not balanced)

*snip*

...it's jumping on this and trying to kill it before it has chance to show off what it can really do, which is not helping the situation any. Yes users need to be aware of what they're buying into but they shouldn't be scared away from the thought of ever coming back.
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Exactly. I find this article akin to someone passing by a house still being framed and calling it ugly. It might just be a little too soon to judge. [H] is well respected by gamers and a less than positive review may very well be a nail in the coffin. My concern is: Could Kyle might be letting his experiences with Infinium Labs color his opinion of any further work done by any of its ex-employees? That comment about the "ex-Infinium Labs evangelist" seemed to me a bit out of place. Although it was an opinion piece.

I think that PhysX could very well be the kick in the ass that gaming needs to take it to a new level. Just because early demos of games released for a fledgling hardware product are rough and still in their infancy, I see no reason to write it off. I'm hoping PhysX does take off and takes gaming out of the rut in which it seems to have been crawling along for the last few years.
 
For me, a PPU is just not worth it. I have a really hard time imagining it making it onto my want list in the foreseeable future. Agrikk stated above that he has hopes that PhysX can take gaming out of the rut it has been in for the past few years, but I actually see it making things worse. From what I read most peoples' concept of the rut deals alot with devs making games prettier every gen, but not any more ( or in some cases less ) fun/innovative. In essence that the same old games get churned out with a new graphics engine taking the role of progress. I see the same thing with PhysX. Dressing up tired rehashes with more realistic behaviour of rocks, dust and water. I just don't see that as enhancing my gameplay experience in any thing more than a superficial way. Certainly not enough to merit any where near the $250 price tag. Until it becomes a necessary component to run a "Game of the Year" then it will never have an install base large enough for any dev to make a game require it. And that wont happen because you don't get a "GotY" that only sells to a minute percentage of the market. While it is an interesting idea, I think it's already dead in the water. My opinion... bet on GPU or multicore CPU's for physics acceleration.



 
Commander Suzdal said:
One thing about this situation that gives me pause is the real vs. theoretical bandwidth issue. The official Ageia story for the slowdown in GRAW with PhysX is all the new data that the GPU has to display, but the Havok guys dispute that contention rather convincingly. Isn't it more likely, as has been speculated in these very forums, that latencies inherent in getting the data to and from the PhysX card to the GPU and CPU are creating massive bottlenecks?
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How about some sort of SLI system where you connect the physics card directly to the video card. While i still think dual GPU physics is moronic. It does have the potential of avoiding most of the bandwidth issues by bypassing the CPU and PCI bus for non-important effects altogether.

If the other card in the SLI was a physics card and not a video card. With two outputs, one for the videocard through the SLI link and one for CPU feedback through the PCI bus. That might be a better implementation system wise. Gonna be hell to code for tho.
 
agrikk said:
Exactly. I find this article akin to someone passing by a house still being framed and calling it ugly. It might just be a little too soon to judge. [H] is well respected by gamers and a less than positive review may very well be a nail in the coffin. My concern is: Could Kyle might be letting his experiences with Infinium Labs color his opinion of any further work done by any of its ex-employees? That comment about the "ex-Infinium Labs evangelist" seemed to me a bit out of place. Although it was an opinion piece.
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Well Kyle is probably bitter from their run in with infinitum labs, a little unessicery IMO, no reason to go around assuming things like that.

I think that PhysX could very well be the kick in the ass that gaming needs to take it to a new level. Just because early demos of games released for a fledgling hardware product are rough and still in their infancy, I see no reason to write it off. I'm hoping PhysX does take off and takes gaming out of the rut in which it seems to have been crawling along for the last few years.
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I agree with your whole post here.

Again I will say that people seem to be incapable of drawing parrallels to other gaming hardware here, we're not so quick to judge new video card capabilities, or whether we can use true 64bit straight away, or dual core. We never see the full benefits of any technology straight away, the review just seemed a little harsh for something which we all know is in its infancy.
 
Frosteh said:
Again I will say that people seem to be incapable of drawing parrallels to other gaming hardware here, we're not so quick to judge new video card capabilities, or whether we can use true 64bit straight away, or dual core. We never see the full benefits of any technology straight away, the review just seemed a little harsh for something which we all know is in its infancy.
Click to expand...
But CPU's and Video cards, whether we can immediatley use the entire feature set or not, do perform a function. They have uses beyond gaming, and as a general rule, there are noticable improvement from the speed increase and/or additional features with legacy apps. A dedicated physics card is a one trick pony. My desktop will not use it. My browser will not use it. My media library will not benefit from it. Only games. And a very precious few at that (for the time being, maybe), and those games will suffer for the requirement. I wont pay $50 for a game, then drop another $250+ for a physics card. I just wont. I don't think many others will either. Assuming from what I've been reading, that the physX calcs can be done in software anyway, then I would sooner roll that money into a new CPU (or video card) that will benefit me across the board.


