Your Take on PhysX

[novasatori]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
For those lamenting that gameplay is more important then graphics- there is a PC Gaming forum, I post there all the time, it really does work. If all you care about is gameplay, it's a good forum for you. This is the Video forum, coming in here and saying graphics don't matter seems an awful lot like thread crapping. I'm not saying I disagree with you in any way shape or form, but games are allowed to have good graphics and good gameplay. Honestly.

I see this as two different issues rolled in to one honestly.

First off, there is no big leap coming for graphics rendering on the actual rendering side for many years. We are at the point now where the 'big jumps' are going to be compression of the complexity of shaders utilized and the speed in which they run at. Outside of lighting models way beyond anything on the horizon(several orders of magnitude beyond RTRT) there isn't going to be another shocker in terms of graphics fidelity.

More advanced physics in games, particularly particle effects, are going to be the, by far, largest improvement we are going to see in game visuals for a long time now. Yes, there are other areas we are going to see progress being made, but none of them have the potential to have as much impact in a short span of time as significantly more advanced physics.

With that said, the only physics platform right now that is a viable alternative to that end is PhysX. Yes, I know that Havok will have GPU support at some date in the future. After OpenCL is finalized, after we have drivers that support it, after Havok gets ported over THEN developers can START taking advantage of it. Don't get me wrong, any game coming out in a timeframe to use GPU accelerated Havok have at it, but I was really hoping that we would see a bit better adoption of technology that can help push the industry forward. We have had the technology available to us for years already, we have an installed base of over 100 million PCs and Macs that can run PhysX right now, a bit better adoption rate from developers would be welcome(this year looks to be much better in this regard, we actually have a decent selection of titles hitting with proper support).

In terms of PhysX itself, as a physics API it really isn't much different from Havok. The only big difference at this point in time is that PhysX can run on MUCH faster hardware and hence, do more to enhance the visual experience in games. For that reason, and no other, right now I like PhysX quite a bit more then the alternatives.

How much of a factor would it be for me buying hardware right now? Well, with close to parity between parts I would rather have the part that supported it then not, and with price and performance being so close it could end up being the deciding factor for me, but that is mainly due to the fact that everything else is so close. If we were seeing faster adoption of more advanced physics by game makers, that would change things considerably. Losing 10% raw framerate for a huge visual benefit in a decent selection of games would likely be a worth while trade off for me.

This would have been so much easier if ATi would have gotten PhysX up and running on their hardware when nV offered. Then everyone could be benfitting now instead of having the loyalists from either camp fighting about it

:thumbsup:

very nice post

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
For those lamenting that gameplay is more important then graphics- there is a PC Gaming forum, I post there all the time, it really does work. If all you care about is gameplay, it's a good forum for you. This is the Video forum, coming in here and saying graphics don't matter seems an awful lot like thread crapping. I'm not saying I disagree with you in any way shape or form, but games are allowed to have good graphics and good gameplay. Honestly.

I see this as two different issues rolled in to one honestly.

First off, there is no big leap coming for graphics rendering on the actual rendering side for many years. We are at the point now where the 'big jumps' are going to be compression of the complexity of shaders utilized and the speed in which they run at. Outside of lighting models way beyond anything on the horizon(several orders of magnitude beyond RTRT) there isn't going to be another shocker in terms of graphics fidelity.

More advanced physics in games, particularly particle effects, are going to be the, by far, largest improvement we are going to see in game visuals for a long time now. Yes, there are other areas we are going to see progress being made, but none of them have the potential to have as much impact in a short span of time as significantly more advanced physics.

With that said, the only physics platform right now that is a viable alternative to that end is PhysX. Yes, I know that Havok will have GPU support at some date in the future. After OpenCL is finalized, after we have drivers that support it, after Havok gets ported over THEN developers can START taking advantage of it. Don't get me wrong, any game coming out in a timeframe to use GPU accelerated Havok have at it, but I was really hoping that we would see a bit better adoption of technology that can help push the industry forward. We have had the technology available to us for years already, we have an installed base of over 100 million PCs and Macs that can run PhysX right now, a bit better adoption rate from developers would be welcome(this year looks to be much better in this regard, we actually have a decent selection of titles hitting with proper support).

