New Mafia II PhysX ON/OFF video.

[Kenmitch]

Even a little protest toward PhysX is too much.


Everyone has an opinion, and I'd completely accept any sort of tak it or leave it stance, but to outright bash it makes zero sense.
/2cents

Look at it this way.

When a person states an opinion and you see an ATI card in the sig you call it bashing, jealosy, etc!

When you state your opinion and others see your sig they automaticaly jump into viral marketing, pro nvidia mode!

The whole problem is when things are pushed into RED vs GREEN team mode as it doesn't help the cause at all.

When you split up into team mode a person has the tendancy to apply the sports attitude towards the situation. Not gonna go into great detail but if you have ever been wrapped up into a specific sport you'll get the idea.

 

[taltamir]

What about PhysX SDK 3.0?

No just a simple "recompile".

fair enough, they certain have improved and developed the technology since the acquisition, even if they didn't originally create it.

Besides which, nvidia got the actual Aegia employees who created it when they bought the company, and those still work for nvidia developing future physX versions...

 

[Keysplayr]

Look at it this way.

When a person states an opinion and you see an ATI card in the sig you call it bashing, jealosy, etc!

When you state your opinion and others see your sig they automaticaly jump into viral marketing, pro nvidia mode!

The whole problem is when things are pushed into RED vs GREEN team mode as it doesn't help the cause at all.

When you split up into team mode a person has the tendancy to apply the sports attitude towards the situation. Not gonna go into great detail but if you have ever been wrapped up into a specific sport you'll get the idea.

That may very well be a difference between us. I don't generally look at sigs unless the particular member is having a problem. Then I do need to see what they have if they haven't described their rigs in the posts.
My point was pretty simple to see. The protests for PhysX go above an beyond the normal call of duty. Like I said, I can fully understand the opinion of "Meh" or "I can take it or leave it", but in no way is the bashing that PhysX gets justified. It is a technology that is being developed by one company. You should all be grateful, or if grateful is too much to swallow, how about pleased? There is a company out there that is pushing new technologies every day. PhysX should have been received very well, no matter which company you favor. Whatever you think of it, "Meh" "I can take it or leave it", it's something MORE. No matter how you frost it, it offers more that what we had before. And will continue to offer more and more as time goes on. People have been saying it would die since 2007, but here we are with new games being released utilizing it.

Bashing PhysX by anybody, does... not... make... sense. Goes against techno geeks bible. You don't have to love it, by any stretch. You can completely ignore it because you can take it or leave it for feel "meh" about it. You can turn it off anytime you want. In fact, with this option of not even using it, why then would there be soooo much protest? Just don't use it.

No argument can make sense of it either.
"Nvidia cut off ATI users from using PhysX GPUs"
Well, they have an option. If they want PhysX, they know what they have to do. If they don't care about it, then they have no conundrum.
Those who do wish to use PhysX but can't because they wish to continue to use AMD as their GPU, that is a bummer, but that is how it is. Anyone can use PhysX if they want to, but this may entail an adjustment to their rig configurations. If you wanted Hyperthreading but had an AMD rig, guess what? Time to change your config.

You don't like what I'm saying, and that's fine, but don't try to tell me that technology bashing of any kind is justified. Especially when a company gives more to it's customers. And if you question the word "more" here, I'd be hard pressed to think of a way you can show that it's "less". Or even worse, "nothing".

 

[WelshBloke]

That may very well be a difference between us. I don't generally look at sigs unless the particular member is having a problem. Then I do need to see what they have if they haven't described their rigs in the posts.
My point was pretty simple to see. The protests for PhysX go above an beyond the normal call of duty. Like I said, I can fully understand the opinion of "Meh" or "I can take it or leave it", but in no way is the bashing that PhysX gets justified. It is a technology that is being developed by one company. You should all be grateful, or if grateful is too much to swallow, how about pleased? There is a company out there that is pushing new technologies every day. PhysX should have been received very well, no matter which company you favor. Whatever you think of it, "Meh" "I can take it or leave it", it's something MORE. No matter how you frost it, it offers more that what we had before. And will continue to offer more and more as time goes on. People have been saying it would die since 2007, but here we are with new games being released utilizing it.

Bashing PhysX by anybody, does... not... make... sense. Goes against techno geeks bible. You don't have to love it, by any stretch. You can completely ignore it because you can take it or leave it for feel "meh" about it. You can turn it off anytime you want. In fact, with this option of not even using it, why then would there be soooo much protest? Just don't use it.

