Hey Anand how about we dump this garbage off the front page as it was the second or third day it was posted. This is senseless Nvidia propaganda posted up for over two weeks. Come on and get back to doing some worthwhile reviews, even if it is some Nvidia hardware, at least it will not appear as obvious propagandizing.
so, where is the specification for the processor? is it a celeron? or a Core i7 ?
I am 100% positive that the Core i7 would be perfectly smooth, without any issue, and if it is not, well, the software is not optimum.
a side by side comparaison without the right caviars around it, like the machine config is may be good marketing, but without doubt misleading at best, because not informing the customers of what is compare. I wonder when the consumer association will start jumping on this behavior, they can make quite some money ...
you dont need to know the machine specs just look at the visual differences at the same frame rate (more or less) with physx on and off. Phyx off is plain and boring with simple physx like glass breaking when being shot but the blinds not moving. physx on and the glass breaks and the blinds move and there are tiny dust particles from the motion of it all all while the game stays playing smooth. It doesnt matter what cpu youre running it on because its being done on the video card.
The game without physx seems really sparse. Did they make the game look plain so that the physx would look more impressive? It seems to me that modern GPUs are so powerful that they could be used to create the same effects without the physx hardware.
I also would be concerned about EA and nVidia teaming up to incorporate this technology into games. I am all in favor of encouraging new technology, but if EA designs games primarily for nVidia cards, where does that leave you if you have an AMD video card. Are EA and nVidia trying to control both the software and hardware markets and force everyone else out?
I can see it now: after installing 3 physx accelerated games, you have to call EA-Vidia customer support for more activations!!!
Isn't that what game designers do already? Perhaps not intentionally, but when they choose a graphics engine to power their game they already know which companies graphics cards handle that particular engine. As Derek has already said numerous times this will run on any hardware it's just a question of how well. Same with current games, if you mainly play games that historically play better on AMD then you should go with an AMD/ATI card. This just seems to be an added bonus if you get the hardware the software is optimized to run on. If it's actually worth it remains to be seen and also is in your personal preference.
There are NO special effects . The "icing on the cake" cloth / nylon ribbon effects are simply removed from the normal (nonPhysix enhanced) version of the game . There is NO visual difference between the Physix version and the normal version . The materials are simply REMOVED from the normal version of the game . The correct and fair way to compare Physix to nonPhysix enhanced rendering was to LEAVE ALL THE AFFECTED OBJECTS in place to correctly weigh the difference in VISUAL IMPACT and PERFORMANCE IMPACT.
nVIDIA tried to avoid the original Ageia fiasco where, letting the effects be in both versions of the game, proved that there wasn't much of a performance difference but, on the contrary, the Physix enhanced version was actually SLOWER with the Ageaia card than a PC without the Ageia card.
I’m totally unimpressed by this river of marketing.
I don't agree. this is a crossplatform game. So the flags arent there in the first place.
The PC port team got someone from the TWIMTBP devision. And he has the so bright idea to put some flags there.
Plastic doesn't tear so easy unles its very thin and weakend.
And safety construction cloths would be to keep things inside. Maybe a pushed guy is to much but it would tear he would hang on it or fall because it stretches.
And the value for gameplay as use in this game is zero. there is interaction but not gameplay bound. Like if it wasn't there doesn't matter.
With ot without you run trough or fall trough.
So nV made theme to go insane with flags.
I like Ageia island GRAW2 map. killing a foo who runs in to a wooden hut. And saw him down with a M249 With woodenhut.
no you're missing the point. The point of the video was to show you the visual differences between physx and non-physx enabled gameplay at the same frame rate. If you went into the console and enabled the flags on the vid without physx then the framerate would be horrible. Dont believe me? try it yourself. Go download the nvidia physx pack and run the fluid demo with hardware physx on then turn the hardware physx off and run the demo again... see if you get the same framerate.
As I mentioned in the post and in the comments before now, the physical effects enabled by PhysX can and will run on any hardware. With AMD or NVIDIA hardware the effects will be possible. The only difference will be performance.
They could have put a side by side video of the effects running on AMD and NVIDIA hardware with the AMD hardware running slowly (as they claim the case would be), but people won't play the game like that -- if it doesn't perform well, they'll turn off the physics.
It makes sense to compare what it looks like with and without because if you can't get the performance to run it then even though it is possible in software and will run in software, people may not have enough CPU power or other graphics power to pick up the slack and provide playable framerates.
We would really love to test performance, but we'll have to wait until the game launches to really see what it can do. It might be that on high end systems it won't really matter what you use, but then again it might not ...
I have to agree with you. They took the items out on the left, so we can't really tell how "great" this "new" Physix(sp? who cares) stuff is.
I'm sure they have their excuse : " If we left it in, we'd have to disable Physix and write "normal" code for the shredding sheets and - blah blah blah.
Yep- appears to be total scammage at this point, and they did it to themselves - what scheisters. I guess the companies are now hiring former politicians and lobbyists for their PR and demonstration videos. They probably have "group sessions" where they get some teenagers in a room and show them "no physix" and "full physix" - then ask the kids if they want the banners and plastic tarps in their game - and they all scream " Yes!"
Then the eggheaded liars ( the l33t marketeers ) turn to their masters and shriek "this is how we'll do it !" - that 'ell be $100 $gazill$ for our cognitive excellence.
Gosh, I can't live without banners and tarps ripping and tearing...can you ? *"We'll only write them in under Physix enabled*
( No problem, really, we just need some huge fanboys spamming all over the net that they have Physix "GPU supported". I guess those people are all busy being red fans right now. )
I haven't even installed their bigbang driver - it all works great already (260 - driver CD that came with the card) so I'm not going to start screwing around.
I'm definitely underimpressed and also see they have a scam video going - so that makes it even WORSE.
