Havok tells PhysX to kiss off

[saaya]

PhysX requires NVIDIA: false.

it does, you have to use a hack to use physix if you have an ati card in your system, and youd have to use a hack to use physix on an ati card.

PhysX supports less platforms: false.

who the h3ck cares how many platforms it supports? the 20 poly bowling pins shaking and falling down in wii sports are done with physix. uhhhhhhhhhhhh! who cares???

Hardware PhysX isn't any better than any other physics simulation: false.

how is it better exactly?

NVIDIA is to blame for underutilizing CPUs: false.

if nvidia really cares about physix as a standard and not a marketing tool, if they really care about improving physic effects in games and not boosting their vga sales, if physix is really so much better and faster on gpus than on cpus... then dont you think they would make sure physix runs as good as possible on cpus as well? dont you think they would make sure that they use all possible hardware resources available, regardless of them being cpu or gpu? dont you think they would use cpu AND gpu resources combined to create even better, even more detailled, even more realistic effects?
even people with a dedicated gtx285 for physics calculations wont ever get close to the effects a game COULD use if they would use idle cpu cores AND the gpu to calculate them...
its SO obvious what physix is for nvidia... its a marketing tool first, a sales tool second, and an actual effort in improving games last...

PhysX somehow hurts PC gaming: false.

has it helped to improve pc gaming? how? where? nvidia pushes game devs to use physix if they want support from nvidia, so the devs have to use resources to somehow patch on physix to the game, which wastes precious dev time and castrates the game for players without nvidia cards.

[Final8ty]

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?

That's the point no games uses the super advanced physics that you keep on talking about.

[Truckchase!]

Well, here's a news flash for them, PhysX can run in software too.

Not at acceptable speeds, and unfortunately that limitation is man-made and on purpose.

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

Because PhysX was a good idea until they took it over and locked it to their platform.

[Kej]

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?

[PaganII]

Games are all failing anyway. If your into a fast moving game you never see 50% of that stuff anyway and if you stop to look, you die! You die and you go to ... nevermind.
Smoke and fire is cool. Who has time to "smell the flowers" when you're getting mobbed by zombies? It is Gameplay and reliable dedicated servers that I want. Graphics? Mob me with interesting, hidden pictures/art, puzzles and active realistic skies. It is cool to look up in the night sky and think, Hey, there is Orion!.

[Final8ty]

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.
.

I'm voicing my opinion on that matter its not about caring about PhysX & if all that was being done was advanced physics i would have no issue. what i have issue with are effect that i have had in the past not being offered now because its been made to run on PhysX when its not needed.

[Manicdan]

im thinking physics will be the next big jump in the next 5 years. the next consoles will have the power to output top quality textures at 1080p, so whats next? obviously realism, aka physics. sure the PC has the ability to use multiple monitors to keep pushing hardware for bigger displays, but thats going to be less than 10%, so again physics is the next step for PC. i cant even imagine the kind of quality a 6870/g580 could handle to keep 1920x1080 at 60fps, we will soon have enough extra bandwidth on gpus to handle physics and more, unless somehow people like leaving vsync off and want 200fps games on a 60fps monitor.

yes the history of physics for the last decade have been 90% demos and 10% games, but its becoming clear that people want more of it, and soon it will be delivered, just need to wait a few years.

[saaya]

Games are all failing anyway. If your into a fast moving game you never see 50% of that stuff anyway and if you stop to look, you die! You die and you go to ... nevermind.
Smoke and fire is cool. Who has time to "smell the flowers" when you're getting mobbed by zombies? It is Gameplay and reliable dedicated servers that I want. Graphics? Mob me with interesting, hidden pictures/art, puzzles and active realistic skies. It is cool to look up in the night sky and think, Hey, there is Orion!.

exactly... i wish we would chose what physics effects we want to use our hardware resources for... id disable cloth animation, liquid animation and all that other cr4p you dont really notice and care about anyways in most games, and use all resources to make character animations and destructable buildings and objects as realistic as possible!