No argument can make sense of it either.
"Nvidia cut off ATI users from using PhysX GPUs"
Well, they have an option. If they want PhysX, they know what they have to do. If they don't care about it, then they have no conundrum.
Those who do wish to use PhysX but can't because they wish to continue to use AMD as their GPU, that is a bummer, but that is how it is. Anyone can use PhysX if they want to, but this may entail an adjustment to their rig configurations. If you wanted Hyperthreading but had an AMD rig, guess what? Time to change your config.

You don't like what I'm saying, and that's fine, but don't try to tell me that technology bashing of any kind is justified. Especially when a company gives more to it's customers. And if you question the word "more" here, I'd be hard pressed to think of a way you can show that it's "less". Or even worse, "nothing".

Thats an interesting argument. You cant criticise something because it exists.

I'm pretty much in the Meh camp, I've been waiting for this wonderful game changing Applesque experience, and I'm still not seeing any magic pixie dust. If you didnt push it so much people probably wouldnt feel the need to give you their opinion.

 

[HurleyBird]

My point was pretty simple to see. The protests for PhysX go above an beyond the normal call of duty. Like I said, I can fully understand the opinion of "Meh" or "I can take it or leave it", but in no way is the bashing that PhysX gets justified. It is a technology that is being developed by one company. You should all be grateful, or if grateful is too much to swallow, how about pleased?

Really, Nvidia brings a lot of it on to themselves.

a. It does seem like a lot of hardware accelerated titles disable too much when PhysX is disabled.

b. The entire saga of artificially disabling their own cards when in use with an ati card. Going so far as to sabatouge the direction of gravity when a 'physx hack' is detected. If intel was doing this, they'd be up to their elbows in lawsuits already. AMD of course pefers Nvidia to behave this way because it prevents physx from taking off, makes people mad at nvidia, and if in a long shot physx does take off they can sue nvidia for even more damages.

c. Disabling support of the original physx cards from working alongside ATI graphics in newer drivers.

Besides that though, I have no problem with a company trying to push a new technology, and I do admire it. The problem here is the way Nvidia has been trying to use PhysX as a blunt instrument. They aren't interested in advancing techonology of making PhysX a standard (or they would, you know, not try to limit adoption rate), instead they seem to see it as a marketing bullet point that they can leverage until an industry standard does materialize.

 

[Ares1214]

With physx on it looks like the guns are firing pebbles!

 

[TurtleCrusher]

That may very well be a difference between us. I don't generally look at sigs unless the particular member is having a problem. Then I do need to see what they have if they haven't described their rigs in the posts.
My point was pretty simple to see. The protests for PhysX go above an beyond the normal call of duty. Like I said, I can fully understand the opinion of "Meh" or "I can take it or leave it", but in no way is the bashing that PhysX gets justified. It is a technology that is being developed by one company. You should all be grateful, or if grateful is too much to swallow, how about pleased? There is a company out there that is pushing new technologies every day. PhysX should have been received very well, no matter which company you favor. Whatever you think of it, "Meh" "I can take it or leave it", it's something MORE. No matter how you frost it, it offers more that what we had before. And will continue to offer more and more as time goes on. People have been saying it would die since 2007, but here we are with new games being released utilizing it.

Bashing PhysX by anybody, does... not... make... sense. Goes against techno geeks bible. You don't have to love it, by any stretch. You can completely ignore it because you can take it or leave it for feel "meh" about it. You can turn it off anytime you want. In fact, with this option of not even using it, why then would there be soooo much protest? Just don't use it.

No argument can make sense of it either.
"Nvidia cut off ATI users from using PhysX GPUs"
Well, they have an option. If they want PhysX, they know what they have to do. If they don't care about it, then they have no conundrum.
Those who do wish to use PhysX but can't because they wish to continue to use AMD as their GPU, that is a bummer, but that is how it is. Anyone can use PhysX if they want to, but this may entail an adjustment to their rig configurations. If you wanted Hyperthreading but had an AMD rig, guess what? Time to change your config.

You don't like what I'm saying, and that's fine, but don't try to tell me that technology bashing of any kind is justified. Especially when a company gives more to it's customers. And if you question the word "more" here, I'd be hard pressed to think of a way you can show that it's "less". Or even worse, "nothing".

Here's the thing, I feel like I speak for many when I say that "physics" in games should be up to game developers and not a single GPU manufacturer. All of these effects have already been done on the CPU without such an immense need for performance. Just look at basic havok effects in HL2. 6 years old and the game still have good physics effects which runs on ALL hardware.