In terms of PhysX itself, as a physics API it really isn't much different from Havok. The only big difference at this point in time is that PhysX can run on MUCH faster hardware and hence, do more to enhance the visual experience in games. For that reason, and no other, right now I like PhysX quite a bit more then the alternatives.

How much of a factor would it be for me buying hardware right now? Well, with close to parity between parts I would rather have the part that supported it then not, and with price and performance being so close it could end up being the deciding factor for me, but that is mainly due to the fact that everything else is so close. If we were seeing faster adoption of more advanced physics by game makers, that would change things considerably. Losing 10% raw framerate for a huge visual benefit in a decent selection of games would likely be a worth while trade off for me.

This would have been so much easier if ATi would have gotten PhysX up and running on their hardware when nV offered. Then everyone could be benfitting now instead of having the loyalists from either camp fighting about it

For the consumer, having one Phsyics standard is very beneficial. But from the business standpoint, there is no reason for ATi to follow a proprietary standard set by their rivals nVIDIA.

Espeically when nVIDIA never actually "offered" ATi anything in the first place. Godfrey Cheng, AMD's Director of technical marketing at Graphic product group confirmed that Nvidia never really offered PhysX to ATI.

Either than that good post. :thumbsup:

 

[taltamir]

according to ngohq, the guys doing the physX port, at first AMD was hostile and nvidia cooperative, then nVidia got hostile too and now both companies are doing all in their power to torpedo a porting of physX to AMD.

 

[BFG10K]

My take at the moment is that both APIs have competent software implementations and that?s the way I run them at this time. I have games that use software Havok and software PhysX offering decent performance and physics effects on the CPU.

Once more hardware titles start coming out then hardware physics might become a factor, but at the moment it?s a non-issue for me. This is coming from someone with an nVidia card.

As for hardware PhysX support, I?ve been asking for a list of hardware accelerated titles but I never got one, until now:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3539&p=8

It?s painfully obvious that the list from nzone looks very different when it?s stripped down past the marketing bullshit. From the 12 remaining titles, most are not even out yet and many that are (e.g. UT3 and GRAW2) only benefit in very specific maps.

So again, hardware PhysX (and Havok for that matter) is a non-factor for me at this time.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: taltamir
according to ngohq, the guys doing the physX port, at first AMD was hostile and nvidia cooperative, then nVidia got hostile too and now both companies are doing all in their power to torpedo a porting of physX to AMD.

That's what I heard as well.

Nvidia wanted it to be standard so they could push it to developers, and of course their cards would get better support and the proper bug fixes first for those titles. However, AMD didn't really want it. They said they would rather work with Havok (although it's Intel's baby atm) and declined to support CUDA (physx) on their GPUs and likely pay some type of licensing fee to Nvidia for it. So Nvidia got angry at this apparent slap in the face and decided to halt any development of physx on AMD hardware.

 

[shortylickens]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: shortylickens

Originally posted by: Red Storm
I will take interest in PhysX (or HavokFX, or any other GPU-accelerated physics engine) when they allow for actual game play changes. Shooting holes in cloth and better looking window explosions mean nothing to me.

Ditto.

I care nothing for visuals. I want gameplay.
That why I, you know, PLAY GAMES!

If I wanted to stare at something pretty & useless I'd just go to the Hooters website.

Then you can go play NES or Atari right?