those are the physics effects that really matter... all this cloth and liquid animation looks cool in tech demos and it can be done very well on gpus since its such a parallel task, large matrixes... but in games its pointless...

the best in game physics ive seen lately was in fear2, and i liked it so much that i played those mech levels over and over again...
and before that, the second best physics are in far cry2, blwing up jeeps and checkpoints and huts is really awesome... thats what crysis was supposed to be and then it never worked properly...

and none of them use physix!
fear2 is even a twimtbp game!!! but luckily they said NO to physix and the ingame physics effects are realllly nice...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp9rRvqG9NM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKEJWyQJ0l8&NR=1

you can destroy walls and columns, and while all the objects are predefined, the amount of destruction most objects take looks amazing and very realistic... and the ragdoll physics are very nice too, in slow mo like in max payne, you can watch your enemies float through the air in weird motions depending on where you hit them

you can play a part of a mech level in the official FEAR2 game demo, see for yourself if you dont believe me!
looks waaaaay better than this havok demo and any physix demo ive seen...

im thinking physics will be the next big jump in the next 5 years. the next consoles will have the power to output top quality textures at 1080p, so whats next? obviously realism, aka physics. sure the PC has the ability to use multiple monitors to keep pushing hardware for bigger displays, but thats going to be less than 10%, so again physics is the next step for PC. i cant even imagine the kind of quality a 6870/g580 could handle to keep 1920x1080 at 60fps, we will soon have enough extra bandwidth on gpus to handle physics and more, unless somehow people like leaving vsync off and want 200fps games on a 60fps monitor.

yes the history of physics for the last decade have been 90% demos and 10% games, but its becoming clear that people want more of it, and soon it will be delivered, just need to wait a few years.

dont forget 3d
almost twice the oomph needed for the same fps
physics and 3d will be the next big steps... raytracing isnt that interesting imo... cool mirrors and light reflections, again, cool for demos but not interesting for actually playing a game...

[trinibwoy]

I'm voicing my opinion on that matter its not about caring about PhysX & if all that was being done was advanced physics i would have no issue. what i have issue with are effect that i have had in the past not being offered now because its been made to run on PhysX when its not needed.

If it was ever uncovered that a developer wanted to do something on the CPU and Nvidia coerced/bribed them to do it on the GPU instead then I would completely agree with you. However, so far it seems that Nvidia's GPU physics additions are things that wouldn't have made it into the game in the first place.

exactly... i wish we would chose what physics effects we want to use our hardware resources for... id disable cloth animation, liquid animation and all that other cr4p you dont really notice and care about anyways in most games, and use all resources to make character animations and destructable buildings and objects as realistic as possible!

Come on, that's pretty silly. What's happening is that you take stuff for granted now and think you don't notice it. Try playing the original UT and tell me if you don't notice how backward the graphics are compared to contemporary titles. In the future all that liquid and cloth animation "cr4p" will be commonplace and when you look back to today you'll wonder wtf is up with all the lame static environments.

[Final8ty]

If it was ever uncovered that a developer wanted to do something on the CPU and Nvidia coerced/bribed them to do it on the GPU instead then I would completely agree with you. However, so far it seems that Nvidia's GPU physics additions are things that wouldn't have made it into the game in the first place.

You seem to be replying to someone else as what you quoted from me has nothing to do with what your now saying to me.

I don't care who decided what.

[trinibwoy]

Nope, I meant to reply to you. So what exactly did you mean by this? What effects in particular do you think developers would have included in the game and run on the CPU if it wasn't for Nvidia's meddling? I tried looking for examples where something was taken out of the core game and made a GPU PhysX only option but came up empty.

what i have issue with are effects that i have had in the past not being offered now because its been made to run on PhysX when its not needed.