 
BLenderhedd said:
A dedicated physics card is a one trick pony. My desktop will not use it. My browser will not use it. My media library will not benefit from it. Only games. And a very precious few at that (for the time being, maybe), and those games will suffer for the requirement. I wont pay $50 for a game, then drop another $250+ for a physics card. I just wont. I don't think many others will either. Assuming from what I've been reading, that the physX calcs can be done in software anyway, then I would sooner roll that money into a new CPU (or video card) that will benefit me across the board.
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Outside of 3d games, getting a new graphics card doesn't really enhance your computer experience at all either. Plenty of people still get computers with integrated video. For a PPU, I believe a more accurate comparison would be to sound cards. You can take the cheap route, and let the CPU do the work just as you do with sounds cards that don’t do EAX in hardware, or you can shell out money for a card that can. The PhysX engine does a remarkable job of using the CPU when a PPU is not present, but even if you have a DualCore processor, the measly little boxes demo alone is enough to max out both cores in a modern processor. Presumably it would be a good thing to actually have some of that processor power available for other things, like the non-physics aspects of the game. Many future games will take advantage of Multiple Cores on their own so even if you have a whole core just sitting there idle with many of today’s games, that might not be how it is in the future.
 
I've read the article about 5 times now to get all the nuances and I have to agree with Frosteh and others.

[H] Just panned a brand new technology without reason - you even cast nasturtiums on UT2k7. Why? Because an ex-infinium labs guy's on the team - and he has the nerve to say it might be good?

Also you cast a negative about CellFactor - saying that 'at worst the gameplay uses the physics well' and then saying the gameplay is really bad. As a sideline you also say the fluids are a step backwards. From what? The laughable particle sprays in CS:S? The strange "tubes of liquid" in FEAR? Oblivion's particle sprays? All of these are terrible examples of how fluids can be handled in the situation you describe and yet you say CF's is a step backwards.

I have never known [H] to slam a new technology from red or green as badly - indeed you pump the Havok solution in the article.

I mean, hell, you were even only moderately disappointed with SM 3.0 which was useless and slow when it was introduced...

What gives, Kyle? :(

Sure you make a whole bunch of good points - the showcase (GRAW) is sloppy, CF is in beta (with all the problems that entails) and there aren't a whole lot of games coming out right now - but talk about doomsaying. :rolleyes:
 
i say it's good cold hard truth

being a supporter of the PPU in theory before it's release, i have now come to the same conclusion as many others as well as Kyle, there is definately not $250-300 worth of value in this hardware

if UT2007 is as good as i hope it is and really utilizes the PPU to a large extent, without killing framerates doing it, then i'll bite, until then, count me out

after all, thats what the "insiders" were boasting, that Physics could be "offloaded" to the PPU to provide a more realistic game experience without killing performance

as it turns out, this is not true to date
 
It killed performance because it was a company's first hardware release using its first drivers in the first game that supported it. On top of that, they used two API for physics: Havok and Ageia, Havok for everything but explosion detail, Ageia for explosions. You might as well install a 7800 and X1800 in the same PC and see how their drivers work together. It's not a pretty sight. :D Ageia released new drivers days after the bad publicity and I have yet to see anyone test the new ones. Keep in mind that the same physics being applied to GRAW in software acceleration of the physics is different, so you can't directly compare the two and assume that because with the PPU you get less fps that it's slower than if the CPU did its work.

Also, IIRC, UT2k7 will have PPU-only maps. If you'd like an idea of why we need hardware acceleration of physics and not dual- or quad-core to solve the problem, check this demo. All run fine on the CPU until you get to the Big Bang test. :D Even if quad-core gave 4x the performance, you're still looking at <10fps in a non-graphically intense application. Now apply far more advanced physics along with UT2k7 or Crysis graphics. :D
 
MrNasty said:
I've read the article about 5 times now to get all the nuances and I have to agree with Frosteh and others.