Another SCAM video - wow I'm so not surprised.
hell, i would just be happy w/ a game that actually attracted me to it. the developers are wasting all this time on this special effect in an order to try to make people overlook the fact that their games suck in actual gameplay.
the last game that really grabbed me was bf1942, desert combat and then bf2 and its series - that is the kind of interaction i want, i could give 2 shits if the curtains move around...
cod4 could have had it but no interaction w/ all teh vehicles like in bf2, so i wait and still play bf2, and yes i played frontlines - just didn't have the same feel :(
I think he was saying that you are into games that (unless you add weather to them) there isnt a ton of call for physics additions. Yeah it would be cool to be able to blow up someones base with a bomb in BF2 but it would alter the entire concept of the game from an FPS to an RTS in first person. So games like BF2 are sort of stuck where they are due to their style of gameplay and overall concept. Games like warmonger which uses the concept of destroyable architecture as a basis for their levels are at the opposite end of the spectrum even though they are fps games too. Then you have the games that only use physx objects a little like ut3, Gears of War, and now mirror's edge. They use physx objects as decorations and enhancements to the overall visual style and feel of the game but nothing that actually changes the way you really play it. Though in UT3 there was a ctf mapt that you could blow the walls down on and it made it much faster to get to the flag room...
Well... I would say that with PhysX turned off they could have implemented some simpler simulations that could be handled by the CPU. We've had hanging and waving cloth simulations done that way for.... many many years without a problem. Tearing cloth is something different of course, but I thing that something really simple would do the job...
Removing all those objects from the game is just plain lame in my opinion. Anyone can do that. The game developers should show that they can actually do something with any hardware...
I would not mind to have a PPU card in my computer as long as the price is right and I can still have a choice of video card manufacturer.
Just my opinion.
i understand what you're saying. however, i'm pretty sure they will let everyone enable the physx effects in the game, but those without a ppu or physx capable nvidia gpu will have poor fps.
Sure they will let everyone enable those effects. But I wonder if they are gonna provide more complex settings (like in graphics) so that you could lower the detail of those simulations in order to have playable framerate. Actually, I am pretty sure they won't. Because then we would find out that the game can run smoothly wihtout physX on GPU and with decent physical simulations. Just like in other games that are out there today....
they just have to make sure that they're just removing the environment cloths not the ones on the clothes that the characters are wearing. they'd probably get an R rating if they do so lol.
After another look or two - and trying to be nice and ignorant about the missing elements on the left:
The tearing plastic and the way it stretched and hung off the outside rail was pretty cool I have to say -
although Kai's powergoo code would probably do the same thing.
I guess they better show the cartoon sex industry - maybe stretching condoms and jiggling body parts will drive the technology properly.
(Sadly, that's likely a very accurate guess.) lol
The PhysX implementation is impressive. Too bad about the dual driver thing, otherwise I'd toss in my 8800GT with my 4870. Any word yet, if DX11 will enable a "DirectPhysics" type of implementation rather than going with vendor specific API's?
The last I heard was that DX11 would still include its own method for hardware based physics acceleration. Where that leaves PhysX and Havok once DX11 is released is anybody's guess.
Personally I'd prefer if they became hardware agnostic engine add-on creators, like Havok used to be. IE-Create a tool that can easily integrate physics into Unreal Engine, Source, etc.
It would be nice, however, if someone went digging into what DX11 is exactly supposed to have and what some game makers are thinking about it right now. IE-Do they plan on using it after launch or will there be a typical 12-18 month lag between hardware introduction and actual software implementation? Hmm, might be an interesting article for Anandtech to pursue... :P
Hmm, do i need to have geforce card as master or can i just run this on a Radeon 38xx/48xx as a primary card and use, say, a gf 8600/9500 for the pyshics efects work?
Can this type of setup work?
The first title that shows tangible gains with hardware PhysX and proof Nvidia's investment in acquiring Ageia was worthwhile! I was pretty excited about PhysX after that initial trailer but the side-by-side comparison really shows off the differences.
well this might sound stupid, but since i know nothing about physX, would someone explain if it possible to have a ATI HD4870x2 in the 1st PCI-E slot powering the graphics (GPU), then have a 8800GT in the second PCI-E slot working as a physics processing unit (PPU)?
One of the current limitations of Vista is that you can only run one display driver using the WDDM. Since the NVIDIA driver needs to be running for PhysX to work, you cannot use ATI as a main card and NVIDIA as a PhysX card. I'm sure NVIDIA would love to allow their cards to be used even in systems with ATI graphics. Hopefully Windows 7 will change that ... though I'm not going to hold my breath.
In fact, it sounds as if DX10 and DX10.1 hardware may already be DX11 compatible.
"GAMEFEST 08: New version adds compute shaders for GPGPU; completely compatible with DirectX 10 hardware
Microsoft has revealed the first details on the latest version of its DirectX SDK at the Gamefest event in Seattle.
Chief new features in version 11 are the new Compute Shader technology, which allows GPUs to be used for general purpose computing; support for tesselation, allowing models to be refined and smoother up-close; and multi-threaded resource handling to help games utilise multi-processor set-ups more effectively.
Rather than require new hardware as DirectX 10 did, DirectX 11 will be completely compatible with DirectX 10 and 10.1 cards - but will, like its predecessor, only support Windows Vista."
I'm guessing that right now PhysX is written using CUDA. I believe it's been said that nVidia has no objection if someone were to write a CUDA interface for ATI cards. But could the same be done by third-parties for PhysX? I'm guessing not since I assume PhysX is proprietary and the source-code not available.
I wonder what the chances of nVidia porting PhysX to OpenCL is so all GPUs can be supported, not that OpenCL is finalized and awaiting final ratification.
So I wonder if PhysX get ported to OpenCL. This means ATI can be supported inderectly. Using PhysX without hacks.
nV was in battle with iNtel about CPU vs GPGPU. The larabee thing.
So nV can see ATI(AMD) as mij direct smaller enemie is also the enemie of a bigger nV enemy so the first become a 'friend'.
nV might need AMD to pull of GPGPU Physics fast. Within the next 2 á 3 years till larabee get populair.
For nV the enemy is iNTel with havok. And AMD in the middle.
The first sign of this is wenn nV give support to the ATI hacker but AMD sticks with iNtel Havok.
one of the options nvidia could take would be to go with a pci-express 4x or 8x physx add in card. The old ones are pci and produce half the number of particles that the 8800gtx produces on its own. So a faster interface would do wonders for an add in card... then nvidia could corner the market through licensing the idea out to companies (including ati) for production just like they do their video cards. Then the people who want to buy ati vid cards and ati physx cards can do so ... or ati can add a physx chip to their cards like nvidia did when they made the 8800gtx to try to do SLI physics.
