Havok tells PhysX to kiss off

[trinibwoy]

I don't care about what PhysX is theoretically capable of if its not going to be used.

Havok is good enough for the job needed & does it on the CPU & not just some theoretical job from a demo.

I haven't seen a single developer make the claims you are making. They seem to come only from people on forums who don't have a clue. Where is your technical information or developer testimonials to back up your claims of Havok > PhysX on the CPU? Are you telling me that all of the developers using PhysX on the CPU are doing so just for kicks? Or let me guess, Nvidia is paying them to use it?

[Chumbucket843]

im not really impressed with these demos. when you have a real game the cpu has a lot more tasks and the amount of bodies in these demo was pretty small.

here is what a gpu can do a year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCaGb40Bz58

[Zed_X]

This is a joke? havok physics are based only on scripts, not real physic models and laws. If you will destroy the vase, destruction model is allways the same, falling parts too! But from different angle This is demo from 1996? Yeah from that year is Havok unchanged!

[Helloworld_98]

I haven't seen a single developer make the claims you are making. They seem to come only from people on forums who don't have a clue. Where is your technical information or developer testimonials to back up your claims of Havok > PhysX on the CPU? Are you telling me that all of the developers using PhysX on the CPU are doing so just for kicks? Or let me guess, Nvidia is paying them to use it?

well BC2 can run on a quad core max settings with a good fps whereas PhysX on CPU needs an i7 HT on and even then the fps is barely playable.

will try and find source, although might be hard since it was a few months ago.

edit: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multime...PhysX_API.html

[trinibwoy]

well BC2 can run on a quad core max settings with a good fps whereas PhysX on CPU needs an i7 HT on and even then the fps is barely playable.

Yeah that sorta thing happens when you try to compare two completely different workloads. What PhysX effect are you looking at in particular when making the comparison to BC2? There aren't any dynamic particle or fluid systems in play there and the destruction is scripted.

[JumpingJack]

Is Havok open source?

It is not open source.

[kl0012]

here is what a gpu can do a year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCaGb40Bz58

This demo actually run on core i7 and not on GPU.
Here is Havok guy speaks about the demo:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/vide...s-at-gdc-2009/

[Mescalamba]

Except PhysX intentionally is not using multiple cores , thanks goes to Nvidia
Personally id prefer CPU doing physic's and GPU doing graphics , we have to put all those CPU cores to better use then 10% utilization during games. GPU's have enough stuff to work with.

Nah, its due designers of games, not nVidia. PhysX has support for multiple cores, just designers dont use it.. (dont ask me why.. no idea).

Im for Bullet and open engines..

[Farinorco]

well BC2 can run on a quad core max settings with a good fps whereas PhysX on CPU needs an i7 HT on and even then the fps is barely playable.

will try and find source, although might be hard since it was a few months ago.

edit: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multime...PhysX_API.html

PhysX (and Havok) don't need nothing to run. PhysX on CPU in i7 HT is barely playable? I bet not. I'm sure that such hw is perfectly capable to throw playable framerates with for example a single cube over the ground as a scene.

What I mean is: PhysX and Havok are nothing else than libraries with preprogrammed functions to make a real time physics simulation (dynamics of objects, application of forces on them, and so). Yes, they can be more or less optimized and be more or less accurate. But you can't compare the performance of 2 such libraries if they are not trying to simulate the exact same scene (AKA, a benchmark).

Trinibwoy is right on this, I have searched myself for such a performance comparison between PhysX, Havok and Bullet with no luck. I could do some tests myself, but I have better things to do with my time right now.

What I can say (not from personal use of them but others opinions) is that aside GPGPU support, Havok has some much better things that PhysX. For example, the character controller is head and shoulders above, including it's animation system and IK solver. That's one of the spotlights of Havok and there's no competence from any other rt physics library (PhysX included) around. I've heard some people questioning stability of the PhysX collision detection system, also, and primitives and meshes support is not the best. Those problems are not shared by Havok (or Bullet, in this case). From the opinions I've read and heard, I'd say that aside GPGPU support, PhysX is nothing else than decent as a physics library.

And some recent games have been released with no CPU physics multithreading at all, which can have different explanations. PhysX CPU multithreading is unstable or buggy? Is it particularly difficult to use? Is NV promoting to set up their middleware in this way? I don't know, but anyhow is nothing good: those games have a subpar CPU performance because of their physics library, AKA PhysX, or the use that developers make of it in the real world.

