FITCamaro,
I couldn't agree with you more. Nowhere in any Ageia documentation or advertising does it say that the Physx chip adds framerate performance. I too am getting sick and tired of reviews testing framerates for this hardware, when it's obviously (painfully obvious) that it's purpose is visuals, not speed.
In my system the Ageia card doesn't take away or add any frame rates at all. But, it does make GRAW look and play a lot more realistic. Maybe not extravegantly more, but more none-the-less. This is also first generation hardware. If 3D hardware would have been blasted so hard when it was new, where would we be today?
One note of worth is that in my testing, you MUST have a dual core processor to benifit from the Physx card. Single core machines will suffer some noticable frame rate loss in my tests.
Great post!
I couldn't agree with you more. Nowhere in any Ageia documentation or advertising does it say that the Physx chip adds framerate performance. I too am getting sick and tired of reviews testing framerates for this hardware, when it's obviously (painfully obvious) that it's purpose is visuals, not speed.
In my system the Ageia card doesn't take away or add any frame rates at all. But, it does make GRAW look and play a lot more realistic. Maybe not extravegantly more, but more none-the-less. This is also first generation hardware. If 3D hardware would have been blasted so hard when it was new, where would we be today?
One note of worth is that in my testing, you MUST have a dual core processor to benifit from the Physx card. Single core machines will suffer some noticable frame rate loss in my tests.
Great post!
Yeah because you know:
1) Tons of people are using Macs,
2) Their OS is completely open source to the public,
3) you can build your own mac without hacking it, and
4) they don't have any kind of proprietary hardware or DRM in any of their "empire".
Mac is almost worse than Microsoft. With Windows, you can legally build your own system and anyone can develop for it (just like Mac). And XP is plenty stable. I personally don't like OS X. Some things are nice but overrall I like the look and feel of Windows better. Then theres also the fact that I can't play my favorite games on it.
FITCamaro,
I also agree with your earlier statement about the physics chip being on the GPU (or at least on the video card.)
To me that makes a LOT of sense. The memory is already there, the bus speed is there. Why not combine them? I don't like the software trick of using GPU time for physics. I'd prefer to see it done destretely on a seperate chip, or extra processing added on to the current GPU's.
Either we support this and games get better, or we don't and suffer a great loss in gaming history.
I also agree with your earlier statement about the physics chip being on the GPU (or at least on the video card.)
To me that makes a LOT of sense. The memory is already there, the bus speed is there. Why not combine them? I don't like the software trick of using GPU time for physics. I'd prefer to see it done destretely on a seperate chip, or extra processing added on to the current GPU's.
Either we support this and games get better, or we don't and suffer a great loss in gaming history.
So they have cloth that can be shot up....Crysis has a destructible environment too...it's all in the programming.
I believe that Ageia’s idea is right on the money, but they have the huge task of getting their software/hardware integrated into the gaming community in a short time...before the other physics solutions mature and take the entire market out from under them. Good luck...may the best solution prevail!
I believe that Ageia’s idea is right on the money, but they have the huge task of getting their software/hardware integrated into the gaming community in a short time...before the other physics solutions mature and take the entire market out from under them. Good luck...may the best solution prevail!
rykerabel
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- May 2, 2006
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I only know 2 things:
1. CPU's cannot do physics as well as specialized hardware no matter how many core's it has. Basically, even $2000 worth of CPU(s) will not be as powerful as the $300 Ageia physics card for physics processing.
2. NVidea and ATI had no intention of adding physics to their cards until Ageia started the idea. Everyone who speaks against Ageia should at least appreciate this.
So, I support Ageia whole heartedly and will buy their card before I ever invest in NVidea/ATI for physics, at least until the developer community settles on a standard.
1. CPU's cannot do physics as well as specialized hardware no matter how many core's it has. Basically, even $2000 worth of CPU(s) will not be as powerful as the $300 Ageia physics card for physics processing.
2. NVidea and ATI had no intention of adding physics to their cards until Ageia started the idea. Everyone who speaks against Ageia should at least appreciate this.
So, I support Ageia whole heartedly and will buy their card before I ever invest in NVidea/ATI for physics, at least until the developer community settles on a standard.
jbo5112
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- Jul 19, 2006
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Right now some of the stuff AGEIA PhysX supports in 3ds MAX is probably better suited to testing the card. Even the current games designed to show off PhysX seem to use a fairly static environment, compared to what they're trying to deliver. Imagine trying to blow up an entire city block while fighting in urban warfare, then driving a bulldozer to move all the debris around. I don't expect quad-core processors (even if you had two of them) to do a great job.
