Carmack: Hardware Physics A Bad Idea

[exfileme]

id Software's John Carmack spoke out against hardware-based physics at QuakeCon 2009, and it wasn't pretty.

Carmack: Hardware Physics A Bad Idea : Read more

 

[leafblower29]

But PhysX is one of the reasons I like nvidia.

 

[Aintry]

Are we allowed to breathe now? I mean, John Carmack is done talking, right?

 

[Upendra09]

how much of a difference do they make?
and how many people actually use PPUs?
I have seen them in rigs from Falcon Northwest and stuff but are they worth it?

 

[airborne11b]

Well, where I agree that "Physx cards" were a bad idea, since you payed for hardware that only showed performance increases in select games *like 4 lol*, now that new series of GPU's come with Physx support built right into the GPU, I think it's great!

Lets face it, id software is a little behind the time anywho, even when they released Doom3 and quake 4, the games were pretty stale. The games had decent graphics for the time they were released, but the games were nothing special, and for the part pretty boring. And what have they given to the gaming community since then? Nothing. While other game companies are pushing forward with fresh new ideas, id is sitting around talking trash about how bad physx is.

I think this can all be summed up in 1 sentence. Id is sore that they can't invent anything new and fresh, so they attack new ideas that they wish they had come up with.

 

[viometrix]

i think carmack is right to a degree, a seperate ppu unit does suck, but what nvidia did by intergrating it into the video card was the way it should have always been, and maybe with a combo of using an available cpu core that isnt being used by by a game or application it would maximise what we can do with physics without the need to spend extra money, use and available slot and consume more power

 

[airborne11b]

and to answer Upendra, No one buys PPU's because all Geforce cards from 9 series and up come with built in PhysX support And those have been out well over a year now.

 

[NuclearShadow]

I believe there is potentiality in physic cards but its really up to the developers such as id to decide to actually make it worth while or not the hardware is in the complete mercy to people like Carmack. However since the merger of physics cards and GPU's this certainly makes it much more affordable to the consumer and developers that take advantage of it have a edge over those who do not.

I do however believe that Carmack's recent love for consoles influences his opinion on this subject. If a game was released today that had ground breaking graphics and to top it off a very advanced physics system that really took advantage of physics capabilities the game simply wouldn't be capable of running on the consoles we have today. With more developers looking to release on both consoles and PC this wouldn't be in their best interest.

 

[redgarl]

Totally right, I think the same thing. PhysX is impressive, but it was far from really more impressive than Havok was when we first saw Half-Life 2.

I am sorry, but why do we need hardware to run physics? Havok was doing a fine job and it never required any additional physical hardware to be run.

What will happens with DX11 around the corner?

 

[worst 3]

I think that with gpu having physx like my 8800gt it will be good, now i don't have to sell it or just throw it out i cant turn it in to a dedicated physx card when i buy a 300 Geforce cars. then keep moving the last gen card to physx or as needed. i think physics done right could change gaming a lot and make it more fun as well as help with graphics by helping with different effects to make them look more real.

 

[redgarl]

[citation][nom]Airborne11b[/nom]I think this can all be summed up in 1 sentence. Id is sore that they can't invent anything new and fresh, so they attack new ideas that they wish they had come up with.[/citation]

Well, I admit that Carmack is not a really good game developer, but he knows how to code. He's one of the few who can sell graphic engines and make money over his games that way.

 

[doomtomb]

Nvidia's Physx on graphics cards is the right thing I think. You don't actually have to spend extra money on additional hardware taking up vital PCI-E slots. Nvidia's Physx actually makes a pretty big impact on games that support it. So his argument is pretty late to the game, we saw PPUs die a very quick death over a year ago.

 

[Upendra09]

[citation][nom]Airborne11b[/nom]and to answer Upendra, No one buys PPU's because all Geforce cards from 9 series and up come with built in PhysX support And those have been out well over a year now.[/citation]
tHanks for the info

 

[r0x0r]

Maybe Carmack is just angry at physics 'cos his rockets aren't working.

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/Business/About

 

[Zoonie]

Ok people, this proves it! The iPhone does NOT have a physics chip.

 

[megamanx00]

Well, dedicated physics cards are pretty much gone so it's kinda like a pointless rant. After all GPUs are more flexible than the ol PPU which was designed to do a specific set of calculations. As long as there isn't a crossplatorm GPU accelerated Physics API, ie doesn't rely on hardware from just one vendor, it will be just a nice thing to have rather than something mainstream.

 

[mr_tuel]

physX is awesome with games that support it. Makes the game feal that much more immersive.

 

[scrumworks]

Finally some big name says PhysX is crap. As long as ATI won't touch it, it will eventually die.

 

[FSXFan]

[citation][nom]zingam[/nom]When will dedicated graphics hardware be gone too?[/citation]
When desktop PC's are gone.

 

[tpi2007]

[citation][nom]Airborne11b[/nom]and to answer Upendra, No one buys PPU's because all Geforce cards from 9 series and up come with built in PhysX support And those have been out well over a year now.[/citation]

Correction: from series 8 and up; although you should at least have an 8800GT to appreciate it.

 

[luissantos]

I don't understand why all this hate geared towards Carmack latelly (or all the media focus to begin with)... Tim Sweeny from Epic Games has been saying things like "in the future real-developers won't use DirectX or OpenGL, they'll write their own low-level APIs" and "in about ten years the GPU will be gone, replaced by massive CPU arays"... so either the true gurus are right in their insanity or just insane.

BTW, ID not inventive... right... first 3d engine, first FPS, first deathmatch game, first real-time shadows game... yeah... I suppose. How many GOOD PC games came out this year anyway? How many Inventive oones then? How many years since you've seen something you could say "wow, this is something totally new"?

It's not Carmack's job to make good games, he's a programmer, he's not responsible for story line, modeling, level design, or whatever other aspect of development.

 

[salem80]

All Physic effect on PhysX i had seed On old games Like Straglehold2 and TomClancy Rainbow six Vegas 2(yep)
^^BTW all that games work perfectly with my IGP
.

 

[ritech_01]

Yawn...Yeah, we all know how well four cores are being used in games. LOL!



Carmack is sore because he chose not to play and now doesn't get invited to the parties very often.

Really it comes down to what kind of games do you want to play. Highly submersive details require hardware to do it properly, you want to add that to the CPU?

Modeled Physics presents a challenge to be convincing after repeated gameplay, if you dont care about those kind of details than Carmack is right, if you want theose kinds of details then doing the physics has to take place somewhere.

 

[ebattleon]

When we end up with 28 cores this will be all mute. From a developer perspective it is cheaper to develop a game to maximize CPU resources than have to pay license fees to use some extra technology that may not be available to most users.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

Any of these "physics demonstrations" I have seen have no impressed me one bit. Like that game where you are running around from rooftop to rooftop, supposedly the whole game is based on physics. MAYBE the flags being shot apart is kinda cool but that does NOT make a game COOL or even GOOD for that matter. Jeesh, talk about a FAD.