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NVIDIA To Showcase PhysX Content
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."
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.
I have nothing compelling to say
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?
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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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.
Any 8000, 9000, or 200 series is supported, so you can get something a bit cheaper.
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.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
(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.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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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...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!
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.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
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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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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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.
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).
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.
PhysL is a more accurate description of the product that was originally released by AGEIA tho..
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
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)?
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.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Novodex, not Novodox
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
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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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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?)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!