My Test of Cell Factor running with and without physX

Tenebrus said:
Wow man! How did you do 2 screen caps where every itsy bitsy fragment is in the exact same position?
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Your right :eek: , I've just checked my fraps folder I have actually got 2 different images, really sorry guys, the with PPU shot is below,

So it was faster with the PPU, still, only by 3 frames tho, and that could be due to there being more debris, so i'd say it's still very close

With PPU : 18 FPS



I,ve edited my OP test also to show the correct jpg, soz again, what a plonker :eek:
 
lowrider007 said:
Your right :eek: , I've just checked my fraps folder I have actually got 2 different images, really sorry guys, the with PPU shot is below,

So it was faster with the PPU, still, only by 3 frames tho, and that could be due to there being more debris, so i'd say it's still very close

With PPU : 18 FPS

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Might want to edit you post to be right....
 
Still not that big of a difference for something that 'requires' a PPU to play and certainly not enough for them to be toting this as the demo that 'proves' they are worth your $300.

I don't think this is the end of PhysX... we'll simply have to wait and see what some of the more advanced functions are. Throwing boxes and pipes up into the air is not that all that complex.

A better demo might be to build, in the center of an otherwise complex outdoor scene, a 'box' made of walls of water and allow the player to walk through one wall and into the center of it. Then allow the player to fire guns, etc. through, in and at the water. Have the water (and possibly the ground as well) react using true physics, scatter then reform. That would probably use a little more horsepower than the standard FPS with flying boxes. :)
 
lowrider007 said:
Just have, again really sorry, I've checked over the over jpg's and there all fine.

Look end of the day Ageia said the min req for Cell Factor was a mid-high end system with a PPU, obviously we are seeing that this is not the case, anybody can check my specs that I've posted and try playing Cell Factor with a simular system or better and you'll see for self that this game is playable without a PPU, yes it's very very slighter faster with the PPU enabled but is it £200 faster.
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I have been watching everything you have posted and am hardly calling "bullshit" on it. Looks like all your ducks are in line even if you did miss one fine point. Overall, it has no real impact on changing anything you have had to say. (Been there, done that too.) Good work all the way around. Kudos.
 
Unreal Tournement 2007 will define the life or death of PhysX.
 
What everyone has failed to realise here is that the Cell Factor game has been designed to have a bunch of OTHER people playing with you. I'd bet that even with 3 other people playing with you you'd suddenly see the benefit of the Hardware physics card.

Also, FYI, firing the gun at the ground producing random debris is what really flexes that game.


I'd like to see some comparisons with a full game going on rather than single player.


BF2 runs like butter on my rig in single player mode and I can have 6x AA and Aniso 16x, but no way in hell can I get away with that in Multiplayer online.


Don't get me wrong, I personally think the Ageia card isn't going to find a profitable market and will die, but I don't believe it can't even deliver on doing what it's meant to do. Further fuller testing is needed IMHO.
 
is there more info on how the testing was done?

maybe a more structured test is in order..

similarly to the way you test difference between CPUs

i don't know if it is possible to do this in CF but back when testing CPUs it'd go something like this.

Turn all the graphics options down and or off
turn the resolution to 640x480
turn off sound
disable Vsync

essentially get to a point where you are clearly CPU limited..

now do these PPU On/Off tests and lets get a clear picture of how much the PPU is offloading the CPU, which in the end is the answer we need.. when CPU limited, offloading the physics calculations should raise the FPS, if they have streamlined the "lag" inherent in the PPU (the whole CPU->PPU->CPU pipe). if the Framerate doesn't go up in a CPU limited situation then i'd be fairly convinced that the PPU is not really worth the time or $$$ (at least at the moment)..

even the difference between 15FPS and 18FPS is a 16% increase in performance, which is pretty good.. but with so many other factors going in its hard to tell what the error rate is.
 
Guys, it should be pretty obivous that you still have a frame cap on when your getting 42fps max.. Not only that but this is a Server demo and a lot of settings are on low for bandwith and syncing other clients.