I never had an Atari, and I still play the handful of NES games that are worth playing, like Final Fantasy & Crystalis. But thats because they came out with GBA versions and I think Final Fantasy is on the Wii's retro games list, isnt it?
I never said gameplay is automatically better simply because its older. Most of the titles on the NES had horrible gameplay, but we simply didnt know any better, se we kept playing. Does anyone else remember the frustration of TMNT or Karnov?
The SNES improved things a great deal in both gameplay and graphics. It was wonderful, and I still play a lot of the better titles from that era.
The Playstation was good but I noticed that devs had already started sacrificing gameplay for pretty visuals around that time. Final Fantasy 7 was OK, not too many video sequences and they normally came after some good gaming, but FF8 overdid things a bit. It was pretty obvious to me they put more effort into 3D graphics and video clips and not nearly enough into gameplay.
Of course I am the majority. Most people loved that game. And thats when it started, the change in gamers' thought processes that led them to believe the pretty colors they weren't controlling were much more interesting than the mediocre colors they were controlling.
I think it has a lot to do with the new generation of gamers coming into the scene. Most of us who grew up with a NES or Sega had graduated high school by the time FF8 came out. Heck, I graduated in 1997 and I seem to recall FF7 came out just a few months later. I had very little free time or disposable income at that point, but I went ahead and got a Playstation anyway, just I could experience that one game. Great stuff, but even as I was playing it I knew I had moved on and wouldnt be part of the new gaming scene. No matter. Care free club sex turned out to be a long more interesting, once I learned how to convince girls I was desperately in need of nookie.

Where was I?
OH YES!

Back to the original point, most of the really excellent games I've played since then did NOT try to push the graphics bar to the next level. They settled on already established graphics and focused on gameplay, which is of course, THE REASON FOR PLAYING GAMES! Again I have to point out that if all I wanted to do was stare at the pretty colors I could just watch Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Polar Express, Chronicles of Narnia, Appleseed, or Lord of The Rings.
I play games because of the interactive part, and I prefer to play good games because I like to have fun. Wasting my time on stuff that is not fun is really damn stupid. And for me most modern games arent fun. Only the ones where the developers put gameplay first even have a chance.
Deus Ex, Baldurs Gate, Knights of the Old Republic are prime examples.
For shooters it would be Serious Sam, Max Payne, and even Red Faction. Also Half-Life 2.
RTS's? Act Of War and World in Conflict come to mind.
Sports: I still prefer the old Tiger Woods 2004.

It should be noted that out of all those games only WiC had cutting-edge graphics when it came out. HL2 was considered good but not top-of-the-line at the time.

Back to PhysX (which was the original point of the thread): Seems like all its done for us so far is enhance the graphics by giving us more and more complex objects to wrap textures around. I'll be much more interested when it changes the way we play games, probably in ways that may never be fully realized. As an example, in Mechwarrior I always thought it would be cool if you could actually track thousands of bullets and hundreds of missiles at the exact same time, and even calculate the effects of their impact on a hundred different body parts, and have those changes actually affect how the Mech operates. I should think PhysX would be perfect for collision detection like that. (I'm talking about computer 3D collision detection, not guns & armor collisions).

Interestingly enough, GRID does an excellent job of that and it does NOT require a PhysX card. Of course, they only have a dozen cars and they probably dont have hundreds of crumple zones on each vehicle.
I'd like to see a huge Mech fight with a dozen beasts on each side and plenty of lesser ground troops as well. All of them shooting like mad.
Can I have that?
That would actually be fun.

Am so sorry this thread got derailed. I honestly thought I was making a relatively simple comment that would have been understood by everyone, even if they didn't agree with me. Guess I was wrong.

 

[AmberClad]

The "iROLLO" posts and any replies quoting or discussing them were removed due to the possibility for thread derailment.

AmberClad
Video Moderator

 

[MarcVenice]

Read Anandtechs review of the GTX275. Look at the slides Nvidia provided to them. I attended the same GTX275 meeting. Pretty much all attendees were complaining about 2 slides about GTX275, vs a gazillion slides about physx. Physx crap we A) knew allready, or B) do/did not care about. Physics *not physx* can be a wonderfull thing, but not in the way Nvidia pushes it. We a) need more powerfull videocards and b) we need an open standard. Physx will NOT make it.

My stance on physx = die, my stance on physics = yes please !

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: AmberClad
The "iROLLO" posts and any replies quoting or discussing them were removed due to the possibility for thread derailment.