[Final8ty]

Nope, I meant to reply to you. So what exactly did you mean by this? What effects in particular do you think developers would have included in the game and run on the CPU it wasn't for Nvidia's meddling? I tried looking for examples where something was taken out of the core game and made a GPU PhysX only option but came up empty.

I didn't mention anything about meddling.
stop putting words into my mouth.

All i mean is so far GPU PhysX has been used for crap.

[trinibwoy]

All i mean is so far GPU PhysX has been used for crap.

Ah, I could swear you were saying that because of GPU PhysX we're getting less on the CPU than we did in the past. Sorry for the misunderstanding. At least you're not missing out on anything.

[Final8ty]

Ah, I could swear you were saying that because of GPU PhysX we're getting less on the CPU than we did in the past. Sorry for the misunderstanding. At least you're not missing out on anything.

Yes but your the one pointing the finger at who where i did not.

And its stuff is been done on the GPU that was done in the past on the CPU & that means that it does not need a GPU to do it.

[570091D]

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.

so, i think everyone just forgot to read this post..... when physx is used in games, it is part of the entire game as a software physics engine. the eye candy that has so many people up in arms; yes it is limited to nvidia users. and why not? why shouldn't nvidia reward it's customers? nvidia took the time to make some really neat (in my opinion) visual effects that can be put to use on it's video cards. is the expectation that they should do the same for thier competators? i find that to be silly...

and xouls, like i said before, i have a single 9800gx2 that plays batman and many other games with gpu physx with no problems... it does not require $1200 worth of nvidia hardware to make it work.

[PaganII]

It is the game developers that are missing it. I'm sure all that stuff looks cool to a graphics guy working for a game company or some hippie on hallucinogenics or people behind the couch watching someone else play but if you've spectated a serious FPS game and seen how a player can't see another player running across the screen because they are concentrating on something else then you know what I mean. This physics stuff is more suited for CG movies. More effort should be directed a server issues than Fung Shway Physics.

[Vardant]

it does, you have to use a hack to use physix if you have an ati card in your system, and youd have to use a hack to use physix on an ati card.

CPU PhysX doesn't, GPU PhysX does, there's a difference.

who the h3ck cares how many platforms it supports? the 20 poly bowling pins shaking and falling down in wii sports are done with physix. uhhhhhhhhhhhh! who cares???

Anyone who plays multiplatform games?

how is it better exactly?

PhysX is more of a simulation, Havok so far looks like a db with predefined sets of destruction. There's definitely more precision going on.

if nvidia really cares about physix as a standard ...........
its SO obvious what physix is for nvidia... its a marketing tool first, a sales tool second, and an actual effort in improving games last...

Does it really matter, what's it to them? It works, it's the only working GPU solution. At least they are doing something unlike ATI. Saying, they are for open standards only after their cooperation with proprietary Havok failed is, well...

has it helped to improve pc gaming? how? where? nvidia pushes game devs to use physix if they want support from nvidia, so the devs have to use resources to somehow patch on physix to the game, which wastes precious dev time and castrates the game for players without nvidia cards.

Adding something for one small group of players isn't castrating anything. Console gamers get exactly the same thing and do you see them spewing nonsense everywhere?
Of course it helped. After Intel killed Havok FX, there was nothing going on regarding high precision physics in games. And look at it now. Bullet is working on their own GPU implementation and you said it yourself, that Intel might have something too.

[Amorphous]

Needs all of what horsepower? It's only running on a single GPU. You can't make PhysX run across multiple GPUs, yet.

PhysX can run on a dedicated GPU, or it can run on the top GPU of any SLI array. In the first case the GPU does nothing but PhysX, in the second, the GPU does graphics and PhysX. In all cases, it's only ever running on a single GPU.

In terms of PhysX processing power, quad SLI with 2 GTX 295s and 2-way SLI with GTX 275s are analogous. 3 GTX 285s and 2 GTX 285s have the same PhysX power. PhysX only processes on the top GPU in SLI.

