PhysX: PS3 can handle it; 360 features limited

[Tap In]

Hey man that's not true. But really though what happened to my PMing rights?

[threadjack]
of course I was kidding , but in response to your question...

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23045

[/threadjack]

 

[Titanio]

Oh give it a rest...it's really getting annoying watching you grasp at straws to try and put down X360 and elevate PS3. These are video game consoles...who cares???

Let's all pack up our bags and go shall we?

So CELL is going to have more power for simulating physics, what else is new? Didn't we already consider this one of CELL's main strengths?

Some of us did. But something tells me that if this had been presented as a "conclusion" prior to yesterday, you and others would be jumping all over it and asking "how can you say that?", "where's your proof?" etc. So yeah, it matters when something solid comes along that presents new information that isn't in the realm of guesswork.

Why don't you just pony up and buy both consoles? Then you can actually look forward to both and maybe, just maybe give up your thinly veiled crusade against a white plastic box called X360?

Oh dear. OK, I just want to clear something up right now:

Because I acknowledge PS3's advantage with physics, I don't want to buy a X360 now? And I am "teh biased"?

Let's get a couple of things straight. I am buying a X360 and a PS3 and a Revolution this gen as I bought a PS2 and Xbox and GC last gen. However, I make NO apologies for finding technical favour in one, or even favouring one fullstop if it merits it. I absolutely abhor this notion, so prevelant on games messageboards, that in order to maintain "credibility" or the appearance of impartiality, one must be careful never to come to any conclusions that could offend someone else, or can never find favour in something someone else doesn't - or as is relevant more recently, never even to suggest something that could irk someone else. That we simply have to sit down and look at everything equally and find no distinguishing features and advantages, to never judge, and that this makes us "unbiased". Rubbish! Have a little backbone. If I find something to like in one system more than another, I'm not going to pretend to like another to the same degree for the same reasons. It's such a pathetic outlook and I simply won't share it. If I find more to like technically in PS3, I won't be afraid to express that. If I hope that a system I'm purchasing months later, and possibly for more money, will be more powerful than what's come before, again I make absolutely no apology for that. It would be perverse to hope otherwise. And since I'm technically inclined, I may well develop a soft spot generally for one system that appeals to me technically. I'll make no apologies for that.

Does that make me biased? Is a judge biased when he finds in favour of one party? People make judgements all the time, people make conclusions all the time. That may make you uncomfortable if they're not the type of conclusions you want to hear, but that's not my problem. That's where, if you wish, we can enter into debate.

edit - to get back to "normal" debate, Alpha, on the point about graphics and physics - physics can help make things look better. You can use them purely for "presentational" purposes if you wish, and it can lend a better graphical quality. E.g. when your smoke behaves better, when your grass bends underfoot, when your explosions look and behave properly etc. etc. Physics and graphics are becoming increasingly bound to one another, at least as far as graphics "in motion" are concerned.

 

[aldo]

Half a dozen and then a few dozen developers (especially Japanese) who will do their own thing. I agree though, this only bodes well for the PS3 if Novodex takes off.

You hit the nail on the head, my friend. However, what will everyone emphasize? They'll emphasize what they can see, namely visuals. I doubt that people are going to buy a game because of the awesome physics. This generation could end up seeing PS3 having the edge in graphics if Novodex spreads like a wildfire while the Xbox 360 pulls ahead graphically. Sounds like a technical stalemate to me. In the end though, I believe that there won't be a large difference in games across platforms graphically or physics-wise.

This is a question that is left unanswered. What if findings are released that show that Havok runs better on Xbox 360. What could we conclude? Nothing, nothing at all. In fact, if it is true that the PhysX chip and the Cell are similar architecturally (still waiting for this to be confirmed), then that may be all the explanation we need. I doubt sincerely that Ageia would spend time optimizing code for the Cell and Xenon when they are trying to pimp their own hardware. It's a cross-platform SDK but you better bet your dollar that this thing runs better on the PhysX chip than any piece of hardware out there. If the Cell matches the PhysX chip physically and logically, then that may explain the performance similarity.

I don't think Ageia busted their asses coding for either of the consoles. Maybe it just turns out that the Cell architecture was more port friendly. I doubt that the Novodex SDK is 100% architecture agnostic.

Nice post. Not quite as impactive or insightful as:

In the grand sceme of things, this means absolutely jack shit. It's just one SDK. ONE.