It would be nice with a real PPU test of cellfactor ;)

If I edit RealityEngine.ini with:

DisableAllFramerateCaps = true

and just add a few zeros to:

ClientRecievePacketsPerSecond = 1500
ClientSendPacketsPerSecond = 2000
ServerMaxSendPacketsPerSecond = 1500

I get with software mode on my X2 at 2500Mhz in a standard deathmatch with no bots:

43 fps just standing still at first spawn.
52 fps when I run to the upper Deathstalker with out moving any objects and just entering driver and then exiting - for a locked view.
83 fps when standing and looking at shadows in the tunnel.

(But a botmatch with same settings newer gives me more then 20 fps)

More PPU test of the finnish box demo posted here would also be nice. I get about 1 fps and a dude at another forum reported 15 fps with hardware - thats 1500% more speed :eek:
 
Umm.. sorry, but you are missing effects without the PPU. You get no fluid effects, and no cloth tearing.
 
why dont we just wait for a real game to be out (and maybe one that is not sponsored by Aegia but definitely has all the guts to overpower your aegia card? hmm, does crysis have that support? :confused: ), anyway, its still too early to conclude anything, give me 4-5 games that confirms no actual physx acceleration and I might be a believer, give me 4-5 games that confirmts some physx acceleration and I might be a believer too..
 
lowrider007 said:
Look end of the day Ageia said the min req for Cell Factor was a mid-high end system with a PPU, obviously we are seeing that this is not the case, anybody can check my specs that I've posted and try playing Cell Factor with a simular system or better and you'll see for self that this game is playable without a PPU, yes it's very very slighter faster with the PPU enabled but is it £200 faster.
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The game works, and in most cases works quite well in software mode, but there are some things, such as all of the cloth, that simply aren’t there in software mode. Meaning that some things in this game at this point still do require it. Here is a small fraps of what the cloth looks like: http://home.comcast.net/~gotnorice/CellFactorcloth.wmv In software mode there is nothing there between those poles.

Also, my tests showed that it helps a lot with the minimums, as you would expect, the periods when the shit hits the fan is when the PPU shines. Without the PPU the minimums almost hit single-digits while it almost never went below 20 with the PPU. That IMO is a pretty big difference when it comes to gameplay. It’s also something that is probably not going to be illustrated by a few random screenshots showing instantaneous fps at any given time. From casual observations, it seems that it works the hardest as it is calculating debris trajectory, not after the debris is already in motion.

But furthermore, and just as we saw with the boxes demo, the PPU helps out considerably more on a single core box than on a dual-core or dual-cpu box, though there are generally improvements all around. For someone with something along the lines of an FX-57 or 4000+, without a 2nd core that is generally idle, a PPU might be more of a worthwhile investment. It didn’t seem to me that Cellfactor is multi-threaded very much outside of using PhysX in software; I rarely see much usage on more than one CPU while in hardware mode. UT2007 on the other hand is supposed to be genuinely multi-threaded. While Cellfactor does a lot better in software mode with a 2nd core to take advantage of, future games will likely see increased use of multiple cores just for the basic game functions, with less “Extra CPU power” and certainly not an entire core just sitting there idle ready to do physics.

spine said:
I'd like to see some comparisons with a full game going on rather than single player.
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The comparisons would have to be subjective, as I’m not sure how you could do reproducible comparisons in a multiplayer environment.

Cellfactor is great but it’s also a Demo that was created in 2 months. Given how long they have been working on UT2007, I’d have to assume that the PhysX implementation is going to be about as mature as it gets and hopefully the issues we’ve seen with games such as GRAW will be cleared up.
 
Ive got a really bad feeling about the physicX cards in general. I was/am interested in the concept so ive been doing my "homework" and i do not like what ive been seeing at all. It appears that up to this point, NOTHING takes advantage of the hardware, nothing. Yes, it can display some extra stuff in GRAW but it kills the frames and with a hack, the frames are the same with or without the card. Now this. Im definatly putting a HOLD on my physicX card purchase untill i see some serious results. Maybe if it was 50 bucks i could see it, but not 300 for worse frame rates then without it!
 