I ran Batman AA just fine with PhysX on medium with a lone GTX 295 with 3D Vision enabled, and with PhysX on high with a GTX 295 for graphics and my GTX 280 as a dedicated PhysX processor. In the scarecrow scenes with hundreds of bricks interacting with each other and scarecrow, a lone GTX 295 had a few minor framerate dives with 3D Vision enabled (didn't try it without 3D).

The difference between medium and high appeared to be the number and complexity of the bricks and smoke effects. I didn't notice a difference between the cloth and paper effects.

So, $600 GPU + GPU that would otherwise be in the dust bin for the maximum settings.

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.

[STEvil]

so, i think everyone just forgot to read this post..... when physx is used in games, it is part of the entire game as a software physics engine. the eye candy that has so many people up in arms; yes it is limited to nvidia users. and why not? why shouldn't nvidia reward it's customers? nvidia took the time to make some really neat (in my opinion) visual effects that can be put to use on it's video cards. is the expectation that they should do the same for thier competators? i find that to be silly...

and xouls, like i said before, i have a single 9800gx2 that plays batman and many other games with gpu physx with no problems... it does not require $1200 worth of nvidia hardware to make it work.

I run an ATi GPU for graphics and an nV GPU for PhysX.. but I have to hack stuff to get it to work. Where's my reward?

[Xoulz]

so, i think everyone just forgot to read this post..... when physx is used in games, it is part of the entire game as a software physics engine. the eye candy that has so many people up in arms; yes it is limited to nvidia users. and why not? why shouldn't nvidia reward it's customers? nvidia took the time to make some really neat (in my opinion) visual effects that can be put to use on it's video cards. is the expectation that they should do the same for thier competators? i find that to be silly...

and xouls, like i said before, i have a single 9800gx2 that plays batman and many other games with gpu physx with no problems... it does not require $1200 worth of nvidia hardware to make it work.

Dude, Batman doesn't require any video card for those effects, let alone a special video card. That is what we are saying.

It's just that Nvidia added those remedial effects to make people who bought Nvidia's cards, feel good. Ironically, such things use to be in every game, as part of showing how talented the dev team is/was (doesn't EQ have beautiful banners and such?) you don't need physics for trivial things.

... but instead, Nvidia added cursory superficial cloth sim, as an exclusivity, then MARKET the hell out of it as an add-on feature. When the Dev team just could of used any open source to do the same... but wouldn't have gotten paid, or promoted.

Nothing in Batman requires physics power. The physical environment is so lame/trivial, it's sad really. On the other hand, even proprietary engines like Carmack or DICE offer superior physics and use of physics.

Even Ghost busters has better physics than Batman... PhysX is pathetic, actually.

[Xoulz]

Needs all of what horsepower? It's only running on a single GPU. You can't make PhysX run across multiple GPUs, yet.

PhysX can run on a dedicated GPU, or it can run on the top GPU of any SLI array. In the first case the GPU does nothing but PhysX, in the second, the GPU does graphics and PhysX. In all cases, it's only ever running on a single GPU.

In terms of PhysX processing power, quad SLI with 2 GTX 295s and 2-way SLI with GTX 275s are analogous. 3 GTX 285s and 2 GTX 285s have the same PhysX power. PhysX only processes on the top GPU in SLI.

I ran Batman AA just fine with PhysX on medium with a lone GTX 295 with 3D Vision enabled, and with PhysX on high with a GTX 295 for graphics and my GTX 280 as a dedicated PhysX processor. In the scarecrow scenes with hundreds of bricks interacting with each other and scarecrow, a lone GTX 295 had a few minor framerate dives with 3D Vision enabled (didn't try it without 3D).

The difference between medium and high appeared to be the number and complexity of the bricks and smoke effects. I didn't notice a difference between the cloth and paper effects.

So, $600 GPU + GPU that would otherwise be in the dust bin for the maximum settings.