[Xoulz]

PhysX demos look way more realistic than Havok.

PhysX demo REQUIRES tri-sli to look like that.

[Vardant]

PhysX demo REQUIRES tri-sli to look like that.

Yes, that's why there are videos with only one card runing just fine

[Xoulz]

Yes, that's why there are videos with only one card runing just fine

Really..?

Video of full blown all-out PhysX simulation with nothing other than a CPU, or one video card..? Where?

Every simulation (ie: Non-game illustration of whats possible with PhysX) has always had $1200 of video cards running the demo. I play Battlefield BC2 and I have never seen a TWIMTBP(<-or whatever) game offer up anything close to BF... nor does it require a specific video card, or series of them.

Please... prove me wrong.

[Final8ty]

I haven't seen a single developer make the claims you are making. They seem to come only from people on forums who don't have a clue. Where is your technical information or developer testimonials to back up your claims of Havok > PhysX on the CPU? Are you telling me that all of the developers using PhysX on the CPU are doing so just for kicks? Or let me guess, Nvidia is paying them to use it?

All that matters to a user is how the games play not how the developer went about making the game.

Results are all that counts & the results thus far from PhysX in games have been a complete joke seeing as a GPU was needed for such results.

[Amorphous]

No it doesn't.

When PhysX runs on any SLI config, 3-way, quad, or 2-way SLI, it only runs on the top GPU.


Amorphous

PhysX demo REQUIRES tri-sli to look like that.

[570091D]

Really..?

Video of full blown all-out PhysX simulation with nothing other than a CPU, or one video card..? Where?

Every simulation (ie: Non-game illustration of whats possible with PhysX) has always had $1200 of video cards running the demo. I play Battlefield BC2 and I have never seen a TWIMTBP(<-or whatever) game offer up anything close to BF... nor does it require a specific video card, or series of them.

Please... prove me wrong.

my 9800gx2 plays batman with full physx and mirrors edge... one older graphics card doing what it's advertised to do. and what's to say this demo want being run on a 980x with 12 gigs of ram? i haven't played BFBC2 and i'm going to buy it for the ps3, but i'm willing to bet the physics won't be as good even though it packs a lot of power. the point i was trying to make in my second post in this thread, is that both of the proprietary systems hurt performance for different segments of the market.

and i just realized that nowhere in the op does intel or havok tell "Physx to kiss off".... wtf is with the thread title?

[Cybercat]

yeah, damn those lazy and incompetent game devs... poor nvidia

what do you think is more important? how good a tech demo CAN look and perform or how the actual games people play and BUY perform and look?

If you can find a game whose physics look better than Batman: AA, Cryostasis or even Mirror's Edge then I'm all ears. I'd consider those actual games, with tearing cloth and fluids and massive amounts of particles that Havok can only dream of.

Physx intentionally doesn't though.

It's a marketing vehicle to castrate performance to sell GPU's.

Calculated on the CPU = an actually useful physics api which is open and able to influence gameplay dynamics.
Oh, except for physx. They NUKE cpu performance by thread restrictions. Physx is not useful.

Software PhysX does in fact influence gameplay. PC gamers, no matter what hardware you're using, get the base PhysX implementation in games, the same as their console counterparts. No compromises. If developers want to use multithreading with PhysX, they can, and as others have proven in this thread, there are examples of people doing it.

How does it?

The option is greyed out for any system with an ATI card present.
That's not platform support.

Let me correct your statement:
In terms of platform support PhysX runs on nvidia systems only because it's an intentionally win/lose based platform when it comes to real world implimentation.
Buy nvidia, use no ATI or gtfo of our fooooooozEEEXxxx.

On ATI systems, you're not locked out of playing games with PhysX. There are TONS of games that use PhysX, but no hardware PhysX. Hardware accelerated PhysX has never been made out to be anything more than a graphical effect. The only time you're locked out is when using hardware PhysX, but all that means is you lose a graphical enhancement that's more advanced than any other physics implementation available. It's an enhancement for NVIDIA users, but this is the important part, it does NOT degrade the experience for those without it. You're more than capable of playing Batman: AA on an ATI-based system, and the gameplay will be just as fun. It just won't look as pretty.