Physx will really take off when it can actually do physics it in realtime. Maybe implement some triple buffering to physx calculations. What I'm referring to is even with hardware physx, there is still that momentary delay from when two objects collide. If it has a little delay, why even bother. That compeltely takes away from the realism factor of physx, making it look and perform no better than pre-rendered/calculated actions. Maybe if it had some soft of object collision prediction (maybe it does, poorly?) then it would actually look really cool. Until then, It's not even meh. It's bothersome.

And Keys, do you really believe in proprietary standards?

Things like this should be a DX or OpenGL standard, IMO. Not for just one select group of customers.

 

[taltamir]

Really, Nvidia brings a lot of it on to themselves.

a. It does seem like a lot of hardware accelerated titles disable too much when PhysX is disabled.

b. The entire saga of artificially disabling their own cards when in use with an ati card. Going so far as to sabatouge the direction of gravity when a 'physx hack' is detected. If intel was doing this, they'd be up to their elbows in lawsuits already. AMD of course pefers Nvidia to behave this way because it prevents physx from taking off, makes people mad at nvidia, and if in a long shot physx does take off they can sue nvidia for even more damages.

c. Disabling support of the original physx cards from working alongside ATI graphics in newer drivers.

Besides that though, I have no problem with a company trying to push a new technology, and I do admire it. The problem here is the way Nvidia has been trying to use PhysX as a blunt instrument. They aren't interested in advancing techonology of making PhysX a standard (or they would, you know, not try to limit adoption rate), instead they seem to see it as a marketing bullet point that they can leverage until an industry standard does materialize.

dead on... this especially concerns me. I know that if physX ever DOES take off, AMD is going to sue, and win, by citing all those things nvidia did way back when. (remember when every country was rushing into to fine the heck out of intel?)

 

[Kenmitch]

You don't like what I'm saying, and that's fine, but don't try to tell me that technology bashing of any kind is justified. Especially when a company gives more to it's customers. And if you question the word "more" here, I'd be hard pressed to think of a way you can show that it's "less". Or even worse, "nothing".

So what your saying with this statement is if you buy an nvidia card they give you more features like physX. When you enable this feature you get less framerates and when you decide to try an ATI card as primary you get nothing

Damn....I hate even responding back as it gives the thread a bump to the top.

 

[taserbro]

Really, Nvidia brings a lot of it on to themselves.

a. It does seem like a lot of hardware accelerated titles disable too much when PhysX is disabled.

b. The entire saga of artificially disabling their own cards when in use with an ati card. Going so far as to sabatouge the direction of gravity when a 'physx hack' is detected. If intel was doing this, they'd be up to their elbows in lawsuits already. AMD of course pefers Nvidia to behave this way because it prevents physx from taking off, makes people mad at nvidia, and if in a long shot physx does take off they can sue nvidia for even more damages.

c. Disabling support of the original physx cards from working alongside ATI graphics in newer drivers.

Besides that though, I have no problem with a company trying to push a new technology, and I do admire it. The problem here is the way Nvidia has been trying to use PhysX as a blunt instrument. They aren't interested in advancing techonology of making PhysX a standard (or they would, you know, not try to limit adoption rate), instead they seem to see it as a marketing bullet point that they can leverage until an industry standard does materialize.

a. You mean details that don't look complex enough to require physx are turned off, right? Unless I'm misunderstanding you here, that's actually an arguable point. Details that don't look that much better than non-physics effects could simply be the result of a mediocre implementation of the physics but that wouldn't make them any less computation-intensive if they were run on the cpu. If anything, blame the game devs for being lazy instead of nvidia, who gave them all the tools needed to do a good job short of doing it for them.

b. I still don't really understand people think there's anything lawsuit worthy. You guys are just exaggerating, right? Is there a law that says that the category of technologies physx belongs to needs to be open-sourced and developed for the benefit of all competing corporations? Does the lack of ati/physx support inhibit ati's sales compared to if physx didn't exist? Did nvidia advertise their cards as supported with a hybrid setup?
IANAL but I've yet to see a compelling case whose merit isn't based on a technicality.

c. This argument rings a bell... when confronted with catalyst 10.8 issues, some people were told "if your drivers work, why update them?" Do the original ppu drivers no longer work for what they were designed?

dead on... this especially concerns me. I know that if physX ever DOES take off, AMD is going to sue, and win, by citing all those things nvidia did way back when. (remember when every country was rushing into to fine the heck out of intel?)