They've said in the past that they would love ATI to jump on the PhysX bandwagon, but I'm sure that means they would want royalties to use it as well. One of the early reports was a few pennies per GPU, which was apparently too much to pay.
Its clear at this point that ATI does not want to support PhysX directly and that Havok is going to be a dead-end until Intel can accelerate beyond the capabilities of a CPU. The only hope for ATI imo is DX11 support of hardware physics and some kind of wrapper and licensing agreement for native PhysX titles.
I had a spelling mistake in my previous post. I meant "now" that OpenCL is finalized and awaiting final ratification.
It's surprising how quiet Intel has been with Havok. There seems to have been quite a few PhysX related announcement recently, but no real response from Intel. And it doesn't look like anything has come out of AMD's partnership with Havok either.
I don’t see anything "special" yet. I wouldn’t mind settling for a “simulated” cloth or explosion effect either with less performance loss. Comparing the kind of “simulated” effects company like valve and others have achieved, even if it’s not technically accurate, this small physics thing looks pretty weak.
If physics is going to improve our games, it got to immense us in ways regular “simulated” explosion or particle couldn’t achieve and without the performance hit.
So far, all I'm seeing for PhysX is just a few small enhanced visuals but it really doesn't contribute much to gameplay, which is where it really counts.
So by that reasoning, Mirror's Edge would be just as compelling if it used half the number of polygon's to render stuff and looked all blocky, right? I mean, graphics don't contribute to gameplay either after a certain point except to make things look nicer/more immersive.
My point is simply just because your gameplay doesn't hinge on physics like Portal doesn't mean that physics aren't important visually. Stuff that *looks* OMG awesome is fun too. Do we need dedicated physics to do it? I dunno. I do remember playing Half-Life in completely software rendered mode and thinking it was just as fun as the accelerated version (except for missing the cool transparency effects in some textures). But when was the last time a 3D game came with THAT option? :)
Graphics attracts gamers interest.
Graphics feeds marketing.
Graphics can enhance emersion.
Graphics load aslo sets your target audience.
Graphics is gameplay independand.
Graphics compete with gameplay.
PhysX uses shaders so the render module sees less shaders.
So less geo vertext pixel stuf can eb done. But TMU Rop stuf have the full GPU resources still avaible. Game can be Fillrate or more shader dependant. Wich means a fillrate heavy game like UT3 you must put the GFX setting extreem to make a G92 dive to CPU physX performance. A shader heavy Game GTX260 could get overstress by both loads.
Then what GPU. GT200 halve of it shader is almost a G80 and the other halve to, but minus 8 shaders each. Similar to a a bunch of PPU. six or so.
But wenn you take a 8600GT or 9800GTX+ you have a lot les. But PhysX could use 16 to 32 shader to have same or more power then a PPU.
For a shader effect hit.
So if you want G92B Rendering power thus a 9800GTX+ Wich nice.
But don't want to deliver much in on PhysX for the more heavy physX games. A GTX260 would be a better choice.
Morroredge PhysX recomendation is a 9800GTX.
So with 8600GT. Even the nV demo's run choppy fullscreen, unles in poststamp window size they run smooth.
My 4400+ 2GB 8600GT + PPU would be replaced by.
Ci7 920 6GB GTX280 55nm next year.
PhysX doesn't come for free. It uses the same GPU resources as Shader effects. Unified shaders.
So now waiting for the killer physX game. Wich this is not.
To make the physics essential to gameplay they have to be present on every system you play on.
Few developers are going to write a game title that can only be run playablely on NVIDIAs DX10 hardware - and considering PhysX processing takes resources from graphics shader processing they'd have to be fairly high-end ones at that - it would be commercial suicide.
Indeed, I still see no compelling reason to be excited by hardware physics yet. There is NOTHING being done in ANY title to date that cannot be done by software just as effectively.
In case it wasn't really clear, the physics simulations actually are able to run no matter what hardware you have -- they will run on an all AMD system if that's what you have. The only difference is performance.
While we haven't seen the game or benchmarked anything yet, it looks like some of the preliminary data NVIDIA is sharing with us indicates that with a 3.2 GHz i7 and a 1GB Radeon HD 4870, you could see playable frame rates with all the PhysX options enabled. Of course, they aren't going to go benchmarking the entire lineup of AMD hardware for us, so we really don't know what else may or may not be playable.
But the bottom line is that NVIDIA shows off very large performance advantages (in early beta code) when running with the physics turned on. That's their advantage here rather than feature limitations.
Which is good and what I was trying to talk about near the end of the blog post. Sorry if I was ambiguous.
This is real humorous: the cloth effects missing altogether when PhysX is disabled - what's to stop nVIDIA from manipulating the game physics in order to sell more PhysX [physical] cards? I mean we've all seen what games like Half Life 2, Fry Cry 2, Fallout 3 etc. can do without PhysX - this simply seems to be staged so that nVIDIA can sell more hardware.
Totally agree. The Source engine already does this (very successfully IMO) with the Havok physics engine. What makes PhysX better, aside from hardware acceleration?
what makes it better is that its real world(or more realistic) physics. What youve been getting with 99% of games up till now is scripted physics on almost everything and ragdoll physics on 2 or 3 objects at a time on the screen. If you run the nvidia fluid demo that is part of the nvidia physx pack (1 or 2 doesnt matter), you can change the mode of display and see that what the physx is really rendering is a bunch of tiny little spheres that have adhesion to each other at different levels of stickiness. Thats also why there is some slowdown when a lot of particles and physx actions are taking place... its rendering hundreds or even tens of thousands of little spheres and masking them with a texture to make it look like cloth, metal, meat, or liquid.
When you interact with scripted physics objects in most games (like say a door in left 4 dead) it reacts the exact same way every time no matter where you shoot it. If those doors were physx based the hole from the bullets would appear exactly where you shot the door. As you also saw in the above videos when the helicopter is shooting the window out it also moves the blinds when it hits the blinds and not just the window no matter what happens.
Basically physx is the next generation of game interaction and it doesnt hurt that ageia (the company that nvidia bought physx from) was giving out their engine for free.
