How will NVidia counter the release of HD5xxx?

[John Reynolds]

Got it, played it, and it has nothing as it isn't to the level of PhysX enabled games. And it is also weak.


Seen it, again, compared to what I have seen and played with PhysX, not very impressive.

I've yet to see any hardware accelerated physics that wows me, regardless of the middleware being used. And I know of no PhysX games that offer anything but very minor visual enhancements that while improving a title's graphics all too often incur too harsh of a performance penalty (even on high-end GPUs).

 

[trinibwoy]

Yeah that pretty much sums it up. Physics doesn't have to affect gameplay to be impressive (all those fancy graphical effects we drool over don't affect gameplay either). However, so far Nvidia hasn't succeeded in showcasing PhysX as a must-have option but they're doing ok cause there's no competition. Batman is a first step though - it's the first real blockbuster win for PhysX. They need more of those and less Cryostasis and Darkest of Days.

 

[Razor1]

Please list the games that use PhysX realistically, aside from window dressings by adding bits of moving eye-candy.

anything outside of eye candy that would require game design/ programming, level design, ai design/ programming changes, physX was released a year ago, games with anything more then eye candy going to need another year to really see them come out.

 

[MfA]

Seen it, again, compared to what I have seen and played with PhysX, not very impressive.

Specifically?

 

[trinibwoy]

Was checking out Bullet Physics and came across this little tidbit. "The August 2009 issue of Game Developers Magazine features an article about game middleware. They surveyed over 100 senior developers of various development houses, mainly working on PC, PlayStation 3 or XBox 360."

 

[Cypher]

Was checking out Bullet Physics and came across this little tidbit. "The August 2009 issue of Game Developers Magazine features an article about game middleware. They surveyed over 100 senior developers of various development houses, mainly working on PC, PlayStation 3 or XBox 360."

I wonder how many of the PhysX users is due to Unreal.

 

[Scali]

Half Life 2? Throwing a buggy around in the air beats symmetrically moving banners.

I can't think of any physics engine that wouldn't be capable of Half Life 2's effects.
It's very basic physics... it's applied well throughout the game, but it's nothing special. CryPhysics, ODE, PhysX, Bullet... they could all do what Havok does there.
I suppose that's the thing...
Havok isn't a bad physics library... but because it lacks hardware acceleration, it doesn't offer anything that other libraries don't.
Libraries that can leverage a GPU or PPU for physics effects, can offer various effects that wouldn't be possible in realtime with just a CPU.
So people can hate on PhysX as much as they want, and in some cases the effects really are poorly applied in games... but in the end, it's better than not having anything at all.

Feels a bit like the linux crowd shouting how much better linux is than Windows or Mac... except most software for Windows/Mac isn't available on linux and you only get poor substitutes. If you don't have anything better to offer, I think it's best to just be silent about it.

 

[Ailuros]

I've yet to see any hardware accelerated physics that wows me, regardless of the middleware being used. And I know of no PhysX games that offer anything but very minor visual enhancements that while improving a title's graphics all too often incur too harsh of a performance penalty (even on high-end GPUs).

Wait until you see digitalwanderer waving his pink cape in front of your face Oh and howdy stranger

 

[Mariner]

Yeah that pretty much sums it up. Physics doesn't have to affect gameplay to be impressive (all those fancy graphical effects we drool over don't affect gameplay either). However, so far Nvidia hasn't succeeded in showcasing PhysX as a must-have option but they're doing ok cause there's no competition. Batman is a first step though - it's the first real blockbuster win for PhysX. They need more of those and less Cryostasis and Darkest of Days.

If people are happy with getting with devs using physics engines to give them a little bit more graphical "bling", then fair enough. However, I'd argue that the most important part of gaming is, you know, gameplay.

Let's face it, no physics engine is going to be able to influence gameplay to any great extent until practically all available hardware supports it. In other words, I'd tend to doubt that this won't be for a couple of years when decent DX11 cards from both the major IHVs are widely used.

 

[digitalwanderer]

However, so far Nvidia hasn't succeeded in showcasing PhysX as a must-have option but they're doing ok cause there's no competition. Batman is a first step though - it's the first real blockbuster win for PhysX.

Now I'm not arguing that Batman isn't a hit as I think it is, but how is that a "blockbuster win for PhysX"?

I don't see the PhysX in Batman being anything more than window dressing, unless I'm missing something in which case I'm pretty sure you'll correct me.

 

[Scali]

Let's face it, no physics engine is going to be able to influence gameplay to any great extent until practically all available hardware supports it. In other words, I'd tend to doubt that this won't be for a couple of years when decent DX11 cards from both the major IHVs are widely used.

