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NVIDIA To Showcase PhysX Content

Posted by Soulskill on from the knocking-down-walls dept.

Early next week, NVIDIA will release the GeForce Experience Pack to demonstrate the 'PhysX' engine it bought from AGEIA earlier this year. The pack is free, and it will contain a stand-alone action game, maps for Unreal Tournament 3, and various demos. Gamasutra notes that the UT3 maps are "designed to 'fundamentally change' the game's mechanics."

56 comments

  1. of course they want to use physx by poetmatt · · Score: 0

    they want to use physx because as is clear right now, nobody other than Nvidia can use it 100% accurately yet.

    I seem to recall an israeli group getting it working on a radeon 4850 and doing fantastic, but overall this is the real reason it's promoted.

    Thus, in effect, its like how nvidia refused to support DX 10.1

    1. Re:of course they want to use physx by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1, Insightful

      they want to use physx because as is clear right now, nobody other than Nvidia can use it 100% accurately yet.

      Maybe because NVIDIA acquired AGEIA, which is the company that made the original PhysX cards.

      That's a bit like saying "Nobody other than Microsoft can do .NET 100% accurately yet," only moreso, because at least Microsoft is pretending .NET is portable. I'm not sure PhysX was ever meant to be. (Consider the -X ending, implying DirectX, rather than something like PhysicsGL, or PhysL, implying OpenGL -- you know, the actually portable industry standard for graphics.)

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    2. Re:of course they want to use physx by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Informative

      (Consider the -X ending, implying DirectX, rather than something like PhysicsGL, or PhysL, implying OpenGL -- you know, the actually portable industry standard for graphics.)

      ...Or maybe PhysX just sounds a hell of a lot better than PhysL?

      PhysX is actually not connected to DirectX at all; the PhysX SDK is even available for the Playstation 3 and Linux.

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    3. Re:of course they want to use physx by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1, Funny

      ...Or maybe PhysX just sounds a hell of a lot better than PhysL?

      Wow, I can't believe I didn't notice... Yes, "Physics" sounds better than "Fizzle"...

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    4. Re:of course they want to use physx by WK2 · · Score: 1

      Yes. Microsoft is the first company to ever use the letter "X" to mark something. Every other name, such as UNIX and Wormhole X-Treme! is just copying them.

      --
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    5. Re:of course they want to use physx by kcbanner · · Score: 1

      You sir, need to: A) Learn how to Read (so you can read about what your ranting about) and B) Stop being an Asshat.

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    6. Re:of course they want to use physx by kcbanner · · Score: 1

      I seem to have gotten it to "work" 100% accurately, using their freely available SDK on my linux box. Maybe you mean the hardware support, which is not critical to using PhysX at all, it defaults back to a software implementation on the CPU.

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    7. Re:of course they want to use physx by MoFoQ · · Score: 1

      ahaha...I can just see Jack frowning.

      but I digress.

      anyways, don't forget...Microsoft (one of the employees at the time) coined the executable file format on DOS/Win to be "marked" with "MZ".

      either way, the PhysX CUDA thingie only makes sense if you have more than one compatible Nvidia product (8xxx/9xxx/2x0), especially if you can't run them in SLi mode (or don't want to).

    8. Re:of course they want to use physx by neokushan · · Score: 1

      Actually it's because long ago before PhysX was owned by AGAIA, it was called "NovodoX".

      Obviously this name sucked ass to some management types, so they decided to change it to something more appropriate and more importantly, more descriptive.

      It's a Physics library, so there's where the "Phys" part comes from, the X is clearly a holdover from "NovodoX", probably as a way of indicating that it's the same library, just with a different name.

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    9. Re:of course they want to use physx by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 1

      Novodex, not Novodox

  2. I wonder what the demo will be... by Cathoderoytube · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let me go out on a limb and take a guess that the demo will consist of a bunch of boxes falling or other things we've already seen in games that seem to work just fine without PhysX chips for some reason. Except they'll note that since it's handled by the PhysX processor to the CPU doesn't take a hit. Then everybody will applaud and cheer, and PC gaming will continue to stagnate.

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    1. Re:I wonder what the demo will be... by Fourier404 · · Score: 5, Informative
      From TFA:

      The pack will feature NetDevil's Warmonger (pictured), a complete action game allowing players to use destructive powers to destroy walls, floors, and whole buildings to open new paths or close existing ones.