Lastly did anyone of you play gears of war or unreal tournament 3? those were based on ageia physx.
All those 'physX' effects can be run without the dedicated hardware. So the question is: what's the framerate difference between dedicated hardware and software emulation?
Some Qxxxx from iNtel has 50GFlops.
GT200 has 933Gflops
while a 4870X2 has 2,4Tera flops. Maybe with OpenCL SDK rework it could do PhysX to.
And you can have more of those. Up to 4 GPU's.
Where a CPU is never dedicated!!!! Also that Cell CPU
It's about the PhysX load.
1/10 of GTX200 is like a Dual Qxxxx dedicated for physics.
If PPU is like 100GFLops dedicated it stil beats non dedicated Ci7
But takes 1/5 of a gTX280 to do comparable. Leaves 4/5 for rendering like a GTX260
5 gflops Gravity, Collisions, Ragdol, gravity gun.
50 Gflops above but with Cloths and fluids
100 Gflops as above but all object can be destructable.
200 Full basic destructable enviorment
2,4TFlop Full fine detaild destructable enviorment.
20Teraflop All PhysX features in one game posible with decent fine detail and game wide used.
Means
So games take a default mix and a enhanced mix of PhysX features depending on the target platform depends how fine detaild and how wide within the game they can use it.
So what nV PhysX means. You can optional have a lot more Physics in the game.
If you don't like a PhysX feature or it subtile it doesn't mean it not computational intensive. Like Dust its subtile its effect Physics. How much resources does it cost. Can it be scraped to enhance a other. Like make trees finer breakable feature. like a more valueble feature.
The cloths physics represents blokking tearable object. Wich is a nice touch. The hanging flags are overkill. More distracts.
A good example of PhysX is Ageia island map. knowing that it can be even better with more powerfull GPU also those in the future.
Performance CPU vs PPU vs GPU is tested with UT3 PhysX maps.
Well Mirror edge will be benched to I think in the future.
well yes and no. objects like barrels and paint cans that you can pick up with your gravity gun and shoot had ragdoll physics (the pride of havok). Those are all that had physics though ... things like the falling smoke stack when you were driving the airboat were scripted physics.
Does the actual physical PhysX card still exist anymore? Since Nvidia has purchased that company have they decided to move all physics processing to the GPU, rather than offload to an external interface?
yes they do but they are a pci (NOT pci express) and after testing with my 8800gtx physx enabled vs the hardware card... the 8800gtx puts out twice as many particles at the same framerate as the addin card. In warmonger you get a max of 20-30 fps with the addin card, which is much better than the 0-3 youd get without any physx, but its a far cry from what you get with the vid card version. They updated warmonger to version 2.5 and it runs much smoother than it used to.
It seems like the frame rate tanks pretty hard on the PhysX video when there are lots of glass shards. I wonder how noticeable that is while playing, or if it is just an anomaly.
It IS being intentionally slowed down. There is actually a subtitle in the video that states this, but it is impossible to read unless you watch the HD version.
While both videos are being slowed down, if you watch closely the left video is slow but smooth, while the right video (PhysX on) is not just slow but very jerky, indicating that the framerate could be taking a dump in some of the physics intense moments.
or you could jsut read the paragraph between the videos as it states this quite clearly. Do u guys even bother to read what they write??!
at any rate, physics is the next big step in gaming. W/ games like Crysis showing that we've practically peaked graphically, physics and AI are the 2 things left out to make games semi real.
I was just going to say that, the framerate in the second video looks awful. I mean, it looks impressive, but if you cant enable those effects without your framerate taking a nosedive, whats the point?
I thought that at first too, but then thought maybe they were slowing it down on purpose to highlight the difference. If that is indeed what they did, then it did sort of backfire, because it definitely looks like the enabled physics kills the framerate.
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shin0bi272 - Tuesday, December 16, 2008 - link
check out cryostasispcgameshardware.com/aid,670694/Reviews/Cryostasis-_DirectX_10_tech_demo_of_th
_Physx_shooter_reviewed/
Razorbladehaze - Monday, December 15, 2008 - link
Hey Anand how about we dump this garbage off the front page as it was the second or third day it was posted. This is senseless Nvidia propaganda posted up for over two weeks. Come on and get back to doing some worthwhile reviews, even if it is some Nvidia hardware, at least it will not appear as obvious propagandizing.SquareOFortune - Monday, December 15, 2008 - link
Absolutely stunning.I'll still buy ATi though. =)
shin0bi272 - Tuesday, December 16, 2008 - link
ahh spoken like a true fanboy :) would you like to buy my ageia physx add-in card? 75 bucks and its yoursevangel76 - Sunday, December 14, 2008 - link
so, where is the specification for the processor? is it a celeron? or a Core i7 ?I am 100% positive that the Core i7 would be perfectly smooth, without any issue, and if it is not, well, the software is not optimum.
a side by side comparaison without the right caviars around it, like the machine config is may be good marketing, but without doubt misleading at best, because not informing the customers of what is compare. I wonder when the consumer association will start jumping on this behavior, they can make quite some money ...
Francois
shin0bi272 - Sunday, December 14, 2008 - link
you dont need to know the machine specs just look at the visual differences at the same frame rate (more or less) with physx on and off. Phyx off is plain and boring with simple physx like glass breaking when being shot but the blinds not moving. physx on and the glass breaks and the blinds move and there are tiny dust particles from the motion of it all all while the game stays playing smooth. It doesnt matter what cpu youre running it on because its being done on the video card.frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
The game without physx seems really sparse. Did they make the game look plain so that the physx would look more impressive? It seems to me that modern GPUs are so powerful that they could be used to create the same effects without the physx hardware.I also would be concerned about EA and nVidia teaming up to incorporate this technology into games. I am all in favor of encouraging new technology, but if EA designs games primarily for nVidia cards, where does that leave you if you have an AMD video card. Are EA and nVidia trying to control both the software and hardware markets and force everyone else out?
I can see it now: after installing 3 physx accelerated games, you have to call EA-Vidia customer support for more activations!!!