We just need to wait for games to be fully tailored for the PPU. When hardware graphics acceleration came out, there was minimum improvement over software - the textures could be blended and the colors were nicer, but that was about it other than a minor speed increase to boot.

Even so, I'd be very surprised if the difference in fps were only on the order of 5-10 in multiplayer matches without the PPU in CF. We need a scripted test run or something for the characters, assuming this is possible.
 
DarkenReaper57 said:
We just need to wait for games to be fully tailored for the PPU. When hardware graphics acceleration came out, there was minimum improvement over software - the textures could be blended and the colors were nicer, but that was about it other than a minor speed increase to boot.
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Actually, it was pretty noticeable. 320x200 -> 640x480 with faster framerates. Bilinear filtering and better textures didn't come 'til much later (until 3Dfx entered the scene) but the difference was already pretty significant.

I still remember the ad i saw in an old PC magazine "Tired of pixels the size of boulders?" :p
 
GotNoRice said:
The game works, and in most cases works quite well in software mode, but there are some things, such as all of the cloth, that simply aren’t there in software mode. Meaning that some things in this game at this point still do require it. Here is a small fraps of what the cloth looks like: http://home.comcast.net/~gotnorice/CellFactorcloth.wmv In software mode there is nothing there between those poles.
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Considering how terrible that looked I think we're better off with there being nothing there.
 
I tried it at 1280x1024, HDR, 4x AA. Plays *very* nice with no PPU. Not really sure about frames, but its smooth and completely playable. My system is at fairly high specs though:
X2 4800+ @ 3.2GHz, 2GB PC3200, 74GB Raptor, Geforce 7800 GTX
 
Sly said:
Actually, it was pretty noticeable. 320x200 -> 640x480 with faster framerates. Bilinear filtering and better textures didn't come 'til much later (until 3Dfx entered the scene) but the difference was already pretty significant.

I still remember the ad i saw in an old PC magazine "Tired of pixels the size of boulders?" :p
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Yeah but the old arguments were there the same as they are here. I predict that this will be required hardware in a few years. There is just too much potential.
 
Protoform-X said:
I tried it at 1280x1024, HDR, 4x AA. Plays *very* nice with no PPU. Not really sure about frames, but its smooth and completely playable. My system is at fairly high specs though:
X2 4800+ @ 3.2GHz, 2GB PC3200, 74GB Raptor, Geforce 7800 GTX
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HDR+4XAA on a GeForce? I thought that wasnt possible on Nvidia cards.. VERY nice system though, BTW
 
Replicant1911 said:
Yeah but the old arguments were there the same as they are here. I predict that this will be required hardware in a few years. There is just too much potential.
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I tend to look at it the other way. This appears to be a product with a limited lifespan. With 4+ core processors visible on the roadmap, I think it would make since to simply write the app to take those cores into account. Sure, you can play the game with 1 or 2 cores, but if you have 4 or more you get all these extra fx. It's still offloading physics processing, but it's offloading it to a general purpose core that you already have.

You could even take it further and plan for multiple cores for use in many situations: AI, sound, encode/decode, even graphics. Sure, it'll be a while before manycore CPUs are common enough to perform all these tasks themselves, but once you have a bunch of cores to play with, there's no telling what'll be possible. You might even see such purpose built processing exist as a core on the main CPU.

Sure, the jury is still out of this product, but they better hurry and get in there while there's a market.
 
bildad said:
Considering how terrible that looked I think we're better off with there being nothing there.
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Compared to what? Have we even had a game before that had cloth that can interact realistically with the enviornment? Just wondering if there was any substance behind that comment or if you're just trolling.

Here is another small video showing cloth interaction:
http://home.comcast.net/~gotnorice/cellcloth.wmv

Aside from the fact that fraps chugs on my box when recording video, how does that look "terrible"?
 