[H] Just panned a brand new technology without reason - you even cast nasturtiums on UT2k7. Why? Because an ex-infinium labs guy's on the team - and he has the nerve to say it might be good?

Also you cast a negative about CellFactor - saying that 'at worst the gameplay uses the physics well' and then saying the gameplay is really bad. As a sideline you also say the fluids are a step backwards. From what? The laughable particle sprays in CS:S? The strange "tubes of liquid" in FEAR? Oblivion's particle sprays? All of these are terrible examples of how fluids can be handled in the situation you describe and yet you say CF's is a step backwards.

I have never known [H] to slam a new technology from red or green as badly - indeed you pump the Havok solution in the article.

I mean, hell, you were even only moderately disappointed with SM 3.0 which was useless and slow when it was introduced...

What gives, Kyle? :(

Sure you make a whole bunch of good points - the showcase (GRAW) is sloppy, CF is in beta (with all the problems that entails) and there aren't a whole lot of games coming out right now - but talk about doomsaying. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Sm 3.0 is a step forward for gpu programming, it is not a wizz bang feature you should care about to begin with, like all the new trans AA features, etc. Something like 3dfx's T-buffer is a closer comparison to the ppu since it requires roughly an equal amount of independant programming effort that is specialized to a specific piece of hardware.

I think the fluid comments were just an opinionated jab at their appearance, I dont think the [H] is saying dont buy a ppu because the water looks funny. I personally really like the liquids, blood included, and would really love to see a whole freaking pool of the stuff. Preferably in a real game and not a tech demo or fan made cellfactor level.

Cellfactor is the only game out today that I would be semi interested in and it is in no way something that would keep my interest for long without multiplayer capability. One game isnt worth $200 dollars to me. $200 to me is a very nice power supply + cash left over, a cpu, (I go for bang + overclock, not latest $500 procs) an entire watercooling system, etc. I remember paying $200 for top of the line video cards. (Which wasnt a pipe dream around three years ago.)

I didnt really get the point with the whole infinium labs reference when I first read the article so feel free to milk that all you want. I dont think I'm going to base my decisions on who works for a company and what they did to some one else.

There really isnt a good reason to buy a ppu right now and that is what the article is about. Unless you really, really, like graw for some reason and have money to burn there is no reason to buy one of these cards. (But then again I dont really see the point in forking out the insane amount of money some do for 7900 sli's and x-fi's with x-ram either.)
 
GotNoRice said:
Outside of 3d games, getting a new graphics card doesn't really enhance your computer experience at all either. Plenty of people still get computers with integrated video.
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BUT... a new graphics card may very well benefit my entire back catalog of games.

GotNoRice said:
For a PPU, I believe a more accurate comparison would be to sound cards. You can take the cheap route, and let the CPU do the work just as you do with sounds cards that don’t do EAX in hardware, or you can shell out money for a card that can.
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I agree that a sound card may be a better comparison, but again, a sound card has other uses. You wouldn't buy a sound card that ONLY does EAX, or that ONLY does MP3 audio. The only sound cards people pay that kind of money for are super-multi-function with remote breakoutbox digital fiber 20.1 surround technology. :)

How about looking at it like this:
Would you buy a car that on paper would do 250mph, get 100 MPG, give you the handling of a Porsche and the comfort of a Rolls if you couldn't buy the fuel it needed? Even though the manufacturer told you that if enough people buy them then the gas stations will just have to start selling the fuel. Good concept or not, it's a broken business model.

Same reason no game developers have released an SLI/Crossfire only title. The market aint there.

For developers to use PhysX, it will have to function well in software, so they don't cut out the majority of their market. It will also have to work with negligible performance loss. They wont put it in a game otherwise. If it works well this way, then there is really very little benefit to accelerating it in hardware, unless you have a slower system that needs all the cpu power it can get. If you have this sort of outdated system are you going to blow $250 on a dedicated physics proc? Doubtful.



 
BLenderhedd said:
Same reason no game developers have released an SLI/Crossfire only title. The market aint there.
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Curious. Is there even such a thing? AFAIK, the game couldn't care less if you have two GPU's since it's transparent and the load managing is done in the driver level only.

Sm 3.0 is a step forward for gpu programming, it is not a wizz bang feature you should care about to begin with, like all the new trans AA features, etc.
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Another thing. Why couldn't they get feedback from the GPU physics? There are already software that uses the GPU for audio processing, they get their results back right?
 