Mirddin - Thursday, December 11, 2008 - link
Isn't that what game designers do already? Perhaps not intentionally, but when they choose a graphics engine to power their game they already know which companies graphics cards handle that particular engine. As Derek has already said numerous times this will run on any hardware it's just a question of how well. Same with current games, if you mainly play games that historically play better on AMD then you should go with an AMD/ATI card. This just seems to be an added bonus if you get the hardware the software is optimized to run on. If it's actually worth it remains to be seen and also is in your personal preference.East17 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
There are NO special effects . The "icing on the cake" cloth / nylon ribbon effects are simply removed from the normal (nonPhysix enhanced) version of the game . There is NO visual difference between the Physix version and the normal version . The materials are simply REMOVED from the normal version of the game . The correct and fair way to compare Physix to nonPhysix enhanced rendering was to LEAVE ALL THE AFFECTED OBJECTS in place to correctly weigh the difference in VISUAL IMPACT and PERFORMANCE IMPACT.nVIDIA tried to avoid the original Ageia fiasco where, letting the effects be in both versions of the game, proved that there wasn't much of a performance difference but, on the contrary, the Physix enhanced version was actually SLOWER with the Ageaia card than a PC without the Ageia card.
I’m totally unimpressed by this river of marketing.
SuperGee - Monday, December 15, 2008 - link
I don't agree. this is a crossplatform game. So the flags arent there in the first place.The PC port team got someone from the TWIMTBP devision. And he has the so bright idea to put some flags there.
Plastic doesn't tear so easy unles its very thin and weakend.
And safety construction cloths would be to keep things inside. Maybe a pushed guy is to much but it would tear he would hang on it or fall because it stretches.
And the value for gameplay as use in this game is zero. there is interaction but not gameplay bound. Like if it wasn't there doesn't matter.
With ot without you run trough or fall trough.
So nV made theme to go insane with flags.
I like Ageia island GRAW2 map. killing a foo who runs in to a wooden hut. And saw him down with a M249 With woodenhut.
shin0bi272 - Sunday, December 14, 2008 - link
no you're missing the point. The point of the video was to show you the visual differences between physx and non-physx enabled gameplay at the same frame rate. If you went into the console and enabled the flags on the vid without physx then the framerate would be horrible. Dont believe me? try it yourself. Go download the nvidia physx pack and run the fluid demo with hardware physx on then turn the hardware physx off and run the demo again... see if you get the same framerate.DerekWilson - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
As I mentioned in the post and in the comments before now, the physical effects enabled by PhysX can and will run on any hardware. With AMD or NVIDIA hardware the effects will be possible. The only difference will be performance.They could have put a side by side video of the effects running on AMD and NVIDIA hardware with the AMD hardware running slowly (as they claim the case would be), but people won't play the game like that -- if it doesn't perform well, they'll turn off the physics.
It makes sense to compare what it looks like with and without because if you can't get the performance to run it then even though it is possible in software and will run in software, people may not have enough CPU power or other graphics power to pick up the slack and provide playable framerates.
We would really love to test performance, but we'll have to wait until the game launches to really see what it can do. It might be that on high end systems it won't really matter what you use, but then again it might not ...
SiliconDoc - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
I have to agree with you. They took the items out on the left, so we can't really tell how "great" this "new" Physix(sp? who cares) stuff is.I'm sure they have their excuse : " If we left it in, we'd have to disable Physix and write "normal" code for the shredding sheets and - blah blah blah.
Yep- appears to be total scammage at this point, and they did it to themselves - what scheisters. I guess the companies are now hiring former politicians and lobbyists for their PR and demonstration videos. They probably have "group sessions" where they get some teenagers in a room and show them "no physix" and "full physix" - then ask the kids if they want the banners and plastic tarps in their game - and they all scream " Yes!"
Then the eggheaded liars ( the l33t marketeers ) turn to their masters and shriek "this is how we'll do it !" - that 'ell be $100 $gazill$ for our cognitive excellence.
Gosh, I can't live without banners and tarps ripping and tearing...can you ? *"We'll only write them in under Physix enabled*
( No problem, really, we just need some huge fanboys spamming all over the net that they have Physix "GPU supported". I guess those people are all busy being red fans right now. )
I haven't even installed their bigbang driver - it all works great already (260 - driver CD that came with the card) so I'm not going to start screwing around.
I'm definitely underimpressed and also see they have a scam video going - so that makes it even WORSE.
Another SCAM video - wow I'm so not surprised.
bob4432 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
They probably have "group sessions" where they get some teenagers in a room and show them "no physix" and "full physix"i think the term you are looking for is "think tank" :D all they need is a killernic and they will all be g2g
bob4432 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
hell, i would just be happy w/ a game that actually attracted me to it. the developers are wasting all this time on this special effect in an order to try to make people overlook the fact that their games suck in actual gameplay.the last game that really grabbed me was bf1942, desert combat and then bf2 and its series - that is the kind of interaction i want, i could give 2 shits if the curtains move around...
cod4 could have had it but no interaction w/ all teh vehicles like in bf2, so i wait and still play bf2, and yes i played frontlines - just didn't have the same feel :(
Griswold - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
With such a list of games you dig, you really have little room to complain about sucky gameplay. Seriously.bob4432 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
you can only play the same game for so long. w/ bf2 it has been out since 06/2005. give me something newshin0bi272 - Sunday, December 14, 2008 - link
I think he was saying that you are into games that (unless you add weather to them) there isnt a ton of call for physics additions. Yeah it would be cool to be able to blow up someones base with a bomb in BF2 but it would alter the entire concept of the game from an FPS to an RTS in first person. So games like BF2 are sort of stuck where they are due to their style of gameplay and overall concept. Games like warmonger which uses the concept of destroyable architecture as a basis for their levels are at the opposite end of the spectrum even though they are fps games too. Then you have the games that only use physx objects a little like ut3, Gears of War, and now mirror's edge. They use physx objects as decorations and enhancements to the overall visual style and feel of the game but nothing that actually changes the way you really play it. Though in UT3 there was a ctf mapt that you could blow the walls down on and it made it much faster to get to the flag room...wh3resmycar - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
the part with the chopper rising and dust and particles seems to react with the air blowing towards you was fantastic.silly thing is why did they remove the cloths when physX was disabled?
kumquatsrus - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
because the framerate would chug like a drunken sailer on the non hardware physx accelerated system in attempting to render the cloth physicsifkopifko - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
Well... I would say that with PhysX turned off they could have implemented some simpler simulations that could be handled by the CPU. We've had hanging and waving cloth simulations done that way for.... many many years without a problem. Tearing cloth is something different of course, but I thing that something really simple would do the job...Removing all those objects from the game is just plain lame in my opinion. Anyone can do that. The game developers should show that they can actually do something with any hardware...
