Implications of havoks announcement on PC gaming

[Chaoticlusts]

So just speculation at this point I guess unless there's an announcement out there I've missed..

What's the likelyhood that Havok's PS4 announcement will translate into widespread GPU accelerated physics in gaming?

I remember years back seeing the first Physx footage and being really excited, the gaming implications could have been fantastic but sadly they kept it locked to their own hardware/Nvidia's and that was never going to work. I've been waiting for years for someone else to put out a decent physics package that wasn't locked to proprietary hardware, although I guess with the dominance of consoles they still would have been excluding a large portion of the marketbase if the consoles couldn't handle the physics.

So now with a new generation of consoles due this year, one of which is confirmed to be running GPU accelerated physics on hardware that's in PC's from a company that already provides the physics engine used in the vast majority of games released atm. Will this finally be the tipping point meaning we'll finally see advanced physics as standard in AAA titles?

This was actually the thing that excited me the most from the PS4 announcement and it didn't seem to get any coverage in the press. The graphics were nice sure but I really believe complicated physics would add so much more to gaming than another fidelity boost at this point, from the demo's that were shown I assume that's where things are heading just wondering what everyone else thought?

Also assuming Havok hasn't made any exclusivity deals what's the likelyhood of this patching into current PC hardware? Or will we have to wait for the 8xxx/7xx series GPU's to support it? Or again will it require a separate card like Physx just not a specific brand? (I doubt that last one as it was stated to be running on the PS4 GPU while that GPU handled rendering)

 

[Jaydip]

Havok runs fine on a CPU.But truth to be told I've never been very impressed by it's showing.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Havok is owned by Intel.

It would be amazing if it ran well on the iGPU's and discrete GPU's were left to do all the rendering in peace. That way everyone with an intel CPU would have a built in physics device.

 

[Chaoticlusts]

I agree it runs fine but like you said it's unimpressive. If you haven't seen them go have a look at a few of the demo's shown at the PS4 announcement and pay attention to the physics specifically (granted that stuff is easily faked in presentations). Those are damn impressive and in the past Physx always did a good job of showing impressive visual effects that could be achieved with GPUPhysics but being proprietary basically placed it in the 'proof of concept' box, not to mention guaranteeing it couldn't be gameplay impacting physics. So yes Havok did very well within the performance constraints they had to deal with, another reason I really want to see what they're capable of when those shackles are cast off.

*edit*

@VulgarDisplay That would be brilliant although would the IB GPU have the power to pull it off? I remember hoping for that back when onboard GPU's became standard with CPU's but we've never seen it, I've assumed the reason was either lack of power or lack of support to access that power (which would be odd because as you said Intel owns Havok). Although for it to really work it can't be exclusive to any vendors hardware, I'm assuming Intel knows that since Havok is running great on the PS4 which runs exclusively AMD hardware.

 

[Jaydip]

I agree it runs fine but like you said it's unimpressive. If you haven't seen them go have a look at a few of the demo's shown at the PS4 announcement and pay attention to the physics specifically (granted that stuff is easily faked in presentations). Those are damn impressive and in the past Physx always did a good job of showing impressive visual effects that could be achieved with GPUPhysics but being proprietary basically placed it in the 'proof of concept' box, not to mention guaranteeing it couldn't be gameplay impacting physics. So yes Havok did very well within the performance constraints they had to deal with, another reason I really want to see what they're capable of when those shackles are cast off.

Well you know good enough for PS4 doesn't mean it is good enough for PC :biggrin: well if the game is a complete port I don't see much enthusiasm in the PC community.The physics engine must take into consideration the advanced hardware of the pc.

 

[Chaoticlusts]

Well you know good enough for PS4 doesn't mean it is good enough for PC :biggrin: well if the game is a complete port I don't see much enthusiasm in the PC community.The physics engine must take into consideration the advanced hardware of the pc.

Lol, well I'd say those demo's rank up against anything on the PC atm. However while I'm a multiplatform gamer 90%+ of my gaming is done on PC, the years consoles come out their usually pretty competitive with average PC's at the time.

Remember though we aren't talking about porting from alien hardware across to PC anymore. The PS3 was CELL the 360 was PowerPC, the PS4 and Durango are both x86, the hardware they have will be closer to standard PC hardware than has ever been the case in the past which should cut down on crappy porting. So taking the 'advanced hardware' of the PC into account has already been done given the PS4 is running a GPU that compares in power to a $200 GPU in todays market (and consoles being dedicated devices can usually squeeze a bit more power out of their hardware). Sure it's not top of the line but dev's rarely ever make games that only work for people with $400+ brand new GPU's.

I'm not saying all praise the PS4 it's awesome, I'll stick with my PC (will probably grab a PS4 down the track after a price drop for some exclusive titles) I'm saying it's showing off something I really want to see on PC's and is doing it with budget-midrange PC hardware and am wondering how much of that we might get to enjoy on PC ^_^

 

[Lonyo]

GPU PhysX on consoles will hopefully happen, and more hopefully will be OpenCL based, so that any PC user can make use of it no matter what GPU.

If Havok do push GPU acceleration on consoles, NV will be forced to allow PhysX to work on AMD GPU hardware for consoles, which would lead to the question if they didn't allow it on PC of why.

GPU physics on consoles is basically the only way for the concept to become mainstream on PC and widely utilised, and with AMD having a lockdown, it's pretty mych the end for NV-only PhysX and general GPU physics lockdowns, if they want PhysX to have any marketshare.

Assuming everything is OpenCL, it will be basically good for everyone if developers are sensible and port well between platforms.
The main issue might be Microsoft on the next Xbox not wanting OpenCL, and instead trying to force DirectCompute or something to be used for physics, if that would even work, although hopefully the multitude of cross platform developers would push back on that.

It will also potentially allow more integrated use of GPU accelerated PhysX, rather than to add on graphical accessories, as the three main platforms would potentially support it, so one game could run on all three, and they can be designed around GPU physics being a core game element.

And of course what VulgarDisplay said, if it can run on IGP that would be even better.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

This was actually the thing that excited me the most from the PS4 announcement and it didn't seem to get any coverage in the press. The graphics were nice sure but I really believe complicated physics would add so much more to gaming than another fidelity boost at this point, from the demo's that were shown I assume that's where things are heading just wondering what everyone else thought?

The primary issues with GPU calculated physics is that it's very hard for the game logic to interact with the state of the physics simulation, if you want something like AI calculated on the CPU to navigate a complex and dynamic physics driven environment then you need to fetch the state of the system off the GPU back to the CPU and this is a slow process (in terms of real time simulation) as Gabe said before, in this regard it's more of a physics decelerator than an accelerator.

Pretty much physics done on the GPU is going to only ever be eye candy that has limited interaction with the game state, which in my opinion is a pretty big waste, and generally looks unnatural. When you see characters wading through collision-less debris in most GPU accelerated physics games it looks wrong, when you see characters using AI to dynamically navigate over and around debris in games like Ghostbusters (which uses the CPU) it adds a lot more to the game.

We actually have a lot of CPU power still knocking around, CPUs are still getting faster and ever more parallel, but we're simply not spending this processing time on anything significant in games, GPU solutions like PhysX deliberately run slowly on the CPU to promote GPU physics, but good physics engines like the one in Ghostbusters are robust and capable of a lot - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9boF-JZKcU