...or this one for that matter:

who cares???

I'm excited about both consoles and am extremely interested in the strengths and weaknesses of both consoles just to satisfy my curiousity regarding the technological potential of these machines.

it's really getting annoying watching you grasp at straws to try and put down X360 and elevate PS3.

FYI, in another post I dismissed a posters assumption that an Xbox developer's whining signified that the X360 was a poor hardware design. I believe that the two systems are very close technically, but I will be just as keenly interested when an unbiased source divulges superior strengths of the X360.

 

[Tap In]

cool article on the how/what the Havok engine was implemented by Bungie in Halo2 (the physics are what I appreciate about this game the most).

http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=havokhalo2feature

But the only thing better than Havok moving objects around, is having those objects collide and explode. Charlie alludes to this point: “One of the cool things we got out of Havok is the whole contact point system. Knowing where things were touching and whether or not they were going in the direction we wanted, we got this ability to deal with damage from the physics engine itself in terms of how hard objects are reacting with each other.â€￾

That aspect of Havok had other benefits in unexpected areas. It allowed our audio engineers to apply audio to Havok objects where they interacted with specific surfaces. That meant the sound of a Ghost scraping against concrete, or a Hog colliding with a Wraith, could be altered based on information being tracked by Havok.

also a comment by Nick Gray of Havok

The next generation of consoles is going to be a huge deal for Havok as the need for 3D and physics becomes even more essential than the near-saturation point of today. If Bungie's next project requires physics, Havok looks like it will be ready for the complications inherent in new architectures.

Havok's Nick Gray takes that fact seriously, saying, "A lot of the new consoles have quite different architecture and they will have massively greater computational power, but it might be represented in a different way, so it will likely be massively parallel. The bottleneck might switch from being actually computing the data to getting it out of the parallel processors. And so fundamentally the architecture is going to change dramatically for the new consoles and to some extent that will affect the design of the software. We’ve known that for a while, so we've had that in our minds and have made changes towards that. So I don’t think there will be any major surprises."

 

[scooby_dooby]

I'd hope that PS3 wouldn't need all 7 SPEs to run a high-end physics engine for a game - otherwise what's left for the next-gen AI and graphics?

Jawed

Point was that Dev's for both systems have issues to overcome, not that all 7 SPE's would be required for physics.

Let's all pack up our bags and go shall we?

Not really, just quite trying to twist and pull every bit of information to try and build up one console over another. It's really pointless and annoying.

 

[Titanio]

Not really, just quite trying to twist and pull every bit of information to try and build up one console over another. It's really pointless and annoying.

As is your whining. You've a problem with me trying to get more information? What? And your constant misspelling of my name. You know, you have to go out of your way to do that. How immature can you be?

Get a grip.

 

[seismologist]

This quote from Tim Sweeny is perfect in terms of what we are going to see from next gen physics compared to last gen...

GameSpot: How did you react when you first saw the Ageia PPU? Would you say that the PhysX chip will bring on a new physics revolution in gaming similar to the 3D revolution sparked by 3dfx in the 1990s?

Tim Sweeney: It's very clearly an idea whose time has come. In games, software-based rigid body dynamics physics has been in use for about five years. It also took about five years from the release of the first realistic 3D games (Wolfenstein 3D and Doom) to the first truly great 3D accelerator, the 3dfx Voodoo1. This is about the time that an industry-changing idea takes from first implementation to industrywide change including hardware adoption. Physics and graphics are both areas where dedicated hardware can exploit the problem domain's underlying parallelism to deliver far more performance than a sequential CPU.

 

[dukmahsik]

This quote from Tim Sweeny is perfect in terms of what we are going to see from next gen physics compared to last gen...

GameSpot: How did you react when you first saw the Ageia PPU? Would you say that the PhysX chip will bring on a new physics revolution in gaming similar to the 3D revolution sparked by 3dfx in the 1990s?