I think the PPU will go the way of the Stacker cards, if you recall those. The cpu method will become so fast that the cards will only give trivial benefit. Hide and watch.
 
Personally, I think if the cards were priced at 100-150 bucks there wouldn't be such an uproar and folks would give it a chance. I think hardware physics acceleration is a great idea. I just think that ageia is trying to get over personally. Even if it delivered all that was promised in graw/future games, I just couldn't see myself forking over 250 bones for it. They are trying to equate it to the cpu and video cards to make the price more believable, I don't buy it. Just my thoughts....
 
VMaxx said:
I think the PPU will go the way of the Stacker cards, if you recall those. The cpu method will become so fast that the cards will only give trivial benefit. Hide and watch.
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That must be why Havok is swaying away from it and implementing hardware acceleration on graphics cards, as if GPUs didn't already have enough to do. Not everyone has quad-SLI to do 60fps then add physics acceleration.

One guy on XS took a 2.9ghz Conroe and ran a software acceleration-only demo by Novodex (guys Ageia bought out and implemented into their API) and got 2-3fps. The demo was graphically uninspiring to begin with, so try that complexity of physics on a system running Crysis or UT2k7.

...but yeah gsboriqua, I completely agree the damn thing is too expensive.
 
Howdy all. First post, glad to be here. :D

Quick FYI: City of Villains enabled PhysX support in the latest patch on the Test server. Another game to test on.

Now Testing in the Training Room - 5/08/06
*snip*

Hardware
* The game is now compatible with Ageia physics cards using the latest drivers.

I play the hell out of CoV, so I'm intrigued. Never been much of an early adopter, though, and that price is a bit painful in the wallet.
 
BLenderhedd said:
How about looking at it like this:
Would you buy a car that on paper would do 250mph, get 100 MPG, give you the handling of a Porsche and the comfort of a Rolls if you couldn't buy the fuel it needed? Even though the manufacturer told you that if enough people buy them then the gas stations will just have to start selling the fuel. Good concept or not, it's a broken business model.
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There is a good number of games coming out that will support the PhysX engine and likely run fine even if you don’t have a PPU, but I have a hard time believing that future games won’t fully tax the CPU. My experience with testing the Demo in software mode is that it actually is quite easy on the CPU usage, as long as nothing is moving. That would seem to me that in an FPS game it wouldn’t bring down your average very much, but your minimum framerate would likely be higher with a PhysX card. By that I mean the PhysX card would benefit more the more chaotic things are on screen, and could perhaps keep the box from chugging too bad during periods of heavy activity or during explosions, etc. In these games that use the PhysX engine, much if not all of the same physics are going to be going on with or without the card, but I can’t imagine that offloading that work from the CPU would be a bad thing.

It seems like a lot of criticism ultimately stems from the fact that there just aren’t many games out yet that support the card, and many have suggested that they should have waited for more games before releasing the cards. Really, that’s exactly what they did. If you go way back and look at the really early articles regarding the PhysX card, it originally had a release date in 2005. The cards have basically been ready to go since then, but they have waited and helped the game developers in order to try to get something to play on. They managed to stretch it up until there are at least a few games out, but I’d imagine that they were probably being pressured by investors or whoever if not probably a bit itchy themselves to release it, after having to sit on it for so long.

Some people seem to be vilifying Ageia as if it is trying to rip people off or mislead people. I don’t really see this as any different than when a new console or a new media player (HD-DVD/Blue-Ray, etc) comes out and the early adopters get stuck paying more and don’t have many things to play on it yet. Still many people do it. Though I already have a card, I’m really just looking forward to Unreal 2007 and other Unreal 3 Engine bases games. CellFactor, the most impressive game the PhysX card has out for it right now, uses an engine that was bought by Epic Games last year. Presumably at least some of that has now been integrated into Unreal 3 Engine as the CellFactor developers themselves have said they would likely use the new Unreal engine to make a full CellFactor game.
 
mashie said:
It seems motherboard manufacturers have to rethink the layout of their bords yet again...

At the moment the Asus A8R32-MVP is the only motherboard that can have two vidoecards with dual slot coolers as well as two PCI cards. It shouldn't really be rocket science to make a SLi board using the same layout.
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Not true. The MSI k9n Diamond Plus will accomodate a ppu and two gpus, and even something else. The DFI CFX3200 will too.
 
I think we should focus less on the limitations of the technology as it is now, and instead look at the possibilities.