If someone tested the card in 3ds MAX with some of the demos they have on the CEBAS site (here), then I think that would be valid. Anyone happen to have any specs of the supposed power of this PPU?
If someone tested the card in 3ds MAX with some of the demos they have on the CEBAS site (here), then I think that would be valid. Anyone happen to have any specs of the supposed power of this PPU?
Why can't physics be like graphics? Why can't different companies make different products with different price tags that only vary in how well they perform?
If AGEIA and their competetors could agree on some standards then couldn't physics in games be adjusted with a slider bar like graphics?
Yes thats completely possible. But it takes a company like Microsoft to define an API for such a thing because the rest of them(Nvidia, ATI, Ageia) are in it to make money so obviously they each want to have their own way of doing things so they don't have to pay royalties to another company.
I am hoping a Physics API comes out in the near future because that would allow fair competition between all the players. DX10 will probably eventually include an API for physics. Maybe not at the start but in a future revision. DX10.0b.
niz
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- Feb 5, 2003
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The question I have is this:
Is Physx actually just a pretty video effect or can it actually effect (and therefore unbalance) the gameplay itself in a multiplayer environment?
e.g. imagine you're playing a multiplayer FPS with only half the people having physx.
Physx players could kill each other with a physx-only side-effect such as with flying shrapnel from shooting something nearby. Non-physx could try exactly the same thing but software-only physiscs would have less shrapnel with a different flight path and it would just be eye-candy with no damaging behaviour. So now there's an unfair difference in actual gameplay depending if you have a physx or not.
So in order for multiplayer games to be fair, developers will have to consider players with the lowest spec machines so they'll purposely disable physx for everyone else. Now you've just paid $350 for purposely-disabled hardware.
Is Physx actually just a pretty video effect or can it actually effect (and therefore unbalance) the gameplay itself in a multiplayer environment?
e.g. imagine you're playing a multiplayer FPS with only half the people having physx.
Physx players could kill each other with a physx-only side-effect such as with flying shrapnel from shooting something nearby. Non-physx could try exactly the same thing but software-only physiscs would have less shrapnel with a different flight path and it would just be eye-candy with no damaging behaviour. So now there's an unfair difference in actual gameplay depending if you have a physx or not.
So in order for multiplayer games to be fair, developers will have to consider players with the lowest spec machines so they'll purposely disable physx for everyone else. Now you've just paid $350 for purposely-disabled hardware.
If the companies can get physics down to $50 (whether it be a seperate card or done by a GPU or whatever) or less, then they could start making physics a requirement like they do with graphics. Thus, as long as you have the minimum, the game will play correctly and any extra physics power you machine has will be for eye candy and/or single player mode.
Using the GPU for other tasks is very old, but why waste GPU power for something when you're trying to get 100% of it used for graphics at the same time? Did that ever occur to you? If it were not for descrete 3D graphics engines then 3D graphics would be up to the CPU. Sounds stupid in that context doesn't it? Now, consider Physics... Get the idea?
Yes that could be the case. However, I think it will be a while before these new effects actually influence the game in a multiplayer environment. Until physics is more commonplace, they will just be pretty effects for multiplayer games. Now in the singleplayer environment its fully possible to do that.
Now I could see MMO's going this way faster than single player games with online components. You want to do a really cool thing in your MMO but everyone has to have it for you to implement it. So therefore you have to make your audience adopt the technology or not be able to play the game.
But in a way thats akin to the days of the N64 with the Memory Expansion pack. Perfect Dark required it to play through the game.
Exactly. I'm so glad somebody pointed this out. Yet another difficulty in adding physics to your games. This could be dealt with by having "Advanced Physics" servers and games which required the settings to be at a particular level, but it would divide gamers somewhat. Unlike graphics, you can't just decrease the number of particles and expect everyone to have the same experience.
Overall I support the addition of advanced physics. I don't expect it to be added quickly, as most standards aren't. It won't be terribly different from choosing to use SLI or Crossfire, you throw in another card for a few hundred bucks and you can get additional goodies with your game... just, better physics rather than a better resolution.