I do remember. Intel lost because they outright bribed laptop manufacturers to use their igps instead of their competitors' products in what was blatant anti-competitive practices; that's a pretty big stretch from nvidia not giving away its homework to its competitors for free. Again, am I missing something illegal that nvidia has done?

So what your saying with this statement is if you buy an nvidia card they give you more features like physX. When you enable this feature you get less framerates and when you decide to try an ATI card as primary you get nothing

Discount the merits of physx effects all you want but you could have said the same about a lot of now ubiquitous gpu techs back when they were still in their infancy. If all innovations were met with such hostility before they were given a chance to mature, we'd all still be playing games that more or less look like mafia2 in five generations.

(edit)
Damn....I hate even responding back as it gives the thread a bump to the top.

Then feel free to respond without doing so; you've clearly shown the ability to do just that and unlike you, I didn't have a means to respond to you without bumping it before I responded. Not that I see anything wrong with that.

 

[HurleyBird]

a. You mean details that don't look complex enough to require physx are turned off, right? Unless I'm misunderstanding you here, that's actually an arguable point. Details that don't look that much better than non-physics effects could simply be the result of a mediocre implementation of the physics but that wouldn't make them any less computation-intensive if they were run on the cpu. If anything, blame the game devs for being lazy instead of nvidia, who gave them all the tools needed to do a good job short of doing it for them.

It's just an observation, and it may even be way off, but myself and others have noticed that many PhysX games with hardware physX disabled seem to scale back to an unreasonable level. IIRC, a good example is this freezer room in Batman:AA where there are 'cold air' particles in PhysX mode and *absolutely nothing* in non-physics mode. We've been using particles for these types of effects since when? 1998? Again, it's just an observation and obviously there is no way to prove it one way or the other -- but the perception that this kind of stuff is happening gets people riled up.

b. I still don't really understand people think there's anything lawsuit worthy. You guys are just exaggerating, right? Is there a law that says that the category of technologies physx belongs to needs to be open-sourced and developed for the benefit of all competing corporations? Does the lack of ati/physx support inhibit ati's sales compared to if physx didn't exist? Did nvidia advertise their cards as supported with a hybrid setup?

It's pretty simple really: from a consumer standpoint Nvidia is denying user's the ability to use their hardware in certain configurations. Anyone with a main ATI card and an old Nvidia card lieing around who wants to try PhysX is going to be understandably mad with Nvidia. Your example about Nvidia not advertising their cards functioning with ATI cards is bad. It's like saying a company can make exploding cars as long as they don't advertise that the cars don't explode. Really, the big issue from a consumer standpoint is that on the box it does not say that the card stops functioning if an ATI card is also in the system.

As far as AMD sueing Nvidia, they have every right to for Nvidia's blatant anti-competitive behaviour. They won't because it isn't in their best interests, but they will if PhysX ever takes off. It's like if the video transcoding engine in sandy-bridge stopped working in the presence of an Nvidia card. Or AMD not letting Nvidia GPUs run in next to their processors. Any company that blocks the use of their product in the presence of a competitor's is going to lose *hard* in court unless they can prove a valid technical reason for doing so. No doubt keyes will make some long-shot fringe argument on why there are potential technical reasons, as would Nvidia's lawyers, but the very simple PhysX hacks show that there isn't almost beyond a doubt.

c. This argument rings a bell... when confronted with catalyst 10.8 issues, some people were told "if your drivers work, why update them?" Do the original ppu drivers no longer work for what they were designed?

The original PPU drivers may or may not work properly for future titles. In any case, anybody with two brain cells to rub together can understand that there is a *huge* difference. *accidently* introducing bugs in newer drivers (which happens all the time) and *intentionally* creating issues. I really do hate throwing the 'F' word around, but my God does that kind of argument ring of fanboyism.

 

[taltamir]

a. You mean details that don't look complex enough to require physx are turned off, right? Unless I'm misunderstanding you here, that's actually an arguable point. Details that don't look that much better than non-physics effects could simply be the result of a mediocre implementation of the physics but that wouldn't make them any less computation-intensive if they were run on the cpu. If anything, blame the game devs for being lazy instead of nvidia, who gave them all the tools needed to do a good job short of doing it for them.

That might be the case... but it seems fishy as there are other plausible explanations which are not as... clean.