    2. Re:I wonder what the demo will be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damn, there goes my hope for a physics-realistic, hentai-style, tentacle-raping monster attacking a dozen 36DD female characters at once.

    3. Re:I wonder what the demo will be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Madness! Yet another techology used for destruction...

    4. Re:I wonder what the demo will be... by neokushan · · Score: 2, Informative

      I wouldn't call myself an expert by a long shot, but I myself made a [url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v438/neoKushan/Random%20Program%20creations/newtexts.png]simple app[/url] that had "lots of boxes falling" around the place and it worked fine without PhysX hardware or other. It was completely unoptimised as well, yet on a fairly limited machine I could have hundreds of boxes colliding all over the shop without much of a frame drop.
      I'm not bragging or trying to sound "kewel", I'm just saying that it's not exactly difficult to do this stuff and every game I've seen so far that supposedly has "super realistic physics" has always disappointed me on so many levels.
      Perhaps with some hardware acceleration, we'll see some really destructible environments in games.
      One can only hope...

      --
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    5. Re:I wonder what the demo will be... by neokushan · · Score: 1

      Ahh fuck, I accidentally used BBCode instead of HTML.
      I'd post the proper link here, but in retrospect I'd rather not risk my photobucket account getting slashdotted, so anything to thin out the numbers of potentially curious people...

      --
      +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    6. Re:I wonder what the demo will be... by Cathoderoytube · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Perhaps with some hardware acceleration, we'll see some really destructible environments in games."

      These days I have very little faith in games. All this physics acceleration is just a gimmick to make money. Game companies aren't into making fun or innovative games anymore, they're all about graphics and gimmicks. So you can blow up walls, big deal. You could do that in Blood, but it didn't require any special hardware to do it. Plus Blood was actually f-u-n.

      --
      I have nothing compelling to say
    7. Re:I wonder what the demo will be... by Andrew+Kismet · · Score: 1

      physics-realistic, hentai-style

      You hope for the impossible and the contradictory.

    8. Re:I wonder what the demo will be... by VeNoM0619 · · Score: 1

      And why should a flat 4 corner square object have troubles with simulating physics?

      No offense, but how was this modded informative? The task you sent was simple enough, let me know when your boxes turn into spheres that start off rolling down a bumpy hill, that each have their own weight values and fall into a simulated cloth that tears only when given a certain amount of kinetic energy.

      Yes, I briefly touched the PhysX SDK, and the things it can do is far more than just box simulation. 6 degrees of freedom, simulated cloth, breaking points on joints, simulation of non square/non standard objects (ie ragdoll physics) As noted in other slashdot articles, it may not be actual physics, but its damn near close enough to fool me if used properly.

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    9. Re:I wonder what the demo will be... by neokushan · · Score: 1

      OH well in that case, you'll be glad to know that everything within my pissy little demo was completely independant of everything else. Every single box you see there could have it's own mass, forces, attenuation, etc. just for the sake of simplicity I only made two different types.
      I could also adjust the gravity on the fly as well as all the above mentioned attirbutes of every new box "shot". Oh and I have spheres. Of different sizes.

      And I didn't use PhysX.

      And the whole point I was trying to make was that I could do this in the space of about a day or two and I'm CERTAINLY no expert in the matter, so why has it taken this long for game developers to really adopt it?

      Plus, you do realise that MOST game physics simply overlay complicated objects with geometrically simple shapes? You might scoff at simple box collisions, but they're fast, efficient and can apply to most objects you'd have in a game. I dare say people would be more impressed with 2000 items bouncing mostly realistically around the place than 200 items bouncing extremely realistically around. Or maybe that's just me.
      Anyway, I've forgot what it is I was saying now, I think you missed what I was saying a little and focussed on the inadequacies of my little app when you should have focused on the inadequacies of most games released these days.

      --
      +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
  3. Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by Animats · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most of what Ageia has done so far involves particle systems for fire, explosions, and water. It's all part of the rendering; none of the Ageia-driven objects feed back into the game play. Have they gone beyond that?

    1. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Technically speaking, visuals can have a profound effect on gameplay.

      That said, I'm also waiting for someone to do something interesting with hardware-accelerated physics.