GotNoRice said:
Compared to what? Have we even had a game before that had cloth that can interact realistically with the enviornment? Just wondering if there was any substance behind that comment or if you're just trolling.

Here is another small video showing cloth interaction:
http://home.comcast.net/~gotnorice/cellcloth.wmv

Aside from the fact that fraps chugs on my box when recording video, how does that look "terrible"?
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Well in your first video as you got closer I couldn't tell if that was cloth or your video card was overheating. First there was this thing, and then there were oddly shaped pollys all over the screen.

Your second video is a little better, but the way the cloth tears apart when shot doesn't look too good. It's a little cheesy and overdone
 
So I actually tried CF on my network and played it with my brother, and i recorded the FPS with Fraps while playing, as well as playing by myself. The average was about a 4 FPS decrease, but I'm not sure how significant that is since the events recorded could be very different. But I definately noticed more slowdown during fighting with the gravity grenades, or if he was in the distance destroying a pile of objects and I was doing the same. Which makes sense since the computer would have to calculate the trajectories of my objects as well as his. More calculations more slowdown. Although my system isn't top notch anymore, it's still very good. I just wish I had a PPU so I can compare the performance. But it's not even worth buying right now.
 
bildad said:
Well in your first video as you got closer I couldn't tell if that was cloth or your video card was overheating. First there was this thing, and then there were oddly shaped pollys all over the screen.

Your second video is a little better, but the way the cloth tears apart when shot doesn't look too good. It's a little cheesy and overdone
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Considering this is a first-try for that sort of thing on Aegia's behalf, that's damn good. The current-gen video cards likely can't handle the polys necessary to really make the fabric work properly, but it looks like polys is all that fabric is missing.
 
So then, what do us humble ppu users so far get for our money, it's certainly not ground breaking accerated physics :confused: :( , but wait, there is someing we get, we get a flag, some toxic waste, some weird magnetic pink liquid, oh and some large steel curtains :p ,

PPU Enabled : Flag


PPU Disabled : Flag


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PPU Enabled : Toxic Waste


PPU Disabled : Toxic Waste


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PPU Enabled : Pink Liquid


PPU Disabled : Pink Liquid


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PPU Enabled : Steel Curtains


PPU Disabled : Steel Curtains
 
i still say give it time when the frist "3d" cards came out i beleave thay were slower then software then things didnt pick up till 3Dfx came along

this stuff is just coming out this is the bleeding edge here its going to have bugs and a high cost this is how its always been in the tech world and how it always will be
ill get a PPU but it mostlikely wont be till the end of the year
 
GotNoRice said:
Compared to what? Have we even had a game before that had cloth that can interact realistically with the enviornment?
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Yes, actually. EverQuest 2 has cloth simulation as an option and it looks better than that imho, even though you cannot 'destroy' any of the cloth in EQ2 and its implementation is somewhat limited.
 
Compared to what? Have we even had a game before that had cloth that can interact realistically with the enviornment? Just wondering if there was any substance behind that comment or if you're just trolling.
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As mentioned Everquest2 cloth looks 100% better, im not sure if its the jerky demo that you uploaded which made it looks so bad, but having not played CF demo myself, i must say that the so called cloth effect is truly horrendous to look at.
 
I still say as much has already mentioned, that we just wait for the technology to grow and improve
 
I remember first seeing decent cloth attempts in the original hitman codename 47, was very impressed back then.

Dynamic cloth that rips and tears hasn't been done before in a game or even a tech demo that I'm aware of, I don't think it looks cheesy, it looks really nice in the HD videos of cell factor when the ship flys through it.

But the discussion here should really be "can our CPU handle this workload"

I'd have to say it can, mine can handle all the boxes with ease, Im sure it can handle dynamic cloth as well.

As for the psudo liquid physics, I dunno, i think you really need dedicated hardware for that at the moment, im guessing it's dealing with a LOT of spherical collisions which is far more intensive than simple ridgid box collisions.