AmberClad
Video Moderator

So iRollo is not allowed to post?

 

[Wreckage]

If not for NVIDIA we would only be talking about the possibility of GPU physics someday being available.

I'm glad PhysX is taking off, especially since Havok is lagging so far behind.

Originally posted by: MarcVenice

My stance on physx = die, my stance on physics = yes please !

This is exactly why I hope PhysX succeeds. ATI and their fanbase are trying so hard to torpedo Physx simply because they don't have a solution of their own.

Basically setting back gaming development out of petty bias.

 

[Rubycon]

I just want more applications to use CUDA for encoding in A/V NLE operations.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

I'm glad PhysX is taking off, especially since Havok is lagging so far behind.

Where is that? I don't see PhysX taking off...It's something there, but it's not doing anything important for the moment.

 

[JSt0rm]

Te only thing cool I see about physX is that fact I can use my old 8800gts as the physX processor and pick up a new card. Only thing is do I want to commit to a new nvidia card or go to AMD but it will be a part of my decision so smart move.

 

[geokilla]

Originally posted by: JSt0rm01
Te only thing cool I see about physX is that fact I can use my old 8800gts as the physX processor and pick up a new card. Only thing is do I want to commit to a new nvidia card or go to AMD but it will be a part of my decision so smart move.

That means you 8800GTS just became a PPU, exactly what AGEIA wanted to sell to us. The good thing is that your 8800GTS won't be wasted.

Who's iRollo? nRollo?

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: Wreckage

I'm glad PhysX is taking off, especially since Havok is lagging so far behind.

Where is that? I don't see PhysX taking off...It's something there, but it's not doing anything important for the moment.

I can see how it sucks for ATI fans to not have Physics support. They should just send a message to ATI and stop buying their cards until they come around.

 

[MarcVenice]

Wreckage, did you read Anandtech's review of the GTX275 vs HD 4890? Did you read the physx part, did you understand the arguments as to why physx isn't quite there yet, and according to the review should have no impact on the purchase decision, unless all things were equal? Did you dismiss those as 'ati fanboyism' on AT's side, or just not substantial enough? I think they AT gave physx all the credit it deseved, which is just very little. Everyone wants an open standard, even people with nvidia cards.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Wreckage, did you read Anandtech's review of the GTX275 vs HD 4890? Did you read the physx part, did you understand the arguments as to why physx isn't quite there yet, and according to the review should have no impact on the purchase decision, unless all things were equal? Did you dismiss those as 'ati fanboyism' on AT's side, or just not substantial enough? I think they AT gave physx all the credit it deseved, which is just very little. Everyone wants an open standard, even people with nvidia cards.

Would that be the same article that said "However, we have to factor in the fact that AMD driver support doesn't have the best track record as of late for new game titles."

Would you agree that ATI has inferior drivers to NVIDIA or do you just cherrypick?

ATI was given a chance to use PhysX and refused. They are the ones who have blocked a standard. People should stop buying their cards as a result.

Either way I have read plenty of articles praising PhysX. I would hope you are not so impressionable as to take the opinion of just one person from one site.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/physx-by-nvidia-review/8

So then, I have to admit to like what I tested today. Overall gaming with PhysX adds a much more immersive experience to gaming. NVIDIA implementation as it is right now is downright good,

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/16392/5

Remember the first time you shot an enemy and his body did a ragdoll slump to the floor, rather than playing through a stock death animation? I spent countless hours afterward finding hilarious locations to kill enemies, whether it involved ledges, stairs, or a myriad of other environmental hazards. It was a great moment for gaming, one that PhysX replicates by bringing that same visceral interaction to a multitude of objects in the game world. The name of the game is immersion, and PhysX helps sell the experience.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: error8

Originally posted by: Wreckage

I'm glad PhysX is taking off, especially since Havok is lagging so far behind.

Where is that? I don't see PhysX taking off...It's something there, but it's not doing anything important for the moment.

I can see how it sucks for ATI fans to not have Physics support. They should just send a message to ATI and stop buying their cards until they come around.