      --
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    2. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by VPeric · · Score: 1

      Played Half-Life 2? Remember the gravity gun? I bet some nifty gameplay can be constructed around mechanics like that. But no, I can't think of a particular game where the physics were essential to the gameplay. Still, even what we have now - realistic simulation of lots of boxes falling down and such - can have a meaningful impact on a shooter, so it's hardly all eyecandy.

    3. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by Have+Blue · · Score: 1

      This is a side effect of the chicken-and-egg problem that has dogged Ageia since it first arrived. Feeding advanced physics back into gameplay creates a compatibility barrier. If you really leverage PhysX and create a game that does amazing things with it, that game is only playable by the small number of PhysX owners. If you limit your physics use to that which can be handled by the plain CPUs owned by the vast majority of the market, you've just greatly reduced the PhysX's utility. Without games that demonstrate what the card can contribute to the experience, it won't sell.

      Hopping aboard an established platform with a huge installed base (Geforce 8xxx cards) is the best thing that could happen to them short of getting designed into a console.

    4. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "I can't think of a particular game where the physics were essential to the gameplay"
      Portal.
      QED.

    5. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Most of what Ageia has done so far involves particle systems for fire, explosions, and water. It's all part of the rendering; none of the Ageia-driven objects feed back into the game play. Have they gone beyond that?

      Someone could have, but then they'd be cutting themselves out of 98% of the game market. With nVidia now owning it they'll only be cutting themselves out of half the market. It's tough to design something like that when you must have a non-PhysX mode too. It's no big secret what cards people have and how often they buy new ones. If they want PhysX in games, they need to start pushing out PhysX-capable cards and build a market base. Software makers aren't going to make a game just for those who recently bought the latest-gen card. I've heard retrofits happen but I don't see how - if it's only an advanced piece of GPU software why did you need special hardware in the first place?

      --
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    6. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

      Feeding advanced physics back into gameplay creates a compatibility barrier.

      True. But there's also a parallelism problem and a lag problem. Particle systems where the particles don't interact with each other parallelize easily. In other words, blowing stuff into little bits is easy to make run fast. Big-object collisions don't parallelize well; you need intercommunication between adjacent objects. This is transitive, which turns a parallel problem into a sequential one. Worst case: "Now let us all join hands around the world", or, "Everybody take hold of the rope and pull". Very few games do physics well enough that two players could pick up an object, one lifting each end, and move it realistically. I'd like to see a game where a raid team has to cooperate to pick up a boat, carry it to the water, and get it launched in the surf zone, timing the launch so they don't get pushed back onto the beach by a wave. That would be a good feature in any "special ops" game; SEALs train for weeks to get that particular skill nailed.

      The lag problem is that the graphics pipeline normally runs behind the game engine, and the game engine doesn't wait for it. If some physics out in the graphics pipeline has to feed back into the game engine, either the game engine has to wait, which slows it down, or the effect has to be introduced into the game engine a few cycles late. In some cases that works; you could have a game where snow was falling and snowdrifts affected skiing or driving. That would work fine if the snowdrift updates reached the game engine a few cycles late. But large-object collision detection and response can't be processed late, or the results not only look awful, you get fly-throughs and instability.

      (I used to do physics engines. I'm responsible for the "ragdoll falling downstairs" cliche (1997)).

    7. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by aliquis · · Score: 1

      http://www.elastomania.com/
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_Earth_(computer_game)

    8. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 1

      PhysX is a complete physics engine, much like Havok. Both CPU and GPU physics, and a software "renderer" for those without accelerator hardware.

    9. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by ozphx · · Score: 1

      I've been playing around with Entanglar lately - and while I woudn't say they've "solved" the multiplayer physics sim issue (and whether it would scale to 3D), the alpha build theyve got up would certainly at least cover your boat scenario on LAN.

      Definitely the couple of prototypes I've been messing around with work a lot better than say Garrys Mod. The funny asteroids-without-guns sample they include lets you get two people pushing the same box around. Presumably it would all go to shit beyond 50ms of lag though - I can't see how it would be possible to keep a couple of worlds synced up in realtime if theres lots going on.

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    10. Re:Does the physics feed back into the gameplay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if it's only an advanced piece of GPU software why did you need special hardware in the first place?

