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NVidia Cripples PhysX "Open" API

Posted by timothy on from the semi-open dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a foot-meet-bullet type move, NVidia is going to disable PhysX engine if you are using a display adapter other than one that came from their company. This despite the fact that you may have an NVidia card on your system specifically to do this type of processing. 'For a variety of reasons some development expense, some quality assurance and some business reasons Nvidia will not support GPU accelerated PhysX with Nvidia GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non-Nvidia GPUs.' Time to say hello to Microsoft dx physics or Intel's Havok engine."

4 of 393 comments (clear)

  1. Anti-trust? by headkase · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why is this not anti-trust? When you paid for the nVidia card to put into your machine why should its functions depend on whether or not a competitors hardware is present? What if Windows said uh-oh you have Linux installed on another partition, disabling Windows...

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    1. Re:Anti-trust? by Moryath · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I gave up on Nvidia when they screwed over my 3D glasses setup; I'd gone through all the trouble of maintaining my rig with an NVidia graphics card, because their occasional driver updates for the stereoscopic driver still made my old VRStandard rig (coupled with a 120Hz-capable CRT) run well.

      Lo and behold, their latest set "only" works either with the Nvidia-branded "Geforce 3D Vision" glasses and a short-list of extra-expensive "approved" 120-Hz LCD's, or else red/blue anaglyph setups. No reason for them to cut off older shutter glasses setups except to force people to buy their new setup if they wanted to continue to have stereoscopic 3D.

      So add the PhysX thing in and we can chalk up two strikes for Nvidia. My new card when I updated my computer this summer was an ATi (no point wasting the $$$ on a Nvidia). One more strike and I won't bother going back to them ever. Boy am I glad I didn't buy that second-hand PCI PhysX board the other day...

  2. Proprietary APIs by Adrian+Lopez · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm currently avoiding PhysX due to the fact that the license requires that credit be given to nVidia/PhysX in any advertisement that mentions the advertised product's physics capabilities. It's a real shame, because I hear that PhysX has pretty robust physics implementation.

    The current state of physics acceleration reminds me of the days when hardware-accelerated 3D graphics (except for high-end OpenGL stuff) were only supported through manufacturer-specific APIs. Hopefully, DirectX physics will be good enough that PhysX will ultimately become mostly irrelevant to game developers -- I'm just not convinced that Microsoft can pull it off.

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    "In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
  3. Re:Havok by V!NCENT · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah it really sucks that some major vendors work together to deliver you a platform inde-fscking-pendant solution that speeds up your computer at no extra freaking costs, patents and other crap. What hidden agenda are you pushing?

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