I'm a bit disappointed at the reaction a lot of people here are having, you would've thought a hardware enthusiast site would see the usefulness of adding in new tech. We're not talking about adding a little cloth tearing to a game, that's just one feature. Imagine if you were in a bunker that was being hit by tank fire or grenades, not enough to destroy it but enough to give it a good shaking. Bricks and objects fall from walls with the shaking, no pre-scripted crap. Or maybe you're attacking a building and you take out some structural support, causing it to collapse realistically and completely change the battlefield. What about an explosion that causes pieces of shrapnel and pebbles to fly out like bullets? You can't just "get out of range" of an explosion, as it could send projectiles out at lethal speeds for a good distance. What about shooting real bullet holes through objects, not painting on decals unless the object is glass (in which case it shatters completely)?
Anyone who's ever played an FPS where you need to make a jump that's JUST higher than your character can muster has probably said to themself, "put down the damn gun and grab onto the ledge". You're frustrated at the game's limitations in one form or another and it detracts from the believability. Maybe 10 years from now we'll look back at modern games and try to play them, only to say "WHAT? I put a grenade next to that wooden door, why is it still intact?"
One thing that people haven't really brought up (maybe because it's completely not true) is that I would think adding very realistic physics would make game design easier, provided that a toolkit was there with pre-made materials and physics laws. If you can tell the game that a wall is made of bricks, or a table is made of a particular type of wood, or that a chair is made of sheet metal, you instantly have all the game needs to know about that item. Provided the 3D model is accurate, it should be able to calculate the mass of the object, coefficient of friction to use in calculations with it, whether the object is shattered, cracked, broken, splintered, punched through, scratched, burned, or completely unharmed when something (a bullet, piece of shrapnel, character's fist, napalm) comes into contact with it... it might even be possible to have the game come up with a texture, and sound effects when two objects of pre-programmed materials interact. All the interactivity of the objects could be figured out in real time, so long as the game knew the 3D layout and materials used for objects...
Right now I'm not willing to put another card in my computer, partly because I'm waiting to see how the Physics battle turns out or at least how it progresses, and because there's minimal game support. However I won't be so foolish as to say "lol who needs more complex physics? thats so useless im gonna spend my $$$ on a second graphics card b/c thats much more awesomer".
As for people saying that CPUs and GPUs could be used to do physics, that's already done now, and as you can see the effects are generally not very great. I hate shooting objects and leaving a decal on them instead of breaking or shattering them. Now, depending on how the multi-core processors work out and how software ends up taking advantage of them, it might be harder to push dedicated hardware physics... but as someone said, because the hardware is dedicated to doing specific things, you'd expect to be able to get better performance per dollar.
enewmen
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- Mar 6, 2005
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I also REALLY hope so. They programmer shouldn't even need to know so much physics, just "shoot the can with V velocity in direction X,Y,Z with mass M, air density D, gravity G, and size S." Then let the API figure out all the interactions. The PPU and driver will also handle all this as well. I am actually surprised this wasn't all finished and standard years ago.
Physics is a big problem. Not just slow, there are just too many problems with things just not looking or behaving correctly.
This reminds me of the early days of 3D cards when the cards where slower than software emulation and high-res wasn't even possible. It wasn't until the 3dfx Monster mini-gl that things finally got working well. Then the first good single card was the TNT. It might be a few generations before physics get really mature and working smoothly. So, I am not complaining for a while.
Actually the API doesn't necessary handle that stuff. All an API is is an interface. The API just standardizes the function names, number of parameters, and parameter types, and return types. So you could have in the API a calculateTrajectory function that returns a trajectory but Ageia, ATI, and Nvidia could each have their own implementation of it.
enewmen
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Ya,
I know the API is just an interface. I was really talking about what happens inside the library. Thanks for reading my post though!
The standard API will make coding easier for everyone to be on the same page while programming physics. I will hate to see ATI, Nvidia, Ageia, with their own seperate implentations.
I know the API is just an interface. I was really talking about what happens inside the library. Thanks for reading my post though!
The standard API will make coding easier for everyone to be on the same page while programming physics. I will hate to see ATI, Nvidia, Ageia, with their own seperate implentations.
Absolutely nothing about Ageia impresses me. I certainly won't go out and spend $300.00 on a card just to make a few bits fly around. It looks pretty enough with the 7900gtx. Sound cards, video cards work with more than just games so the cost is acceptable. Not so with a card dedicated to one thing and one thing only and needs compatible titles to work. I don't see developers writing two sets of code or forcing customers to purchase hardware to run the game when most already have a huge investment hardware then asking some people to eliminate a card if their PCI slots are all used and that's not hard to do with only 2 PCI slots on new motherboards. As far as I'm concerned it's a step backwards to the old 3Dfx pass through days, didn't make sense then doesn't now. If history has it's way again Ageia will be gone or consumed by ATI or Nvidia and it'll be put where it should be on the graphics card and maybe add $50 to the cost of the card since it's just a chip 
I'll never buy one, nor will I ever install one on any computer I build or service, if a customer wants one they'll have to shoot themselves in the foot on their own I won't help. Has anyone thought about how much of a second card for SLI $300.00 would buy? That's a better use of $300.00 for graphics than anything Ageia is promoting.