I would not mind to have a PPU card in my computer as long as the price is right and I can still have a choice of video card manufacturer.
Just my opinion.
kumquatsrus - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
i understand what you're saying. however, i'm pretty sure they will let everyone enable the physx effects in the game, but those without a ppu or physx capable nvidia gpu will have poor fps.ifkopifko - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
Sure they will let everyone enable those effects. But I wonder if they are gonna provide more complex settings (like in graphics) so that you could lower the detail of those simulations in order to have playable framerate. Actually, I am pretty sure they won't. Because then we would find out that the game can run smoothly wihtout physX on GPU and with decent physical simulations. Just like in other games that are out there today....wh3resmycar - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
they just have to make sure that they're just removing the environment cloths not the ones on the clothes that the characters are wearing. they'd probably get an R rating if they do so lol.SiliconDoc - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
After another look or two - and trying to be nice and ignorant about the missing elements on the left:The tearing plastic and the way it stretched and hung off the outside rail was pretty cool I have to say -
although Kai's powergoo code would probably do the same thing.
I guess they better show the cartoon sex industry - maybe stretching condoms and jiggling body parts will drive the technology properly.
(Sadly, that's likely a very accurate guess.) lol
george1976 - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Indeed, not there yet...i'm not impressed, at all.Lifted - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
That was one lame demonstration. Looked like Wolfenstein with a cloth waving around.LTG - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Mirror's Edge is based on the Wolfenstein engine, licensed from Id.Pirks - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
LTG is spewing obvious bullshit here, so don't believe this lama :)Mirror's Edge is built on UE3, not on some id's tech
tim851 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
Wow, you're not very familiar with the concept of humor, are you?But thanks for pointing out that ME is not based on the Wolfenstein Engine from 1991, I'm pretty sure a lot of people fell for that...
cmdrdredd - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Yeah, has anyone played this game yet? I have and it's easily one of the worst games I've seen this year.Give me physics that MEAN SOMETHING in a game that is worth buying. Seriously? Is that all you can come up with? Waving cloth? Big woopdy doo...
giantpandaman2 - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
The PhysX implementation is impressive. Too bad about the dual driver thing, otherwise I'd toss in my 8800GT with my 4870. Any word yet, if DX11 will enable a "DirectPhysics" type of implementation rather than going with vendor specific API's?Hardin - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
This is hardly impressive. I'd expect something better than tearing fabrics and shards of glass.shin0bi272 - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
play warmongerCreig - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
The last I heard was that DX11 would still include its own method for hardware based physics acceleration. Where that leaves PhysX and Havok once DX11 is released is anybody's guess.giantpandaman2 - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Personally I'd prefer if they became hardware agnostic engine add-on creators, like Havok used to be. IE-Create a tool that can easily integrate physics into Unreal Engine, Source, etc.It would be nice, however, if someone went digging into what DX11 is exactly supposed to have and what some game makers are thinking about it right now. IE-Do they plan on using it after launch or will there be a typical 12-18 month lag between hardware introduction and actual software implementation? Hmm, might be an interesting article for Anandtech to pursue... :P
setzer - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Hmm, do i need to have geforce card as master or can i just run this on a Radeon 38xx/48xx as a primary card and use, say, a gf 8600/9500 for the pyshics efects work?Can this type of setup work?
TantrumusMaximus - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
This was answered above...chizow - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
The first title that shows tangible gains with hardware PhysX and proof Nvidia's investment in acquiring Ageia was worthwhile! I was pretty excited about PhysX after that initial trailer but the side-by-side comparison really shows off the differences.shin0bi272 - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
play warmongerdanchen - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
well this might sound stupid, but since i know nothing about physX, would someone explain if it possible to have a ATI HD4870x2 in the 1st PCI-E slot powering the graphics (GPU), then have a 8800GT in the second PCI-E slot working as a physics processing unit (PPU)?DerekWilson - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
One of the current limitations of Vista is that you can only run one display driver using the WDDM. Since the NVIDIA driver needs to be running for PhysX to work, you cannot use ATI as a main card and NVIDIA as a PhysX card. I'm sure NVIDIA would love to allow their cards to be used even in systems with ATI graphics. Hopefully Windows 7 will change that ... though I'm not going to hold my breath.strikeback03 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
Maybe it would be possible for NVIDIA to write a driver which sees the card you want to use for PhysX as something other than a display driver?haukionkannel - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Yep. That is the case. DX11 change some thing that you can use CPU for GPU tast and vice versa, but nothing about different GPU's so far.Creig - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
In fact, it sounds as if DX10 and DX10.1 hardware may already be DX11 compatible."GAMEFEST 08: New version adds compute shaders for GPGPU; completely compatible with DirectX 10 hardware
Microsoft has revealed the first details on the latest version of its DirectX SDK at the Gamefest event in Seattle.
Chief new features in version 11 are the new Compute Shader technology, which allows GPUs to be used for general purpose computing; support for tesselation, allowing models to be refined and smoother up-close; and multi-threaded resource handling to help games utilise multi-processor set-ups more effectively.
Rather than require new hardware as DirectX 10 did, DirectX 11 will be completely compatible with DirectX 10 and 10.1 cards - but will, like its predecessor, only support Windows Vista."
ltcommanderdata - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
I'm guessing that right now PhysX is written using CUDA. I believe it's been said that nVidia has no objection if someone were to write a CUDA interface for ATI cards. But could the same be done by third-parties for PhysX? I'm guessing not since I assume PhysX is proprietary and the source-code not available.I wonder what the chances of nVidia porting PhysX to OpenCL is so all GPUs can be supported, not that OpenCL is finalized and awaiting final ratification.