The hardware isn't the problem.
Both nVidia and AMD already have hardware capable of DirectCompute/OpenCL on the market.
The problems are mainly software at this point...
OpenCL isn't officially supported by either nVidia or AMD on publically released drivers... Havok allegedly supports OpenCL, but it hasn't been released yet either. The only other physics API that supports OpenCL afaik is Bullet. I'm not sure what the status of its OpenCL support is. But without public drivers, it's not very useful for final products at this point.

DirectCompute is currently only supported by nVidia in public drivers. But I don't know of any physics API planning to make use of DirectCompute.
Aside from that, DirectCompute will only run on Vista SP2 or Windows 7. On Vista SP2 it requires the Platform Update, which is currently still in beta stage. Windows 7 isn't released for the consumer market yet.
So while us developers can get DirectCompute running, it's not going to run out-of-the-box on a consumer machine yet. When Windows 7 launches, at least nVidia is covered, but I don't know how long AMD is going to take.
I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of XP support has something to do with the lack of interest from physics API developers to leverage the DirectCompute functionality. The number of people still gaming on XP is just too large to ignore.

The only software that actually works at this point is PhysX, and it actually works on XP, Vista and Windows 7, and it runs on Cuda, which is a very mature product by now, unlike OpenCL and DirectCompute.

 

[XMAN26]

I've yet to see any hardware accelerated physics that wows me, regardless of the middleware being used. And I know of no PhysX games that offer anything but very minor visual enhancements that while improving a title's graphics all too often incur too harsh of a performance penalty (even on high-end GPUs).

Personally, I loved GRAW2 and replay it on occasion just because of the PhysX. To me, the PhysX in that game is/was far better than the Havok PhysX of HL2. Cryostasis is another where the PhysX makes the game more realistic. To have stuff react to other things it interacts with including other parts of its original whole is realistic. Havok has not shown me that in any game as of yet. It all looks like prearranged physics and not reactionary.

 

[trinibwoy]

Now I'm not arguing that Batman isn't a hit as I think it is, but how is that a "blockbuster win for PhysX"?

I don't see the PhysX in Batman being anything more than window dressing, unless I'm missing something in which case I'm pretty sure you'll correct me.

The game is a blockbuster not the physics. Besides it's ironic to hear that "window dressing" stuff from someone who's so big on AA. The double standard is intriguing.

 

[Florin]

Huh? The game is a blockbuster not the physics. Besides it's ironic to hear that "window dressing" stuff from someone who's so big on AA. The double standard is intriguing.

I've read that complaint about current physics implementations often on this forum, you know the shpiel that they are just eye candy and nothing game changing. Always struck me as curious on a site which has cutting edge eye candy as its basic subject matter.

 

[Scali]

I've read that complaint about current physics implementations often on this forum, you know the shpiel that they are just eye candy and nothing game changing. Always struck me as curious on a site which has cutting edge eye candy as its basic subject matter.

Nonono... what is there when you look Beyond 3D? That's right, gameplay!

 

[trinibwoy]

I've read that complaint about current physics implementations often on this forum, you know the shpiel that they are just eye candy and nothing game changing. Always struck me as curious on a site which has cutting edge eye candy as its basic subject matter.

Yep, it's a blatant double standard reserved solely for PhysX but meh what can you do

 

[madyasiwi]

People seems to forget that there is a lot more to physics than just some basic newtonian principles. After all, computer graphics itself is nothing more than eye candy physics, since it is just a cheap simulation of the physics of light. So, what's wrong with having more of eye candy richness? :smile:

 

[I.S.T.]

Yep, it's a blatant double standard reserved solely for PhysX but meh what can you do

Not quite.

AA/AF currently add more to the visuals of games than PhysX has. That may change in the future, mind you.. Who knows what can/will be done with it.

 

[Scali]

Yea, graphics, like physics will always be an approximation of reality.
There are various different algorithms to approximate these phenomena. Just like there's room for triangle rasterization, REYES and raytracing side-by-side, as graphics solutions, there's also room for various physics libraries, each with their own solutions for the laws of physics, with varying levels of stability, performance, realism and all that.

 

[leoneazzurro]

Batman AA Physx support anyway is not a big deal: it slows frame rate sometimes to slideshow-level even on performance-level cards (I don´t know how it runs on a GTX285, but on GTS250 level cards I saw problems even at 1024x768 resolution).
For being this a game that promotes Physx, I think that the implementation is not the best (without having a second card to dedicate exclusively to GPU phisics, of course, but I think it´s a little too much for the average player)