      Most GPUs are "dumb" processors: they do very specific types of operation, very fast.

      The hardware that runs PhysX is a type of general-purpose chip, more like your CPU than the GPU on standard video cards. That's why you need special hardware (if you want to spare your CPU the extra load, that is. As noted above, PhysX will run on the CPU if appropriate hardware isn't available; you just won't get the efficiency boost)

  4. Video's showing performance would be more useful by thermian · · Score: 1

    I'm trying to decide whether a GTX 280 is worth the price. These demo's are only any good if you already have a physx capable card.

    --
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  5. NEgative nellies.. by hubdawg · · Score: 2, Insightful

    abound everytime the name Nvidia pops up. Im not sure I understand how buying and adapting PhysX into the company makes the company a bad guy. If you have Nvidia and PhysX capable hardware... then in games that are coded for it they will look prettier, more realistisc perhaps. If you do not have the hardware you wont see those effect. I do not understand how that makes Nvidia wrong or open to ridicule. I would think the comments that are negative may be biased because the poster had a bad experience with an Nvidia product. People need to exhale and relax....it's all small stuff.

    1. Re:NEgative nellies.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What negative comments? I see no comments attacking nVidia. Comments questioning the useful of hardware accelerated physics, sure.

      But if you want a good reason for Slashdot to hate nVidia, their refusal to release open source drivers is as good a reason as any.

      Both Intel and AMD/ATI have open source drivers. OK, well, so AMD/ATI only claimed they were going to open source their drivers. It appears they never actually did. But, uh...

  6. Re:Video's showing performance would be more usefu by billster0808 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Any 8000, 9000, or 200 series is supported, so you can get something a bit cheaper.

  7. Not holding my breath... by VE3OGG · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I remember, many moons ago, when the PhysX cards were gaining some king of industry momentum. I wouldn't call it acceptance, but it definitely wasn't a complete disregard either.

    I think one of the big problems here is that between AMD and NVIDIA there are only two major market forces -- both of whom are no where near on a lovey-dovey level, and definitely no where near sharing ideas (read licensing) stuff between them. So if NVIDIA gets this PhysX stuff working from AEGIA, marvelous, but it will be completely ignored by the ATI/AMD crowd. And if the better share of 50% of the marketplace is ignoring this, it is simply not in game designers' best interests to waste development time and money on something.

    Really, I could see this type of technology being similar to the PS*2* HDD -- barely ever used.

    1. Re:Not holding my breath... by jandrese · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't say they had momentum. There was some interest, but most everybody said "show me the money", and then the Physics enabled stuff came out and it was decidedly underwhelming, or worse, no better than what you could do on the CPU with most games (which were bottlenecked by the graphics card anyway). Since this will slow down the graphics card, I'm having trouble seeing the advantage unless you have a grossly overpowered graphics card (Quad GTX 280s?) hooked up to a somewhat anemic CPU.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    2. Re:Not holding my breath... by Warll · · Score: 4, Informative

      Except that Nvidia is having, or at least helping get PhysX on ATi cards as well. http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/08/physx-on-ati-effort-gets-helping-hand-from-nvidia/

    3. Re:Not holding my breath... by dousette · · Score: 1

      I just bought a Sapphire HD4850 card... would it benefit me to purchase one of the new PCI-E PhysX cards, or hold off until AMD/ATI gets it working on their chips? I read an article here that said made future PhysX support sound promising, but does anyone have any more information on exactly when or if this will be available?

    4. Re:Not holding my breath... by kcbanner · · Score: 1

      PhysX works fine and fast in games without hardware support.

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    5. Re:Not holding my breath... by Tim+C · · Score: 1

      Which makes perfect sense - if you're the only vendor for something like that, then it'll either never take off or take off very slowly (unless it's truly revolutionary) as games won't require it because too few people have it. So, you help your competitors develop an offering - perhaps keeping the best tech to yourself as you do so. Now the availability of compatible cards is much higher, there's more chance games will use them, more chance people will buy them, and so more money for you. Especially as you kept the best of the tech to yourself...

      --
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  8. PhysX Matters in City of Heroes by Bonker · · Score: 5, Informative

    Both player super powers and quite a bit of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles have been designed or retrofitted for PhysX capabilities in mind.