SuperGee - Monday, December 15, 2008 - link
iNtel AMD nVidia are supporting OpenCL.So I wonder if PhysX get ported to OpenCL. This means ATI can be supported inderectly. Using PhysX without hacks.
nV was in battle with iNtel about CPU vs GPGPU. The larabee thing.
So nV can see ATI(AMD) as mij direct smaller enemie is also the enemie of a bigger nV enemy so the first become a 'friend'.
nV might need AMD to pull of GPGPU Physics fast. Within the next 2 á 3 years till larabee get populair.
For nV the enemy is iNTel with havok. And AMD in the middle.
The first sign of this is wenn nV give support to the ATI hacker but AMD sticks with iNtel Havok.
shin0bi272 - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
one of the options nvidia could take would be to go with a pci-express 4x or 8x physx add in card. The old ones are pci and produce half the number of particles that the 8800gtx produces on its own. So a faster interface would do wonders for an add in card... then nvidia could corner the market through licensing the idea out to companies (including ati) for production just like they do their video cards. Then the people who want to buy ati vid cards and ati physx cards can do so ... or ati can add a physx chip to their cards like nvidia did when they made the 8800gtx to try to do SLI physics.chizow - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
They've said in the past that they would love ATI to jump on the PhysX bandwagon, but I'm sure that means they would want royalties to use it as well. One of the early reports was a few pennies per GPU, which was apparently too much to pay.Its clear at this point that ATI does not want to support PhysX directly and that Havok is going to be a dead-end until Intel can accelerate beyond the capabilities of a CPU. The only hope for ATI imo is DX11 support of hardware physics and some kind of wrapper and licensing agreement for native PhysX titles.
ltcommanderdata - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
I had a spelling mistake in my previous post. I meant "now" that OpenCL is finalized and awaiting final ratification.It's surprising how quiet Intel has been with Havok. There seems to have been quite a few PhysX related announcement recently, but no real response from Intel. And it doesn't look like anything has come out of AMD's partnership with Havok either.
rqle - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
I don’t see anything "special" yet. I wouldn’t mind settling for a “simulated” cloth or explosion effect either with less performance loss. Comparing the kind of “simulated” effects company like valve and others have achieved, even if it’s not technically accurate, this small physics thing looks pretty weak.If physics is going to improve our games, it got to immense us in ways regular “simulated” explosion or particle couldn’t achieve and without the performance hit.
mmntech - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
So far, all I'm seeing for PhysX is just a few small enhanced visuals but it really doesn't contribute much to gameplay, which is where it really counts.morose - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
So by that reasoning, Mirror's Edge would be just as compelling if it used half the number of polygon's to render stuff and looked all blocky, right? I mean, graphics don't contribute to gameplay either after a certain point except to make things look nicer/more immersive.My point is simply just because your gameplay doesn't hinge on physics like Portal doesn't mean that physics aren't important visually. Stuff that *looks* OMG awesome is fun too. Do we need dedicated physics to do it? I dunno. I do remember playing Half-Life in completely software rendered mode and thinking it was just as fun as the accelerated version (except for missing the cool transparency effects in some textures). But when was the last time a 3D game came with THAT option? :)
SuperGee - Monday, December 15, 2008 - link
Graphics attracts gamers interest.Graphics feeds marketing.
Graphics can enhance emersion.
Graphics load aslo sets your target audience.
Graphics is gameplay independand.
Graphics compete with gameplay.
PhysX uses shaders so the render module sees less shaders.
So less geo vertext pixel stuf can eb done. But TMU Rop stuf have the full GPU resources still avaible. Game can be Fillrate or more shader dependant. Wich means a fillrate heavy game like UT3 you must put the GFX setting extreem to make a G92 dive to CPU physX performance. A shader heavy Game GTX260 could get overstress by both loads.
Then what GPU. GT200 halve of it shader is almost a G80 and the other halve to, but minus 8 shaders each. Similar to a a bunch of PPU. six or so.
But wenn you take a 8600GT or 9800GTX+ you have a lot les. But PhysX could use 16 to 32 shader to have same or more power then a PPU.
For a shader effect hit.
So if you want G92B Rendering power thus a 9800GTX+ Wich nice.
But don't want to deliver much in on PhysX for the more heavy physX games. A GTX260 would be a better choice.
Morroredge PhysX recomendation is a 9800GTX.
So with 8600GT. Even the nV demo's run choppy fullscreen, unles in poststamp window size they run smooth.
My 4400+ 2GB 8600GT + PPU would be replaced by.
Ci7 920 6GB GTX280 55nm next year.
PhysX doesn't come for free. It uses the same GPU resources as Shader effects. Unified shaders.
So now waiting for the killer physX game. Wich this is not.
Thorburn - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
To make the physics essential to gameplay they have to be present on every system you play on.Few developers are going to write a game title that can only be run playablely on NVIDIAs DX10 hardware - and considering PhysX processing takes resources from graphics shader processing they'd have to be fairly high-end ones at that - it would be commercial suicide.
Tigerlight - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Indeed, I still see no compelling reason to be excited by hardware physics yet. There is NOTHING being done in ANY title to date that cannot be done by software just as effectively.DerekWilson - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
In case it wasn't really clear, the physics simulations actually are able to run no matter what hardware you have -- they will run on an all AMD system if that's what you have. The only difference is performance.While we haven't seen the game or benchmarked anything yet, it looks like some of the preliminary data NVIDIA is sharing with us indicates that with a 3.2 GHz i7 and a 1GB Radeon HD 4870, you could see playable frame rates with all the PhysX options enabled. Of course, they aren't going to go benchmarking the entire lineup of AMD hardware for us, so we really don't know what else may or may not be playable.
But the bottom line is that NVIDIA shows off very large performance advantages (in early beta code) when running with the physics turned on. That's their advantage here rather than feature limitations.
Which is good and what I was trying to talk about near the end of the blog post. Sorry if I was ambiguous.