 

[taserbro]

It's just an observation, and it may even be way off, but myself and others have noticed that many PhysX games with hardware physX disabled seem to scale back to an unreasonable level. IIRC, a good example is this freezer room in Batman:AA where there are 'cold air' particles in PhysX mode and *absolutely nothing* in non-physics mode. We've been using particles for these types of effects since when? 1998? Again, it's just an observation and obviously there is no way to prove it one way or the other -- but the perception that this kind of stuff is happening gets people riled up.

Look, I don't mean to insinuate any side is right or wrong here but people get riled up for much less than that and it doesn't make them right. Perception is one thing but putting fervor into theorycrafting possible scenarios of dastardly evil doings from what could be explained as the devs' lack of time to re-implement a neat effect to run on cpu is a bit ridiculous imo. You have all the rights in the world to speculate but I draw the line at completely unfounded accusations that make it sounds like a fact.

It's pretty simple really: from a consumer standpoint Nvidia is denying user's the ability to use their hardware in certain configurations. Anyone with a main ATI card and an old Nvidia card lieing around who wants to try PhysX is going to be understandably mad with Nvidia. Your example about Nvidia not advertising their cards functioning with ATI cards is bad. It's like saying a company can make exploding cars as long as they don't advertise that the cars don't explode. Really, the big issue from a consumer standpoint is that on the box it does not say that the card stops functioning if an ATI card is also in the system.

As far as AMD sueing Nvidia, they have every right to for Nvidia's blatant anti-competitive behaviour. They won't because it isn't in their best interests, but they will if PhysX ever takes off. It's like if the video transcoding engine in sandy-bridge stopped working in the presence of an Nvidia card. Or AMD not letting Nvidia GPUs run in next to their processors. Any company that blocks the use of their product in the presence of a competitor's is going to lose *hard* in court unless they can prove a valid technical reason for doing so. No doubt keyes will make some long-shot fringe argument on why there are potential technical reasons, as would Nvidia's lawyers, but the very simple PhysX hacks show that there isn't almost beyond a doubt.

I have some problems with that analogy. A car exploding is clearly a catastrophic failure of the product and not the function it is advertised to perform. Li-ion batteries can explode in very rare and specific circumstances but nobody advertises them as such because they aren't designed to do that (edit, sorry it's late and I pick bad examples; by that I don't mean those don't have warning labels which is another affair entirely, rather I mean li-ion cells aren't sold as "cheap, high power density and useful makeshift incendiary device that can burn through steel" because they aren't meant for that); on the other hand, hand grenades are advertised as explosive and nobody has a problem with them because that's the function it was designed for.

An nvidia card not working as secondary ppu in a system doesn't stop it from performing the jobs it was advertised to perform perfectly. A better analogy would be people being angry at a car manufacturer for not providing an adapter to retrofit their older car radios into their competitors' radioless cars, even though it is clearly capable of doing that job. Intel would probably get away with turning off some function of their hardware if paired with a competitor's redundant solution if they don't break a law I don't know about.

Lastly, I use the term anti-competitive rather loosely but in the context of anti-trust, you actually have to do something that breaks those laws to fit the bill. Again, I've seen no legal argument that would yield anything other than a dose of ridicule and a healthy lawyer bill in an actual court of law.
Further claiming that they'll have their day in court yet leads me to believe those statements are made in anger rather than based on actual legal merit.

The original PPU drivers may or may not work properly for future titles. In any case, anybody with two brain cells to rub together can understand that there is a *huge* *accidently* introducing bugs in newer drivers (which happens all the time) and *intentionally* creating issues. I really do hate throwing the 'F' word around, but my God does that kind of argument ring of fanboyism.

Look I understand the frustration for actual ppu card owner who got ripped off on this deal but we could say the same about s3 being bought out and their cards not getting windows 7 drivers or ibm's laptop divisions being bought out and their oldest iterations of hardware no longer being supported. Nvidia really has no obligation to support those ppus for new titles and I agree that it would have been very classy of them for doing it anyway but again, calling them out because they didn't go above their obligations in order to protect their own assets within a pretty tumultuous market could also be said to be f-word-y.

That might be the case... but it seems fishy as there are other plausible explanations which are not as... clean.

It's possible but think of it this way:
If you were a company like nvidia with as much to lose as they do in their current situation, would you take the risk of this kind of shady business just for a benefit so intangible that people in this very thread claim can't notice the difference even in a video that was designed to emphasize the difference? To quote the daily show, they'd either have to be veeery evil or verrry stupid...
...or maybe we shouldn't attribute to malice what could be much more reasonably be attributed to incompetence.