    For example, when a fire blaster sends a bad guy to the burn ward, bits of flame and whatnot fly around, catching on nearby terrain or even other players or enemies. The same things happen with electric and other blasters that have a big visual 'splash'.

    My earth controller leaves lots of stones and pebbles lying around. Enemies, players, and my stone golem have to wade through these and kick them out of the way to get to where they're going. When her wind powers kick up, the rocks frequently roll around in the gusts.

    Anyone who uses firearms in Paragon, Rhode Island or in the Rogue Isles generates LOTS of brass. If you're not careful, they'll pile up around your feet and go scattering when you walk around. If a flier-type happens to go around them, they'll be blown around by his wake.

    Perhaps the most dramatic use of PhysX in player powers is the 'Propel' power. This allows some telekinetics and gravity control types to throw bits of the terrain around (summoned out of pocket-space, of course). It's frequently possible to litter a zone with 'Propel Junk', that you have to shove out of the way to get anywhere. It's quite a fantastic thing to knock out a gangster with a ballistic fork lift. Gravity control just does bad things to physics particles in general, such as spraying piles of the forementioned casing brass all over the place.

    A flier who tears through a tree will see lots of leaves and maybe a branch or two swirl behind in his wake.

    The real bonus to PhysX is ragdoll model physics. When you punt someone hard enough to send them flying, they often land... awkwardly. It takes a few seconds for a mook who's just been skipping along the pavement by his teeth to pull himself back together. A favorite bonus is to knock an enemy into a railing. You can often leave them helpless, hanging by their feet or even their head in some rare cases.

    PhysX in City of Heroes uses the CPU-only dll by default, but will also work with an add on Aegia card or with the newer CUDA drivers from nVidia.

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    1. Re:PhysX Matters in City of Heroes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      However, it's a limited implementation of particle physics, in that the 'leftover' bits, whether they're spent brass, bits of rock, pieces of exploded robot, chunks of concrete, light poles, pool tables, etc. all have zero 'real' mass -- your character can run up to a ten-foot-tall abstract sculpture the Gravity controller left lying around and punt it around the room/battlefield as if it were a soccer ball. The closest concession to object mass is that a Singularity or Flight (and area-effect attacks that do knockback) will blow leaves, brass, confetti, and small rocks around, but not the larger objects 'summoned' by Propel. This is, it appears, a deliberate decision to keep game play quick; having to get several people to push a forklift out of a doorway after the Gravity Controller pulled it out of a pocketverse and slammed a villain with it would slow down play (and quickly make Gravity Controllers unwanted in teams).

    2. Re:PhysX Matters in City of Heroes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All of these effects work without an extra physics card, fyi.

  9. The problem by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    Is that if I make something that alters gameplay in a fundamental way require a PhysX card, then I make my game available to only a small amount of people. It's kinda like 3D cards back in the day. While various games supported them, none required them. Not enough people had them. As more and more got them, it because a worthwhile venture to make a game that required one.

    So supposing that enough graphics accelerators are made to support PhysX, then maybe companies will start using it for core gameplay. However until that point, they'll separate that out to make sure that anyone can play the game.

  10. Unreal Tournament 3? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where is the fucking Linux client Epic? Why do you delete all posts about the Linux client in your forums?

  11. old stuff? by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 1

    Isn't this simply the stuff ageia released a while ago before nVidia bought them? And nVidia is now simply re-releasing them (after they pulled the content from te website) to show off their PhysX support for Geforce 8+ cards.

  12. Re:of course you want to use PhysL by weirdcrashingnoises · · Score: 1

    PhysL is a more accurate description of the product that was originally released by AGEIA tho..

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  13. visuals VS. gameplay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >>Technically speaking, visuals can have a profound effect on gameplay.

    Yes, they're used as a substitution.

    I remember

    1. Re:visuals VS. gameplay by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes, they're used as a substitution.

      Poorly, yes, but they do also affect gameplay directly, when used properly.

      For a really trivial example, try adjusting the crosshairs on your favorite FPS. Most gamers I know like to use a little dot, dead-center in the screen, to show exactly where the bullet is going to go (assuming the gun is accurate). But just try turning it off for a moment -- are you even playing the same game? The difficulty just went up a hell of a lot.

      Try that all around -- toggle HUD displays and see what happens.