For example, imagine a massively multiplayer WW2 game, with ha-yoooge levels, with tanks and planes and so on. Okay, so I'm talking a baddass Battlefield game here. Nothing new here.

But imagine if EVERYTHING in the game behaved like it should - instead of static walls and sandbags and stuff that shrug off tank blasts and demo charges, you'd have walls crumble into bricks (which don't neccessarily have to be modelled - the PPU could perhaps dynamically break a single solid brush (the wall) into bricks and shrapnel (it's just math, really), and the bricks can go flying as a result of the shell blast, becoming deadly projectiles themselves, not to mention plaster chunks and so on. The possibilities for realism are endless. No more hiding invulnerable behind a garden fence lobbing grenades at tanks - that sort of thing is unrealistic.

Imagine rolling into in a small European town, all nice and tranquiland relatively intact, and meeting the enemy, entrenched and dug in. When you're done, there's nothing but rubble left.

That sort of shit would be ubercool.

What about waterfalls that have real water, for a change, instead of cascading sprites and simulated particle effects, or having a character wade or run through water, the water flowing, parting and splashing around his legs realistically (think Morpheus' rescue in The Matrix)

Of course, the workload on the GPU and the system's ram would be enormous, so I cannot help but wonder whther the PPU is a bit premature.
 
For me the bottom line is this:

People parting with a wad of hard-earned cash have a right to be skeptical and demand that the seller of a new technology prove the value of the product. It is not my responsibility to make the PhysX card a success by emanating positive waves about it. It is Ageia's responsibility to show that I can get my money's worth. Truly great tech will not require boosterism to succeed.

Take the 3Dfx example that so many refer to in this dialogue--yes there was an adoption period when titles were few, yes it was originally a separate add-on card that was awkwardly integrated with 2D cards, yes it was relatively expensive, yes Glide was proprietary. BUT, it sold anyway because it WORKED!!! All you had to do was see it in action and you had to have one. None of this pseudo-ethical trash about "we owe it our support because it's a worthy idea..." We're not talking about world peace, we're talking about a high-priced toy that had better deliver the goods. 3Dfx did, and Ageia may yet, but so far, not so much, and thanks to Kyle and the rest for telling us so we don't have to pay $250 to find out.
 
Lord of Shadows said:
That would be a better demonstration if I could get more than 1 fps before hitting the boxes.
Click to expand...

Same thing as in Novodex rocket - when everything's sitting there the API stops the CPU from calculating interactions.

In this case however there's no break for the CPU - and it hurts :(
 
I for one bought 2 Voodoo1 cards JUST to play Quake on the Lan I had at my house at the time. Quake in software 3D was cool but slow, while Quake on Voodoo was a whole new experience. At the time there were no other games taking advantage of the Voodoo1 that I knew of. Those cards weren't exactly cheap at the time if I remember correctly. But it was a big enough step forward that I never felt I had been cheated. I did however look forward to ANY new game that might come along and take advantage of my shiny new cards.

Now here is Ageia... Is the card too expensive? Maybe. Are there too few games that take advantage? Yep. Will it change the amount of satisfaction I get when I play games? Well, it certainly has the potential.

As an example there are really 4 examples (milestones) I can think of that changed my gaming use of PC's.
First was C&C on the PC, that's the game that got me to buy my first PC.
Second was Quake and Voodoo1, really a new level of immersion in my gaming experience.
Third was Unreal Tournament, think lan parties...
Fourth was HalfLife, another big step in immersion in my experience. HalfLife changed my expectations about what was possible in games.

I think the PPU will lead to another level of immersion just like HalfLife. HalfLife 2 gave us a glimpse of what physics can bring to the sense of immersion. Like many others... I am really looking forward to the game that brings truly immersive, interactive physics to my gaming world.

As far as multiplayer and Physx goes, I would guess that someone smart will come up with a game that has physics realism settings. One set of servers for Physics in software, and another set of servers for physics in hardware. Just like with a GPU, some people will have more realism at higher frame rates. The software servers/clients will have scorch marks and sprite explosions, the hardware servers will have holes in objects and flying debris. No reason a game engine can't be designed to do this. Will we see it? I sure hope so.

No matter how you look at it, I think Ageia is truly a pioneer in the same ilk as 3DFX. Will they stand the test of time? Who knows. But what they have done so far is an amazing piece of work. They have gotten Microsoft to adopt PhysX for Xbox360. They have won support for PhysX in quite a few upcoming titles. They have support for PhysX in tools used by developers such as 3DS Max, Alias, Softimage and RAD Gametools. They have designed, developed and manufactured a working PPU… no small feat in itself.