Yup, we should throw our cards on the window and never buy anything from ATi again, since they don't want to implement that amazing thing, called PhysX.
I played Mirror's Edge on my 4870 and cried when there was no cloth around me. I didn't have any hail in that UT3 map and again, it broke my heart.

You don't have to read any reviews, to see it with your own eyes, that PhysX doesn't bring heaven into games. Why won't you just admit it? You have a Nvidia card and I bet you've played the PhysX games and were they really more immersive? In your heart you know they weren't, but you just don't want to admit it.
ATi didn't want PhysX because it's useless for the moment, exactly like Nvidia did with dx10.1. It has potential, there is no doubt about it, but today is next to nothing. I bet that when PhysX will mean something, ATi will crawl to Nvidia to buy it from them, but that time hasn't come yet and it's very far too...

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: shortylickens

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: shortylickens

Originally posted by: Red Storm
I will take interest in PhysX (or HavokFX, or any other GPU-accelerated physics engine) when they allow for actual game play changes. Shooting holes in cloth and better looking window explosions mean nothing to me.

Ditto.

I care nothing for visuals. I want gameplay.
That why I, you know, PLAY GAMES!

If I wanted to stare at something pretty & useless I'd just go to the Hooters website.

Then you can go play NES or Atari right?

I never had an Atari, and I still play the handful of NES games that are worth playing, like Final Fantasy & Crystalis. But thats because they came out with GBA versions and I think Final Fantasy is on the Wii's retro games list, isnt it?
I never said gameplay is automatically better simply because its older. Most of the titles on the NES had horrible gameplay, but we simply didnt know any better, se we kept playing. Does anyone else remember the frustration of TMNT or Karnov?
The SNES improved things a great deal in both gameplay and graphics. It was wonderful, and I still play a lot of the better titles from that era.
The Playstation was good but I noticed that devs had already started sacrificing gameplay for pretty visuals around that time. Final Fantasy 7 was OK, not too many video sequences and they normally came after some good gaming, but FF8 overdid things a bit. It was pretty obvious to me they put more effort into 3D graphics and video clips and not nearly enough into gameplay.
Of course I am the majority. Most people loved that game. And thats when it started, the change in gamers' thought processes that led them to believe the pretty colors they weren't controlling were much more interesting than the mediocre colors they were controlling.
I think it has a lot to do with the new generation of gamers coming into the scene. Most of us who grew up with a NES or Sega had graduated high school by the time FF8 came out. Heck, I graduated in 1997 and I seem to recall FF7 came out just a few months later. I had very little free time or disposable income at that point, but I went ahead and got a Playstation anyway, just I could experience that one game. Great stuff, but even as I was playing it I knew I had moved on and wouldnt be part of the new gaming scene. No matter. Care free club sex turned out to be a long more interesting, once I learned how to convince girls I was desperately in need of nookie.

Where was I?
OH YES!

Back to the original point, most of the really excellent games I've played since then did NOT try to push the graphics bar to the next level. They settled on already established graphics and focused on gameplay, which is of course, THE REASON FOR PLAYING GAMES! Again I have to point out that if all I wanted to do was stare at the pretty colors I could just watch Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Polar Express, Chronicles of Narnia, Appleseed, or Lord of The Rings.
I play games because of the interactive part, and I prefer to play good games because I like to have fun. Wasting my time on stuff that is not fun is really damn stupid. And for me most modern games arent fun. Only the ones where the developers put gameplay first even have a chance.
Deus Ex, Baldurs Gate, Knights of the Old Republic are prime examples.
For shooters it would be Serious Sam, Max Payne, and even Red Faction. Also Half-Life 2.
RTS's? Act Of War and World in Conflict come to mind.
Sports: I still prefer the old Tiger Woods 2004.

It should be noted that out of all those games only WiC had cutting-edge graphics when it came out. HL2 was considered good but not top-of-the-line at the time.