[Final8ty]

If you can find a game whose physics look better than Batman: AA, Cryostasis or even Mirror's Edge then I'm all ears. I'd consider those actual games, with tearing cloth and fluids and massive amounts of particles that Havok can only dream of.

Software PhysX does in fact influence gameplay. PC gamers, no matter what hardware you're using, get the base PhysX implementation in games, the same as their console counterparts. No compromises. If developers want to use multithreading with PhysX, they can, and as others have proven in this thread, there are examples of people doing it.

On ATI systems, you're not locked out of playing games with PhysX. There are TONS of games that use PhysX, but no hardware PhysX. Hardware accelerated PhysX has never been made out to be anything more than a graphical effect. The only time you're locked out is when using hardware PhysX, but all that means is you lose a graphical enhancement that's more advanced than any other physics implementation available. It's an enhancement for NVIDIA users, but this is the important part, it does NOT degrade the experience for those without it. You're more than capable of playing Batman: AA on an ATI-based system, and the gameplay will be just as fun. It just won't look as pretty.

Like the realistic paper that goes right through batmans cape.
The tiles that break which any precal could look just as good.
And particles which you have none without PhysX in batman & as if particles have never existed before now.

Criterion black had plenty of breaking glass.

The problem is the pro PhysX people don't seem to grasp is not the fact that you can do more of everything with GPU PhysX, people are upset that the claim that now you cant do anything without it which of course is rubbish its just you cant have as much, but the problem is now your not getting anything unless you use it in a PhysX game on the pc.

[Xoulz]

No it doesn't.

When PhysX runs on any SLI config, 3-way, quad, or 2-way SLI, it only runs on the top GPU.


Amorphous

Lulz..

You don't get it. PhysX needs all that horsepower to actually do anything in game. Did you even play Batman?


What is all the fuss about? PhysX?

People actually bought a game, specifically for loose paper on the floor & Cloth banners? Why does anyone need a special video card for that superficial fluff? I don't see any game by Nvidia that use PHYSICS as a mean of use within their games.

It's all eye candy and for show. Why buy $1200 worth of Nvidia cards, to say you can run a demo?



So stop your BS please.

[Cybercat]

The problem is the pro PhysX people don't seem to grasp is not the fact that you can do more of everything with GPU PhysX, people are upset that the claim that now you cant do anything without it which of course is rubbish its just you cant have as much, but the problem is now your not getting anything unless you use it in a PhysX game on the pc.

I'd say the thing I can't grasp is why NVIDIA is getting all the blame for this.

There's not really a reason why Havok can't code tearing cloth and real fluid simulation. If anything, a GPU should be more limited in what you can code into it than a CPU. There's no reason developers couldn't use massive amounts of particles and rigid bodies in their games regardless of the physics middleware. But they won't. Blame consoles and their crappy processors. Blame developers for not taking advantage of the PC and all the quad-cores running on them when they port their games. But don't blame NVIDIA for giving their customers a little something extra by offering developers their resources in implementing unparalleled PhysX effects that do nothing to harm people who can't use them.

If anything, blame AMD for their unwillingness to do the same.

[Final8ty]

I'd say the thing I can't grasp is why NVIDIA is getting all the blame for this.

There's not really a reason why Havok can't code tearing cloth and real fluid simulation. If anything, a GPU should be more limited in what you can code into it than a CPU. There's no reason developers couldn't use massive amounts of particles and rigid bodies in their games regardless of the physics middleware. But they won't. Blame consoles and their crappy processors. Blame developers for not taking advantage of the PC and all the quad-cores running on them when they port their games. But don't blame NVIDIA for giving their customers a little something extra by offering developers their resources in implementing unparalleled PhysX effects that do nothing to harm people who can't use them.

If anything, blame AMD for their unwillingness to do the same.

I don't care about no tearing cloth or real fluids.
I'm talking about effects that have been used in the past without PhysX that are now only being used with PhysX or nothing at all in a GPU PhysX enabled title.

You cant grasp why NV is getting all the blame because your not listening to the reasons of what has been happening & are more interested of what it could offer & not what has been offered.
if you listened you would see that it being NV is irrelevant because i would not buy a GPU from anyone for physics from what i have seen in games at this point.