 

[Dribble]

The discussion about why mafia 2's cpu physics are nvidia's fault is stupid. It's an xbox game, it's cpu physics are highly optimised to work with an xbox cpu not a core i7. The PC simply gets the xbox game, the devs haven't bothered to do enhanced effects taking advantage of a faster PC's cpu.

So you think nvidia are the scum of the earth if they don't provide those effects? If the dev's don't do it then surely that's intel or amd's jobs - they are the ones providing the faster PC cpu. Nvidia doesn't even make cpu's?

So nvidia provides better effects for an nvidia graphics card. Well no surprise there, they are doing it to sell graphics cards, no other reason. But because no other company - the devs, intel, amd can be bothered to invest like this nvidia is bad?

Only one company is actually doing anything and that's the one everyone wants to hate? It's a twisted world we live in. Why not hate the devs for not trying harder with their PC port? Or amd for do absolutely nothing but talk? Or intel for taking over havok and then basically killing new development on it?

 

[HurleyBird]

You have all the rights in the world to speculate but I draw the line at completely unfounded accusations that make it sounds like a fact..

I never made it sound like a fact. My first had "it seems" not "it is: and my second post stipulated that it's just an observation. In any case, even though there might be some things that point to foul play it's impossible to prove. It's also impossible to prove otherwise. Obviously if there was no perception of Nvidia crippling hardware physX titles no one would be riled up. If there was proof then everyone would be riled up. Right now there is only an unprovable perception, so it makes sense that it riles up people but to a lesser degree, especially whith other physX drama

I have some problems with that analogy.

The car analogy was extreme, granted, but it was valid. Marketing your product as something that it isn't is false advertising, but it doesen't work the other way around. Not advertising your product's limitations doesen't magically get you off the hook in this kind of situation. Here's a less extreme example: Imagine if Half-life 3 came out without the ability to run on Windows 7, people bought the game assuming (as they should) that it would, and Valve's reponse afterwards was "well, we never advertised that HL3 would run on Windows 7".

An nvidia card not working as secondary ppu in a system doesn't stop it from performing the jobs it was advertised to perform perfectly..

Yes it does. On the box it's advertised to perform PhysX. You don't actually figure out that it can't run phsyX coupled with an ATI card unless you search the nvidia website. And the justification on the website "complicated technical connections that only exist between Nvidia cards" is completely, demonstrably false.

A better analogy would be people being angry at a car manufacturer for not providing an adapter to retrofit their older car radios into their competitors' radioless cars, even though it is clearly capable of doing that job.

No. Not creating an "adaptor" for two things that otherwise *do not* function together is not the same as taking two things that *would* normally function together and sabatoging one of them so they no longer do. Not adding something != taking something away.

Lastly, I use the term anti-competitive rather loosely but in the context of anti-trust, you actually have to do something that breaks those laws to fit the bill. Again, I've seen no legal argument that would yield anything other than a dose of ridicule and a healthy lawyer bill in an actual court of law.
Further claiming that they'll have their day in court yet leads me to believe those statements are made in anger rather than based on actual legal merit.

Let's get things straight. I *do not* beleive there will be a lawsuit. To reiterate my stance, AMD could sue Nvidia anytime they wanted to but will not because Nvidia is shooting themselves in the foot by stiffling PhysX adoption. The last thing AMD wants is for PhysX to work with ATI cards.

That being said, if PhsyX ever does really take off, which is the giantest of long-shots, then you'll definitely see a lawsuit. I'm not a lawyer, but I do know that a common misconception is that anticompetitive law can only be used against big companies. From wikipedia because looking up the actual laws is outside the scope of a forum post:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

"Competition law, or antitrust law, has three main elements: ...
banning abusive behavior by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position."

That last part is why AMD could sue Nvidia at any time. If phsyX ever does take off they could sue nvidia under the first part (and obviously have an eaiser time making their case)

Look I understand the frustration for actual ppu card owner who got ripped off on this deal but we could say the same about s3 being bought out and their cards not getting windows 7 drivers or ibm's laptop divisions being bought out and their oldest iterations of hardware no longer being supported. Nvidia really has no obligation to support those ppus for new titles and I agree that it would have been very classy of them for doing it anyway but again, calling them out because they didn't go above their obligations in order to protect their own assets within a pretty tumultuous market could also be said to be f-word-y.