For the naysayers, that claim the their new faster GPU does so much more than just make a game faster… I beg to differ. Moving from a 6800GT to a Radeon 1900XT with SM3.0 really only buys you higher framerates, and some very small increases in AA image quality. It doesn’t change the experience of a game much at all (certainly not the way advanced physics has the potential to). It doesn’t make your Internet browsing faster, it doesn’t make Word quicker, it really provides you nothing more than your old card outside of games. Will a PPU provide you anything outside of games now? Nope, But neither did that shiny $600 video card. Can a PPU be used for anything besides physics? I’d guess that a driver can be written for the PPU to do things like Folding at Home. Will I buy a PhysX PPU? Personally, in the future I’d be more likely to buy a PhysX card and a $350 GPU than to buy a $600 GPU.

Just my .$02
 
As I was reading review on other sites I kept saying to myself I can't wait to read HardOCP's take on it. As Kyle said near the end was that everyone else was looking at framerate to see how it performs and I didn't agree with that, it's about the experience. Thanks Kyle for another well thoughtout and presented case for another product that wants my Hard earned money.

LK
 
Cobraphx said:
I for one bought 2 Voodoo1 cards JUST to play Quake on the Lan I had at my house at the time. Quake in software 3D was cool but slow, while Quake on Voodoo was a whole new experience. At the time there were no other games taking advantage of the Voodoo1 that I knew of. Those cards weren't exactly cheap at the time if I remember correctly. But it was a big enough step forward that I never felt I had been cheated. I did however look forward to ANY new game that might come along and take advantage of my shiny new cards.

Now here is Ageia... Is the card too expensive? Maybe. Are there too few games that take advantage? Yep. Will it change the amount of satisfaction I get when I play games? Well, it certainly has the potential.

As an example there are really 4 examples (milestones) I can think of that changed my gaming use of PC's.
First was C&C on the PC, that's the game that got me to buy my first PC.
Second was Quake and Voodoo1, really a new level of immersion in my gaming experience.
Third was Unreal Tournament, think lan parties...
Fourth was HalfLife, another big step in immersion in my experience. HalfLife changed my expectations about what was possible in games.

I think the PPU will lead to another level of immersion just like HalfLife. HalfLife 2 gave us a glimpse of what physics can bring to the sense of immersion. Like many others... I am really looking forward to the game that brings truly immersive, interactive physics to my gaming world.

As far as multiplayer and Physx goes, I would guess that someone smart will come up with a game that has physics realism settings. One set of servers for Physics in software, and another set of servers for physics in hardware. Just like with a GPU, some people will have more realism at higher frame rates. The software servers/clients will have scorch marks and sprite explosions, the hardware servers will have holes in objects and flying debris. No reason a game engine can't be designed to do this. Will we see it? I sure hope so.

No matter how you look at it, I think Ageia is truly a pioneer in the same ilk as 3DFX. Will they stand the test of time? Who knows. But what they have done so far is an amazing piece of work. They have gotten Microsoft to adopt PhysX for Xbox360. They have won support for PhysX in quite a few upcoming titles. They have support for PhysX in tools used by developers such as 3DS Max, Alias, Softimage and RAD Gametools. They have designed, developed and manufactured a working PPU… no small feat in itself.

For the naysayers, that claim the their new faster GPU does so much more than just make a game faster… I beg to differ. Moving from a 6800GT to a Radeon 1900XT with SM3.0 really only buys you higher framerates, and some very small increases in AA image quality. It doesn’t change the experience of a game much at all (certainly not the way advanced physics has the potential to). It doesn’t make your Internet browsing faster, it doesn’t make Word quicker, it really provides you nothing more than your old card outside of games. Will a PPU provide you anything outside of games now? Nope, But neither did that shiny $600 video card. Can a PPU be used for anything besides physics? I’d guess that a driver can be written for the PPU to do things like Folding at Home. Will I buy a PhysX PPU? Personally, in the future I’d be more likely to buy a PhysX card and a $350 GPU than to buy a $600 GPU.

Just my .$02
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Really good post.

I too have been always at the front of the tech wave when it comes to PC gaming. I remember getting an AdLib sound card. Before that most games had no sound or just PC speaker beeps. With an AdLib card WingCommander could have sound if I bought the add-on sound pack. At the time it was amazing and really made a difference. BTW do you know were AdLib is now? Bankrupt... crushed by an upstart company called Creative.