      For a more relevant example, take lighting. People like to say that HDR adds nothing to gameplay -- and to some extent, they're right. But say someone has a sunset to their back -- how are you going to aim at all into that lense flare? Whereas they can see you just fine -- in fact, you're all lit up by the setting sun -- better duck down quick and find some shadow. And maybe sneak up behind them, and reverse that situation.

      For an extreme example, the visuals and controls can be designed as a gameplay gimmick -- take the final level of Beyond Good & Evil. (SPOILER: Having your character be as messed up in the head as if she'd been drugged has a profound impact on gameplay, and this was, in fact, the single hardest moment in the game for me.)

      And finally, let's take the best game I've played in a long time -- Portal. It's about gameplay, right? Everyone will tell you, it's a whole new paradigm of gameplay about portals.

      Well, what if those portals were just blue and orange circles. What if you couldn't see through them. Would the gameplay be at all the same? (Play through with the developer commentary if you need it spelled out for you.) What if it wasn't for the visual cue of white-ish walls to show you where you can legally place a portal?

      And would it be the same game without GlaDOS? Or the theme song?

      Yes, I realize GlaDOS wasn't that impressive visually -- I'm talking about her voice. My point is that everything about the game has the potential to change the way it's played. And you will never know how little or how much until you actually get people to play it. Honestly, did anyone at Id imagine rocket jumping, before someone else discovered it?

      And yes, it does suck when visuals are used as a substitution for gameplay. With few exceptions, the visuals do not make up for the gameplay.

      (I'll make an exception for Final Fantasy, which are worth watching, even if they're more like a season of anime with a crappy RPG minigame squeezed in.)

      But that is not a reason to immediately dismiss any eye candy as completely useless, without giving it a moment's thought.

      --
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    2. Re:visuals VS. gameplay by mikael · · Score: 1

      The problem is, hardcore game players will take advantage of the multiplayer game system settings, and turn off all the extra visual effects that make it hard to see other players (don't need fog, lens flare, smoke effects, high-resolution detail, light haze, high screen resolutions) and which slow down frame rate.

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    3. Re:visuals VS. gameplay by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      hardcore game players will... turn off all the extra visual effects that make it hard to see other players (don't need fog, lens flare, smoke effects, high-resolution detail, light haze, high screen resolutions) and which slow down frame rate.

      However, if these effects are being used to influence gameplay, you could require them as a baseline.

      At which point, if "hardcore" gamers figure out how to disable them, they're no longer "hardcore", they're "cheaters".

      As for the rest of us, consider two possibilities: First, console shooters up the ante -- you now have to modify the hardware in order to cheat in this way, and there's no argument that your framerate would be affected (everyone's framerate is affected in the same way).

      And second, just WTF did you buy that multi-thousand-dollar gaming rig for, if you're going to turn down all the visuals? (For that matter, if it's a single-player game, what is the point of cheating in that way?)

      --
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  14. PhysL by nick_davison · · Score: 1

    rather than something like ... PhysL

    I may be wrong but I think naming your product Fizzle might make it a hard sell. Perhaps DampSquib(tm)?

  15. techreport preview by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    techreport did an initial review, with benchmarks, of the physx GPU functionality:
    http://techreport.com/articles.x/15261

  16. For those that don't want to wait... by VampBoy · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those that already have a Geforce 8 or 9 card and don't want to wait for Nvidia's demo.

    Head on over to http://www.warmongergame.com/ and grab the game. I'd also recommend heading over to Guru3d and finding some BETA drivers that enable PhysX support for the 8 series cards and newer PhysX drivers.

    --
    the cake is a lie
    1. Re:For those that don't want to wait... by VampBoy · · Score: 2, Informative

      If it gets /.'d

      http://www.fileplanet.com/182564/180000/fileinfo/Warmonger-Gold-Install-(Free-Game)
      http://files.filefront.com/Warmonger+Operation+Downtown+Destruction/;9142023;/fileinfo.html
      http://files.totalgamingnetwork.com/file/4835/Warmonger.exe/
      http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/863/Warmonger_-_Operation:_Downtown_Destruction_Full_Game.html
      http://www.gamershell.com/news_43755.html
      http://www.chip.de/downloads/Vollversion-Warmonger_29641300.html

      --
      the cake is a lie