Back to PhysX (which was the original point of the thread): Seems like all its done for us so far is enhance the graphics by giving us more and more complex objects to wrap textures around. I'll be much more interested when it changes the way we play games, probably in ways that may never be fully realized. As an example, in Mechwarrior I always thought it would be cool if you could actually track thousands of bullets and hundreds of missiles at the exact same time, and even calculate the effects of their impact on a hundred different body parts, and have those changes actually affect how the Mech operates. I should think PhysX would be perfect for collision detection like that. (I'm talking about computer 3D collision detection, not guns & armor collisions).

Interestingly enough, GRID does an excellent job of that and it does NOT require a PhysX card. Of course, they only have a dozen cars and they probably dont have hundreds of crumple zones on each vehicle.
I'd like to see a huge Mech fight with a dozen beasts on each side and plenty of lesser ground troops as well. All of them shooting like mad.
Can I have that?
That would actually be fun.

Am so sorry this thread got derailed. I honestly thought I was making a relatively simple comment that would have been understood by everyone, even if they didn't agree with me. Guess I was wrong.

Well look, games have to move foreward in realism and visual fidelity. That's the way of technology in the industry.

 

[MarcVenice]

A) I attended Nvidia's conference myself. B) I've had no real problems with ATI drivers so far. And I've been benching a few lately, and I own ATI myself, because in Europe ATI is priced much better. You can find my first review here btw: http://tweakers.net/reviews/12...de-hd-4870-getest.html It's in dutch, so I doubt they mind me posting this.

I do know that Nvidia pushes Physx awfully hard though, and I do know that Nvidia only offered Physx to AMD in public, but never offered it to AMD through the right channels. I also know I enjoy gaming, and so far physx hasn't impressed me much, and I've done an awfull lot of gaming. I agree it's nice, and I wish Nvidia truly offered ATI a chance to use Physx, or that they would enable PhysX to run through OpenCL instead of Cuda. That's it.

And then, with PhysX and Havok running on both cards, we can let the physics war shift into high gear. See which company can get the big publishers backing them, and then we can only hope they really start doing something with physics, instead of some rustling leaves no-one cares about in Sacred 2.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Wreckage, did you read Anandtech's review of the GTX275 vs HD 4890? Did you read the physx part, did you understand the arguments as to why physx isn't quite there yet, and according to the review should have no impact on the purchase decision, unless all things were equal? Did you dismiss those as 'ati fanboyism' on AT's side, or just not substantial enough? I think they AT gave physx all the credit it deseved, which is just very little. Everyone wants an open standard, even people with nvidia cards.

Would that be the same article that said "However, we have to factor in the fact that AMD driver support doesn't have the best track record as of late for new game titles."

Would you agree that ATI has inferior drivers to NVIDIA or do you just cherrypick?

ATI was given a chance to use PhysX and refused. They are the ones who have blocked a standard. People should stop buying their cards as a result.

Either way I have read plenty of articles praising PhysX. I would hope you are not so impressionable as to take the opinion of just one person from one site.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/physx-by-nvidia-review/8

So then, I have to admit to like what I tested today. Overall gaming with PhysX adds a much more immersive experience to gaming. NVIDIA implementation as it is right now is downright good,

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/16392/5

Remember the first time you shot an enemy and his body did a ragdoll slump to the floor, rather than playing through a stock death animation? I spent countless hours afterward finding hilarious locations to kill enemies, whether it involved ledges, stairs, or a myriad of other environmental hazards. It was a great moment for gaming, one that PhysX replicates by bringing that same visceral interaction to a multitude of objects in the game world. The name of the game is immersion, and PhysX helps sell the experience.

When they were criticizing ATI's drivers, which wile not in any way shape or form terrible, you saw fit to use it as a signature for your posts. Your post makes it seem like ATI's drivers are terrible which they are not. When they criticize PhysX and CUDA, not for being bad, but for being not ready for prime time, it's just one opinion from a sea of opinions.