Lulz..

You don't need any video card to get physics, specially the pathetic lame superficially delivered eye candy that Batman delivered. It's moot!


Here: This doesn't require SLI, or tri-SLI or anything special, just a $200 CPU.




The question is: if you are spending more, to exclusively get this exotic physics engine... where is it?

[KingOfsorroW]

even people with a dedicated gtx285 for physics calculations wont ever get close to the effects a game COULD use if they would use idle cpu cores AND the gpu to calculate them...
its SO obvious what physix is for nvidia... its a marketing tool first, a sales tool second, and an actual effort in improving games last...
has it helped to improve pc gaming? how? where? nvidia pushes game devs to use physix if they want support from nvidia, so the devs have to use resources to somehow patch on physix to the game, which wastes precious dev time and castrates the game for players without nvidia cards.

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.

+1 to those posts. I totally agree with them. It is really strange to see someone who honestly thinks that flying paper is worth a videocard and a huge perfomance hit. You cant run Batman AA with 8qxfsaa and with physics enabled even on a 285 tri-sli config. Because the game will stutter in that case - you'll have to decrease the game iq to say 4x or 2x even better. That's just to be able to see the flying papers around and some more complicated smoke. THese effects have been avaible for ages for free ... Hey, here is nice business idea for ya, nv folks - how about start selling air? That'll bring you some money...

[RejZoR]

Take a look at these example with glass breaking. Please ignore the overall grapics quality because these two games are 8 years apart...

Mirror's Edge (2009) - "Advanced" GPU only physics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l4XWJt4EfE

Red Faction (2001) - Advanced glass simulation on any sub 1GHz single core CPU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baWbh9062VE

Sure Mirror's Edge has smaller glass shards and there are many more of them. But then again, they are doing this in era where quad core CPU's and graphic cards with 20 times the processing power are noting uncommon. If you would apply all this to Red Faction and simply bump up the number of glass pieces and make them smaller, it would still run damn fast on ANY CPU so ANYONE could enjoy it. But in this case, NVIDIA is feeding us with crap like that this can ONLY be done through GPU PhysX.
Bollocks i say. Just look the relation of these two games in terms of time difference and processing power available at the time of game release. There is hardly any visual difference from a technical perspective.

Anyone who's still blindly believing everything NVIDIA is feeding you, think again. And also think how much physics could have evolved if idiots like NVIDIA weren't artificially blocking it's evolution with their lame ass proprietary physics engines that work on only one hardware. Why DirectX and Direct3D got so good reception and 3dfx Glide didn't?
Because Direct3D runs on any graphic card wile Glide was only working on 3Dfx Voodoo cards. And where is 3dfx these days? See what i mean?

[Amorphous]

I get it. You're saying NVIDIA shouldn't add features for their users and then market it. Understood!

AMD should just stop making CPUs and GPUs, and then stop marketing too.

Dude, Batman doesn't require any video card for those effects, let alone a special video card. That is what we are saying.

It's just that Nvidia added those remedial effects to make people who bought Nvidia's cards, feel good. Ironically, such things use to be in every game, as part of showing how talented the dev team is/was (doesn't EQ have beautiful banners and such?) you don't need physics for trivial things.

... but instead, Nvidia added cursory superficial cloth sim, as an exclusivity, then MARKET the hell out of it as an add-on feature. When the Dev team just could of used any open source to do the same... but wouldn't have gotten paid, or promoted.

Nothing in Batman requires physics power. The physical environment is so lame/trivial, it's sad really. On the other hand, even proprietary engines like Carmack or DICE offer superior physics and use of physics.

Even Ghost busters has better physics than Batman... PhysX is pathetic, actually.

[Final8ty]

I get it. You're saying NVIDIA shouldn't add features for their users and then market it. Understood!

He said nothing of the sort.

1. having a product.
2. how you go about using it.

Don't mix the 2 up.