Again, apples and oranges. Discontinuing support for a product is *way* different than continuing support but removing the functionality that was previously there to run alongside a completely unrelated part made by your competitor. It's not even apples and oranges. It's apples and chicken soup.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Hello to Green team Denmark! How's the weather over there today/tonight/tomorrow or thatever it is?

From one fallacy to another..

How's this for a defination....Seems to fit the best

It sucks, as it is an fallacy...but thanks for conferming my previous post.

Of considerable use, service, or importance!

ZZzzzzzZZZZzzzzZZZZZz...

Currently the only real use is for marketing purposes only. If you think that it can be used to a greater extent more power to you! It's up to the develpopers to use it or not to use it. Seems like with a divided market it's not gonna be of much use to them.

That is a flat out lie
Hardware physics in games has been much more since 2006...where I enjoyed CellFactor and altered gameplay in Ghost Recon (the added physics debri did damage)

Now what nvidia should do is physX done right. Maybe nvidia should purchase a game developer and use physX to it's true potential the way it's suppost to be played or whatever the saying is....Oh wait they wouldn't do that as it would cut off 1/2 of the customer base for the game(s)

NVIDIA is doing fine.
It's AMD that is dragging it's ass, delivering nothing.

When and if nvidia can make physX work without substantial framerate loss without the need for purchasing a dedicated physX card while even running their best cards in SLI then maybe they'll have something....My theory is it won't happen anytime soon! Hell it might not even be possible at all.

You really need to read up on physics and the amount of calculations needed for physics...debating with you is pointless if you foundation is ignorance

Maybe your into the dust particle's and shell casings along with unrealistic effects for the most part, and like physX at it's current implementation....But for the most part others are not. It's not just those running an AMD/ATI card it's your fellow nvidia users at the same time.

I'll take ANY hcange over the "*boom* - *debri* - *debri inactive* - *debri gone" we have now.
Scripted animations need to go for physics simulations ASAP.

It's about suspension of disbeleif.

I'm not sure but it seems like some posters here have some kinda obligation to defend nvidia's honor....Or they just have so much vested in nvidia that it's their way of justifying the purchase of their products in the past, present, and future

Again, you are putting cart before horse.
It's people feeling and need to defend AMD's apati that causes these debates to spur.
Mostly because people on AMD's side can't cope with that AMD's got nothing...while the other side does.

It will be fun in ~2015 when AMD finally delivers on hardware physics, to watch the AMD change stance about about hardware physics ( :wub: )

I guess a reply without fresh content to debate is kinda useless.

Nice resume of your post :thumbsup:

Why do you think that nvidia nuked the drivers so physX wouldn't work if an AMD/ATI card is detected as primary?

Or AMD didn't wan't to pay a fee for PhysX and put a NVIDIA sticker on their boxes?

Couldn't be because they are getting a free ride as they'd have to pay to play. Couldn't be to protect the IP as it would be done on a nvidia card. Could it be that even nvidia knows that for physX to work at it's best the use of the physX card needs to be independant and handling it's job only? I'm sure nvidia nuked physX for a reason and it doesn't involve IP, taking a free ride, or for the money!

It's been fun watching your tinfoil hat dribble, but honestly do read up:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/AMD-PhysX-Havok,news-1950.html

 

[Lonbjerg]

The discussion about why mafia 2's cpu physics are nvidia's fault is stupid. It's an xbox game, it's cpu physics are highly optimised to work with an xbox cpu not a core i7. The PC simply gets the xbox game, the devs haven't bothered to do enhanced effects taking advantage of a faster PC's cpu.

So you think nvidia are the scum of the earth if they don't provide those effects? If the dev's don't do it then surely that's intel or amd's jobs - they are the ones providing the faster PC cpu. Nvidia doesn't even make cpu's?

So nvidia provides better effects for an nvidia graphics card. Well no surprise there, they are doing it to sell graphics cards, no other reason. But because no other company - the devs, intel, amd can be bothered to invest like this nvidia is bad?

Only one company is actually doing anything and that's the one everyone wants to hate? It's a twisted world we live in. Why not hate the devs for not trying harder with their PC port? Or amd for do absolutely nothing but talk? Or intel for taking over havok and then basically killing new development on it?

It's painfully clear for me...but I need to ask, just to be 100% sure:

You have never used the PhysX SDK and you have no clue how the compiling works, right?

 

[Dribble]

It's painfully clear for me...but I need to ask, just to be 100% sure:

You have never used the PhysX SDK and you have no clue how the compiling works, right?

What's that got to do with anything?

 

[Lonbjerg]

What's that got to do with anything?