Oyster - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
This is real humorous: the cloth effects missing altogether when PhysX is disabled - what's to stop nVIDIA from manipulating the game physics in order to sell more PhysX [physical] cards? I mean we've all seen what games like Half Life 2, Fry Cry 2, Fallout 3 etc. can do without PhysX - this simply seems to be staged so that nVIDIA can sell more hardware.frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
I agree also. I just posted comments that brought up the same issue.Spivonious - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
Totally agree. The Source engine already does this (very successfully IMO) with the Havok physics engine. What makes PhysX better, aside from hardware acceleration?shin0bi272 - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
what makes it better is that its real world(or more realistic) physics. What youve been getting with 99% of games up till now is scripted physics on almost everything and ragdoll physics on 2 or 3 objects at a time on the screen. If you run the nvidia fluid demo that is part of the nvidia physx pack (1 or 2 doesnt matter), you can change the mode of display and see that what the physx is really rendering is a bunch of tiny little spheres that have adhesion to each other at different levels of stickiness. Thats also why there is some slowdown when a lot of particles and physx actions are taking place... its rendering hundreds or even tens of thousands of little spheres and masking them with a texture to make it look like cloth, metal, meat, or liquid.When you interact with scripted physics objects in most games (like say a door in left 4 dead) it reacts the exact same way every time no matter where you shoot it. If those doors were physx based the hole from the bullets would appear exactly where you shot the door. As you also saw in the above videos when the helicopter is shooting the window out it also moves the blinds when it hits the blinds and not just the window no matter what happens.
Basically physx is the next generation of game interaction and it doesnt hurt that ageia (the company that nvidia bought physx from) was giving out their engine for free.
Lastly did anyone of you play gears of war or unreal tournament 3? those were based on ageia physx.
GaryJohnson - Monday, December 15, 2008 - link
All those 'physX' effects can be run without the dedicated hardware. So the question is: what's the framerate difference between dedicated hardware and software emulation?SuperGee - Monday, December 15, 2008 - link
I see it this way. If Chips performe like this.Some Qxxxx from iNtel has 50GFlops.
GT200 has 933Gflops
while a 4870X2 has 2,4Tera flops. Maybe with OpenCL SDK rework it could do PhysX to.
And you can have more of those. Up to 4 GPU's.
Where a CPU is never dedicated!!!! Also that Cell CPU
It's about the PhysX load.
1/10 of GTX200 is like a Dual Qxxxx dedicated for physics.
If PPU is like 100GFLops dedicated it stil beats non dedicated Ci7
But takes 1/5 of a gTX280 to do comparable. Leaves 4/5 for rendering like a GTX260
5 gflops Gravity, Collisions, Ragdol, gravity gun.
50 Gflops above but with Cloths and fluids
100 Gflops as above but all object can be destructable.
200 Full basic destructable enviorment
2,4TFlop Full fine detaild destructable enviorment.
20Teraflop All PhysX features in one game posible with decent fine detail and game wide used.
Means
So games take a default mix and a enhanced mix of PhysX features depending on the target platform depends how fine detaild and how wide within the game they can use it.
So what nV PhysX means. You can optional have a lot more Physics in the game.
If you don't like a PhysX feature or it subtile it doesn't mean it not computational intensive. Like Dust its subtile its effect Physics. How much resources does it cost. Can it be scraped to enhance a other. Like make trees finer breakable feature. like a more valueble feature.
The cloths physics represents blokking tearable object. Wich is a nice touch. The hanging flags are overkill. More distracts.
A good example of PhysX is Ageia island map. knowing that it can be even better with more powerfull GPU also those in the future.
Performance CPU vs PPU vs GPU is tested with UT3 PhysX maps.
Well Mirror edge will be benched to I think in the future.
Spivonious - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
Play HL2? It had tons of non-scripted physics (imo scripted physics aren't physics at all). All done in software, very smoothly.shin0bi272 - Sunday, December 14, 2008 - link
well yes and no. objects like barrels and paint cans that you can pick up with your gravity gun and shoot had ragdoll physics (the pride of havok). Those are all that had physics though ... things like the falling smoke stack when you were driving the airboat were scripted physics.raskren - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Does the actual physical PhysX card still exist anymore? Since Nvidia has purchased that company have they decided to move all physics processing to the GPU, rather than offload to an external interface?shin0bi272 - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
yes they do but they are a pci (NOT pci express) and after testing with my 8800gtx physx enabled vs the hardware card... the 8800gtx puts out twice as many particles at the same framerate as the addin card. In warmonger you get a max of 20-30 fps with the addin card, which is much better than the 0-3 youd get without any physx, but its a far cry from what you get with the vid card version. They updated warmonger to version 2.5 and it runs much smoother than it used to.poco153 - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
It seems like the frame rate tanks pretty hard on the PhysX video when there are lots of glass shards. I wonder how noticeable that is while playing, or if it is just an anomaly.VaultDweller - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
There's text at the bottom of the video stating that the slowdown was done in post-production.I don't know whether the videos posted here are high-resolution enough for the text to be legible, I'm at work and can't view them right now.
glynor - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
It IS being intentionally slowed down. There is actually a subtitle in the video that states this, but it is impossible to read unless you watch the HD version.Screen cap here: http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/6201/capture2ex...">http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/6201/capture2ex...
iamezza - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
While both videos are being slowed down, if you watch closely the left video is slow but smooth, while the right video (PhysX on) is not just slow but very jerky, indicating that the framerate could be taking a dump in some of the physics intense moments.Griswold - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
Noticed that as well. Nice way to cover your ass when your pants dropped...DerekWilson - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
or you could just hit the full screen button on our site ;-)glynor - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Good point!poco153 - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Good eye :pThanks!
poohbear - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
or you could jsut read the paragraph between the videos as it states this quite clearly. Do u guys even bother to read what they write??!at any rate, physics is the next big step in gaming. W/ games like Crysis showing that we've practically peaked graphically, physics and AI are the 2 things left out to make games semi real.
glynor - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
The article was updated after these posts. Thanks for being a jerk though!Proteusza - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
I was just going to say that, the framerate in the second video looks awful. I mean, it looks impressive, but if you cant enable those effects without your framerate taking a nosedive, whats the point?Tanclearas - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
I thought that at first too, but then thought maybe they were slowing it down on purpose to highlight the difference. If that is indeed what they did, then it did sort of backfire, because it definitely looks like the enabled physics kills the framerate.darckhart - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
I'm getting a video not available error on that 2nd clip.DerekWilson - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
fixed. let me know if there are any other issues.