And the issue at hand was your comment about how great PhysX is and how ATI sucks because they don't support PhysX. In fact this whole thread is about PhysX. Not ATI's drivers.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/AM...X-Havok,news-1950.html
http://www.fudzilla.com/index....view&id=12977&Itemid=1

According to those links, Godfrey Cheng says nVidia never offered PhysX through "proper channels." One would assume that means a proposal sent to ATI HQ in some form. Cheng also goes on to give logical reasons for not supporting PhysX at this time.


For anyone looking for a serious argument. PhysX is not there yet. Is it a nice check box feature? Yes, but it's not anywhere close to being there yet. Physics acceleration (not necessarily PhysX and not necessarily Havok) is intriguing and I definitely think it's the future of any gaming because for the short term we've exhausted our ability to add realism to any large degree through traditional graphical means such as higher res textures, polygon counts, etc.

Will there be pure graphical improvements? Yes. However, I think we're getting to the point where once these current high end cards trickle down, it's about as good as it gets and then it'll be extremely difficult to tell without large magnification of screen shots to show much differences any advances in graphics.

The next advancements in gaming will be utilizing the extra CPU cores for better AI and utilizing the CPU and GPU for advanced physics (again, not necessarily PhysX or Havok) to make the gaming world interact with the player more realistically.

PhysX today is simply not even close to being ready for prime time and in truth there is very little to compel one to buy a video card just for PhysX. In one to two years time PhysX might be more relevant but with the demos shown by ATI using Havok on OpenCL (which will run on both ATI and nVidia hardware) it'll face some very stiff competition and there is zero guarantee that it will be the dominant physics acceleration implementation unless it also ports PhysX to OpenCL. Especially if one considers using Havok which will work on all discrete GPU's or running only PhysX (CUDA) which will work only on nVidia cards.

I believe we will see a PhysX implementation on OpenCL but not until Havok gains some traction. The physics acceleration battle will not begin in earnest until then.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
And then, with PhysX and Havok running on both cards, we can let the physics war shift into high gear. See which company can get the big publishers backing them, and then we can only hope they really start doing something with physics, instead of some rustling leaves no-one cares about in Sacred 2.

Exactly, I'd rather that we can use both physics types on whichever card. Then if the developers decide to shift focus to one type of physics that should be the standard. If PhysX is a better implementation than Havok then you proponents of PhysX have nothing to worry about as it will win out in the end, and vice versa. However, from what Modelworks (I think that's his nick) said, he can do more with Havok currently than he can with PhysX so maybe PhysX needs to be expanded to level the playing field? I'm not a programmer so I don't know the real benefits or drawbacks to either method.

 

[Red Storm]

PhysX in its current state will never take off. Developers aren't going to heavily invest time and resources into something that only a portion of the userbase can take advantage of (which is why currently all you see are level packs and tech demos, nothing substantial). If and when we get hardware-accelerated physics that runs on any video card regardless of brand, then it'll take off.

And that doesn't have to be PhysX (how can you blame ATI for not wanting to pay nVidia to use PhysX? I certainly don't), it can be Havok or any other engine to come out.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

i will not buy an nvidia card because of physx. it is a non-factor for me.

i WILL buy an ATI card because i feel they are less of a bully in the market and try less to trick their customers. the 9800gtx is a completely different core architecture than the gtx260/280. why was it moved "upwards" in the scale to be named the GTX250.

 

[BenSkywalker]

If PhysX is a better implementation than Havok then you proponents of PhysX have nothing to worry about as it will win out in the end, and vice versa.

Outside of Wreckage, I don't think you will find a lot of PhysX supporters per se, just people who want to see advancement which at this point leaves us no alternative. On the other side, you see people who oppose advancement- it seems yourself included- because a particular company decided they didn't want to do it until years later.

However, from what Modelworks (I think that's his nick) said, he can do more with Havok currently than he can with PhysX

Havok supports AI functionality and animation. In theory it is equally capable of PhysX in terms of physics also, it just runs on significantly slower hardware which is something we are supposed to see changing sometime this year.

Did you dismiss those as 'ati fanboyism' on AT's side, or just not substantial enough?

In AT's latest graphics card roundup they called the 4670 and 9600GT equals- impartial?.