Tim Sweeney: It's very clearly an idea whose time has come. In games, software-based rigid body dynamics physics has been in use for about five years. It also took about five years from the release of the first realistic 3D games (Wolfenstein 3D and Doom) to the first truly great 3D accelerator, the 3dfx Voodoo1. This is about the time that an industry-changing idea takes from first implementation to industrywide change including hardware adoption. Physics and graphics are both areas where dedicated hardware can exploit the problem domain's underlying parallelism to deliver far more performance than a sequential CPU.

great timing, looking forward to a dedicated ppu in the ps4/xbox 720

 

[seismologist]

the PlayStation 3 and a PhysX PC will have the horsepower to process all of the technology's features

apparently thanks to Cell, the PS3 wont require a dedicated PPU

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

apparently thanks to Cell, the PS3 wont require a dedicated PPU

LOL! Unless the RSX can double as a CPU, I think you're jumping to conclusion. Like any tech demo, everything's in a vacuum. I thought the Cell was supposed to do graphics, AI and sound as well. Keep in mind that the PPU has nothing to do but crunch physics.

 

[dskneo]

LOL! Unless the RSX can double as a CPU, I think you're jumping to conclusion. Like any tech demo, everything's in a vacuum. I thought the Cell was supposed to do graphics, AI and sound as well. Keep in mind that the PPU has nothing to do but crunch physics.

you know how much of Cell will these physics consume?

no...

you know how much will sound consume?

no...

how know how much will AI consume?

no...

we know nothing about this.
You dont either, so please stop it. Stop downplaying everything Cell as shown so far. We can only win with Cell and its capabilities.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

I typed out a detailed response, but as usual IE crashed on me. But in short, I wasn't under-playing anything. I thing your over-hyping Cell's capabilities.

 

[BlueTsunami]

Under Hype, Over Hype...no one can make that determination yet. We haven't seen the CELL being used in a standard system yet (which will be the PS3). So over hyping or under hyping it should be impossible because there no basis for hyping it at all since we haven't seen the solid application in question yet using the CELL fully (IE: Video Games)

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

I agree. I would rather err on the side of caution than to end up with egg on my face in the ****** bin. I think that anyone implicitly grouping the Cell's capability with a dedicated PPU is downright silly.

 

[Jawed]

Does anyone know the GFLOPs rating of the PPU card Ageia is proposing to sell this autumn?

Jawed

 

[BlueTsunami]

LOL..I put in PPU Gflops rating in google....and Beyond3d came up a few times. How many times has PPU been brought up here? There also seem to be no idea as of yet the GFlop rating of Ageias PPU yet...would be interesting to see what it is.

 

[mckmas8808]

I agree. I would rather err on the side of caution than to end up with egg on my face in the ****** bin. I think that anyone implicitly grouping the Cell's capability with a dedicated PPU is downright silly.

Alpha you are too smart to say something like that. Some people (like me) are grouping CELL's capability with a dedicated PPU because statements like these.

Although the PhysX libraries accelerate a host of technologies, from physical object interactions to fluid-based particle effects like water and smoke, only the PlayStation 3 and a PhysX PC will have the horsepower to process all of the technology's features, Ageia executives said. The Xbox 360 will not be able to process the fluid-based technology, because of the limitations of its architecture.

 

[BlueTsunami]

Alpha you are too smart to say something like that. Some people (like me) are grouping CELL's capability with a dedicated PPU because statements like these.

That statement is a little deceptive though. Have they truly and honestly pin pointed the problem being the 360's horsepower? As it was stated..it could be the SDK. It will be interesting to see what Havok or any other company would say about the 360's ability to process physics. Seeing Ageias PPU flop rating would also put things in context.

 

[Titanio]

One thing that would be interesting to get clarification on is the characterisation of Cell's relative performance from the 4Gamer article. One said that "basically" it says PhysX = PS3 Cell from a performance point of view, but is there anything more specific than that? Any specific quotes? (asides from the "PS3 can do lots" quote ).

Also interested in any more specifics on what SenatorMonkey mentioned about how they were using one SPU - any clarification on that? They're using 1 SPU in Cell for cloth/FD? Using 1 SPU for that which would take one core in Xenon? A little confused by that comment.

Cheers!

 

[mckmas8808]

One thing that would be interesting to get clarification on is the characterisation of Cell's relative performance from the 4Gamer article. One said that "basically" it says PhysX = PS3 Cell from a performance point of view, but is there anything more specific than that? Any specific quotes? (asides from the "PS3 can do lots" quote ). Cheers..

Look Titanio for some reason some people want to fight this issue more than be happy about it. I can't figure out why this is. This is the first time that someone has came out and given some concret evidence on how physics in the PS3 will compare to a dual-core CPU with the PhysX chip included.

They have said it themselves. We are not making it up. How this may change 2 or 3 years from now we don't know. But for some reason Aegia has made the statements that they have said.