You can't even rember your own words?:

The discussion about why mafia 2's cpu physics are nvidia's fault is stupid. It's an xbox game, it's cpu physics are highly optimised to work with an xbox cpu not a core i7. The PC simply gets the xbox game, the devs haven't bothered to do enhanced effects taking advantage of a faster PC's cpu.

That part make is sadly obvious that you don't know what you are talking about in regards to PhysX and how you compile for PhysX.

That for confirming my suspesions.

.oO(Sad that most at the bashing of PhysX, on a tech-site none the less, is based on simple ignorance )

 

[Keysplayr]

You can't even rember your own words?:



That part make is sadly obvious that you don't know what you are talking about in regards to PhysX and how you compile for PhysX.

That for confirming my suspesions.

.oO(Sad that most at the bashing of PhysX, on a tech-site none the less, is based on simple ignorance )

While I'm fairly certain you misunderstood Dribble, and engaged in an unnecessary attack on him, I'd still very much like to hear your level of expertise in compiling for PhysX. WITHOUT the nastiness if you please.

 

[Pantalaimon]

For those who are pro PhysX, let me ask you something. Did HL 2 need GPU PhysX to implement that nifty gravity gun into the game? Has GPU PhysX managed to add anything as compelling and interesting as that gravity gun into any game?

That's the kind of compelling game feature that I would like to see added to games with GPU or CPU physics, but so far all GPU PhysX effects seem to be overdone eye candy.

 

[Keysplayr]

For those who are pro PhysX, let me ask you something. Did HL 2 need GPU PhysX to implement that nifty gravity gun into the game? Has GPU PhysX managed to add anything as compelling and interesting as that gravity gun into any game?

That's the kind of compelling game feature that I would like to see added to games with GPU or CPU physics, but so far all GPU PhysX effects seem to be overdone eye candy.

That would be pretty cool, but did you notice if HL2 also had ambient mist/fog/steam that reacted when you used that grav gun to throw an object through it? Did you throw it though a hanging tapestry and have the object rip through it? Did you have shards of glass break and fall all over when you threw an object through a window?
There is a lot more going on since HL2. I think Crysis was one of the best (more recent) examples of CPU physics than anything else. And you can see how tough it is on even the latest most advanced systems.
And by the way, there shouldn't be anyone who isn't "pro PhysX", and even more so, against it. If all of us are THAT into technology, then no matter what PhysX does not offer at this time, the next moves should be anticipated rather than bashed or a call for it's demise.

 

[HurleyBird]

I agree with both of you guys. Phsyics has come a long way since Half Lifee, but sespite that we haven't seen anything done with physics any more interesting than HL2 did with the gravity gun. With a few exceptions (destruction in Crysis, and then even better destruction in Bad Company 2), the advances in physics have seemed gimmicky at best, and overkill look-at-me-I-have-lots-of-debris masturbation at worst (yes, I'm looking at you Mafia 2!). With the exception of cellfactor way back when, PhysX has felt *very* gimmicky since no one seems to want to do interesting things with it.

I was hugely excited with the PPU when it was first announced, and I still beleive in the basic idea. We need an industry standard though, before game developers use physics in new and interesting ways.

 

[Keysplayr]

I agree with both of you guys. Phsyics has come a long way since Half Lifee, but sespite that we haven't seen anything done with physics any more interesting than HL2 did with the gravity gun. With a few exceptions (destruction in Crysis, and then even better destruction in Bad Company 2), the advances in physics have seemed gimmicky at best, and overkill look-at-me-I-have-lots-of-debris masturbation at worst (yes, I'm looking at you Mafia 2!). With the exception of cellfactor way back when, PhysX has felt *very* gimmicky since no one seems to want to do interesting things with it.

I was hugely excited with the PPU when it was first announced, and I still beleive in the basic idea. We need an industry standard though, before game developers use physics in new and interesting ways.

All current industry standards were just ideas at one point. PhysX may still become that standard even if it means OpenCL is the way. But OpenCL has a long way to go to get anywhere near CUDA at this point.

 

[HurleyBird]

Only way PhysX will become the standard is if they port it to OpenCL (or have two version: CUDA for GeForce, OpenCL for everything else). That way it will run on AMD GPU's whether AMD likes it or not. That would require a giant (and welcome) shift in Nvidia's decision making process though.

Personally, I don't care what becomes the industry standard, I just want it to happen already. PhysX so far has been a great dissapointment, but I still beleive that the idea can lead to great things once we have an industry standard and developers embrace it.