[saaya]

Tell that to the people trying to compare GPU PhysX to Havok. Havok has no GPU solution at all so it's a useless comparison.

sure they do... its probably locked in intels basement somewhere, but they had a working gpgpu physics engine for yeeeeaaars now...
it didnt work a lot faster on gpus vs cpus though, at least when i worked with it...

and think about it, what makes more sense? using a gpu to calculate a new feature or a cpu? gpus are busy doing graphics in almost every system, while most people have at least one cpu core idling most of the time, if not several...
then think about memory, physics needs lots of memory, and cpus have 2-4x more memory available than gpus, and tend to have lots of free ram as well while gpus have their mem full of textures and game data...

im surprised nobody ever pointed this out to nvidia when they were talking about how gpus are the limiting factor nowadays and the most important processor and component of a modern pc... i totally agree! but if gpus are the limiting factor, then why do you use the already limiting weak link in your system and make it do even more work, work that can be done at least as well on the cpu?

[Xoulz]

I'd say the thing I can't grasp is why NVIDIA is getting all the blame for this.

There's not really a reason why Havok can't code tearing cloth and real fluid simulation. If anything, a GPU should be more limited in what you can code into it than a CPU. There's no reason developers couldn't use massive amounts of particles and rigid bodies in their games regardless of the physics middleware. But they won't. Blame consoles and their crappy processors. Blame developers for not taking advantage of the PC and all the quad-cores running on them when they port their games. But don't blame NVIDIA for giving their customers a little something extra by offering developers their resources in implementing unparalleled PhysX effects that do nothing to harm people who can't use them.

If anything, blame AMD for their unwillingness to do the same.

You don't seem to grasp it do you..? Unless that tearing of the cloth is usefully in a game, it's superficial to gameplay. Meaning, it's pointless other than a marketing ploy, to sell nvidia brand video cards.

Specially when those effects could've easily been done using PhysX with the CPU. But that would defeat the Marketing behind getting people to buy Nvidia cards, uno? So they tell you you needs PhysX and if you want moar, then buy more of their cards.. lol.



Name one Nvidia game, that has the physics in use, as part of the gameplay, like games using their own proprietary methods. (From even 5 years ago). of Battlefield... that goes back to even BF2 or even 2142.

All Nvidia has is demo's... their games suck ballz.

[insurgent]

If anything, blame AMD for their unwillingness to do the same.

I can't blame AMD lately, last gen they drove the prices down, and this gen the competition is very late.

[Cybercat]

I don't care about no tearing cloth or real fluids.
I'm talking about effects that have been used in the past without PhysX that are now only being used with PhysX or nothing at all in a GPU PhysX enabled title.

You cant grasp why NV is getting all the blame because your not listening to the reasons of what has been happening & are more interested of what it could offer & not what has been offered.
if you listened you would see that it being NV is irrelevant because i would not buy a GPU from anyone for physics from what i have seen in games at this point.

What effects that have been used in the past? You act like there's this whole forgotten era of gaming where we had super advanced physics and then all of a sudden PhysX swooped in and stole it all. I disagree that GPU PhysX has done anything to hurt the overall quality of physics in games.

What reasons am I not listening to? I've seen many arguments in here, almost all of them based on ignorance. PhysX requires NVIDIA: false. PhysX supports less platforms: false. Hardware PhysX isn't any better than any other physics simulation: false. NVIDIA is to blame for underutilizing CPUs: false. PhysX somehow hurts PC gaming: false.

Your argument appears to be that because of hardware PhysX, software physics of any kind hasn't advanced, or has been unable to advance. Would this be a fair assessment?

[trinibwoy]

All that matters to a user is how the games play not how the developer went about making the game.

I agree. And all that matters to owners of Nvidia graphics cards is that GPU PhysX is another option they have. Considering that you find the effects underwhelming and/or useless why do they bother you so much? You should be happy you don't have to deal with them.

the problem is now your not getting anything unless you use it in a PhysX game on the pc.

So you're saying that in the absence of PhysX developers would've chosen to implement those effects on the CPU? That's funny cause I don't see a single non-PhysX game with cloth simulation for example. Unless you can find a developer to say that Nvidia asked them to remove a CPU effect and make it GPU only then you're just grasping at straws.

Unless that tearing of the cloth is usefully in a game, it's superficial to gameplay.

You've been rambling on in this thread repeating the same thing yet you fail to realize everything a graphics card does is superficial to gameplay. I don't think anybody cares if you don't like tearing cloth, soft shadows, ambient occlusion, AA or any other "superficial" effect that GPUs can perform. It's all subjective and people will turn on whichever effects they like.