Link to AdLib history ----> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlib

I also bought a voodoo card and was amazed. (For me it was Mechwarrior.) Again the difference was major and enriched the gaming experience. (Ironically again the upstart dominated the established brand. 3dfx - NVIDIA.)

Now I have tested a Ageia card. The experience was not enriched. Framerate suffered and the effects were not WOW. More like "check it out there are all these marbles falling out of the wall" or in Cell Factor there is so much stuff that you cannot move around the map. Toss a grenade and your FX60 system with 7800 512MB SLI system drops to 10 FPS @ 1024 by 768.

I think physics is going to be a major part of future games. I just don't think Ageia will be part of it in the long run. My reasons are simple.

1) The above performance issues. (I hope these can be fixed but only time will tell.)

2) Uptake by consumers. This is big. At the current price many people will not by this. Because of this we get #3

3) Lack of major game support. I expect most support to be tacked on for an game title worth having. A company would have to be crazy to gamble the success of there title on everyone that is playing it buying a $300 card. This means no gameplay physics for awhile.

4) The final straw. Competition. With both NVIDIA and ATI announcing physics with the industry leader in software physics (Havok) they are going to have a hard time getting additional support in future titles. (This is regardless of if the Ageia solution is better.)
 
AACDIRECT said:
1) The above performance issues. (I hope these can be fixed but only time will tell.)
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First game in use? Lots of people didn't think SLI would take off because the drivers sucked and it cost 2x as much. -_-

AACDIRECT said:
2) Uptake by consumers. This is big. At the current price many people will not by this. Because of this we get #3

3) Lack of major game support. I expect most support to be tacked on for an game title worth having. A company would have to be crazy to gamble the success of there title on everyone that is playing it buying a $300 card. This means no gameplay physics for awhile.
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That can be said for everything the first time something is used. Ageia's saying they their physics engine will be used in 100 games by 60 developers thru to 2007. Havok has been used in 100 games, but the SDK was launched six years ago. Ageia will have the same amount of PPU-enabled games as Havok has been used in games in half the time. One of the reasons is because the SDK is free, where as Havok could never be used by a 3rd-party developer just starting up.

Microsoft and Sony have signed agreements to use the SDK, and it's in Unreal Freaking Tournament! Epic created their engine from scratch and had a choice for physics. Create their own, use Havok, or use Ageia. Their choice should reflect Ageia is doing something good to appeal to world-class developers.

AACDIRECT said:
4) The final straw. Competition. With both NVIDIA and ATI announcing physics with the industry leader in software physics (Havok) they are going to have a hard time getting additional support in future titles. (This is regardless of if the Ageia solution is better.)
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This is true, but that doesn't mean they can't accel on PS3 and Xbox 360 and put that towards better tech for cheaper. Sony's been doing that for all their products (although their other products aren't that great anymore).

AACDIRECT said:
Now I have tested a Ageia card. The experience was not enriched. Framerate suffered and the effects were not WOW. More like "check it out there are all these marbles falling out of the wall" or in Cell Factor there is so much stuff that you cannot move around the map. Toss a grenade and your FX60 system with 7800 512MB SLI system drops to 10 FPS @ 1024 by 768.
Click to expand...

Exactly. You have your once-$500 7800GTX pulling 40fps in Oblivion. What do you do when a more graphically advanced game comes out? Make the GPU do more work with physics ontop of its already intense workload!! SLI is almost necissary now.
 
Very cool!

I can't find it, but there was a demo that showed off water using tiny spheres, then a transparent mesh covered it (kinda like the way the matress works in the Novodex Rocket with the matress), except being confined to limits of a shape of a matress, it was loose and fluid-like. A mesh basically just covered the connected beads.

Or if that's too much just make a demo that uses a PPU's max object count, then we can compare CPU vs PPU. If the PPU can run it, it'd be a perfect example. :)
 
i picked up my physx and yeah, its pretty pricey. cell factor is beautiful, and i'm expecting a lot from UT2007. i think there may not be many killer apps right now, but i think as time goes on there'll be more.
 
I just purchased RON: Rise of Legends and as it was installing I was reading some articles online about it and realized that it supports Ageia PhysX. Has anybody performed testing with this game? I'm not sure how exactly one would test but I can see where it could add a benefit when you are in the heat of a big battle.
 
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