Thing is the scale of all the boxes is nothing new, at least to me. When HL2 was released and we saw garysmod released, you could launch physics enabled objects into the world at any rate you like. I remember at the start of one of the game chapters just before you reach the lab (end of the waterboard section) and firing about 500 computer monitors into the water which all bobbed around, even then frame rates were fine for 500-600 primitives
 
Elios said:
i still say give it time when the frist "3d" cards came out i beleave thay were slower then software then things didnt pick up till 3Dfx came along

this stuff is just coming out this is the bleeding edge here its going to have bugs and a high cost this is how its always been in the tech world and how it always will be
ill get a PPU but it mostlikely wont be till the end of the year
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The above post sums up this whole thread.
Might as well have more fun kicking around the dog with some 40s of Old English on a Saturday night. Shootable cloth? Fuck if I care. I'm moving too fast to stop and smell the roses. I'd rather see goddamn GIBS. Fuck cloth, I want bodies that fly into small tiny pieces according to how the rocket hits your opponent's body. Now that's what I can see PhysX for. Fuck shootable cloth, that shit is child's play. Gamers want mayhem and destruction. Its what keeps us coming back.

In my own opinion, I saw this coming. PPUs will eventually get down to the price of a mid grade sound card (ie 129-200 dollars). That's when I'll consider blowing my money away. For the meantime I got 300 dollars to save for that crossfire x1900 to complete my gaming beast. No thanks Ageia. I'll see you next round when somebody makes good enough software to validate the purchase of your hardware.
 
Frosteh said:
But the discussion here should really be "can our CPU handle this workload"

I'd have to say it can, mine can handle all the boxes with ease, Im sure it can handle dynamic cloth as well.
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Yeah, this demo doesn't show anything that a cpu couldn't reasonably do, albeit slightly slower. Quite frankly, dual and quad core cpu's are what are gunna kill Ageia. Peripheral physics processing is a perfect use for multi core cpu's.
 
heres a video i did of the cellfactor demo without a ppu using the high setting icon. frame rate whilst recording was roughly half of what i normally get.

cellfactor vid without a ppu

my specs

X2 3800 @ 2.5GHz
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
OCZ 3200 Platinum
Sapphire X800XT
3x Maxtor DM9's RAID 0
Audigy2 ZS Platinum
Enermax Noisetaker 600W
CoolerMaster CMStacker
 
I think you'll need to run the game at such a resolution so the Video card does not become the bottleneck.

Try 800x600 just for kicks. I'd be curious to see what Hardware Ageia Physics does then.
 
kaleb_zero said:
HDR+4XAA on a GeForce? I thought that wasnt possible on Nvidia cards.. VERY nice system though, BTW
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There's only a couple of FP16 HDR games that nvidia can't support AA in: Serious Sam 2, Far Cry. Oblivion rendering is hacked with the Chuck patch to enable AA. Most other games don't use FP16 HDR, so HDR + AA works fine on nvidia cards.
 
No_flaming_my_butt said:
that guys right, ut2007 will define it.
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of course he's right, he's kyle


i'm just waiting on a review from hardocp on one of these things, you can buy them at newegg.com, who wants to make a bet they've got one on thier bench by now and are doing tests with it
 
I don't know if I should say this, but I can't help noticing how many new posters have joined in the last month or so and are spending a lot of their time defending the PhysX PPU. It first began to catch my attention because it seemed like a pretty specialized topic for new members to get worked up about. Add in the fact that most new members here are also relatively new to enthusiast computing, and it seemed strange that they would even know what a PPU was, let alone have a strong opinion on its value. It's even stranger that many of them seem to own one already.

Call me paranoid, but I smell a big, fat, geurilla-marketing rat...
 
Commander Suzdal, either they are ringers, or more likely they are enthusiasts who frequent other forums that aren't discussing PPUs as objectively as hardforums is, so they feel need to register and post... i doubt there is a need for alarm (tin foil hats)...
 
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