When I play a game I'm not walking around looking at bits and pieces flying around or waving in the wind, I'm trying to win, paying attention to the objective. Who cares about destructable terrain, not going to help you win, not going to do anything but ooohh and awwe the croud like fireworks on the 4th and that's not worth even $100.00 and a PCI-E 1x slot to me. I'd rather have oh say, new cpu, more ram, larger monitor, the list goes on and on but oddly it doesn't include $300.00 for a card that does only one thing, does it only it optimized games and uses a useful slot.
I'll never buy one, nor will I ever install one on any computer I build or service, if a customer wants one they'll have to shoot themselves in the foot on their own I won't help. Has anyone thought about how much of a second card for SLI $300.00 would buy? That's a better use of $300.00 for graphics than anything Ageia is promoting.
When I play a game I'm not walking around looking at bits and pieces flying around or waving in the wind, I'm trying to win, paying attention to the objective. Who cares about destructable terrain, not going to help you win, not going to do anything but ooohh and awwe the croud like fireworks on the 4th and that's not worth even $100.00 and a PCI-E 1x slot to me. I'd rather have oh say, new cpu, more ram, larger monitor, the list goes on and on but oddly it doesn't include $300.00 for a card that does only one thing, does it only it optimized games and uses a useful slot.
M_with_one_M
Distinguished
- May 6, 2006
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Exactly. I'm so glad somebody pointed this out. Yet another difficulty in adding physics to your games. This could be dealt with by having "Advanced Physics" servers and games which required the settings to be at a particular level, but it would divide gamers somewhat. Unlike graphics, you can't just decrease the number of particles and expect everyone to have the same experience.
Overall I support the addition of advanced physics. I don't expect it to be added quickly, as most standards aren't. It won't be terribly different from choosing to use SLI or Crossfire, you throw in another card for a few hundred bucks and you can get additional goodies with your game... just, better physics rather than a better resolution.
I'm a bit disappointed at the reaction a lot of people here are having, you would've thought a hardware enthusiast site would see the usefulness of adding in new tech. We're not talking about adding a little cloth tearing to a game, that's just one feature. Imagine if you were in a bunker that was being hit by tank fire or grenades, not enough to destroy it but enough to give it a good shaking. Bricks and objects fall from walls with the shaking, no pre-scripted crap. Or maybe you're attacking a building and you take out some structural support, causing it to collapse realistically and completely change the battlefield. What about an explosion that causes pieces of shrapnel and pebbles to fly out like bullets? You can't just "get out of range" of an explosion, as it could send projectiles out at lethal speeds for a good distance. What about shooting real bullet holes through objects, not painting on decals unless the object is glass (in which case it shatters completely)?
Anyone who's ever played an FPS where you need to make a jump that's JUST higher than your character can muster has probably said to themself, "put down the damn gun and grab onto the ledge". You're frustrated at the game's limitations in one form or another and it detracts from the believability. Maybe 10 years from now we'll look back at modern games and try to play them, only to say "WHAT? I put a grenade next to that wooden door, why is it still intact?"
One thing that people haven't really brought up (maybe because it's completely not true) is that I would think adding very realistic physics would make game design easier, provided that a toolkit was there with pre-made materials and physics laws. If you can tell the game that a wall is made of bricks, or a table is made of a particular type of wood, or that a chair is made of sheet metal, you instantly have all the game needs to know about that item. Provided the 3D model is accurate, it should be able to calculate the mass of the object, coefficient of friction to use in calculations with it, whether the object is shattered, cracked, broken, splintered, punched through, scratched, burned, or completely unharmed when something (a bullet, piece of shrapnel, character's fist, napalm) comes into contact with it... it might even be possible to have the game come up with a texture, and sound effects when two objects of pre-programmed materials interact. All the interactivity of the objects could be figured out in real time, so long as the game knew the 3D layout and materials used for objects...
Right now I'm not willing to put another card in my computer, partly because I'm waiting to see how the Physics battle turns out or at least how it progresses, and because there's minimal game support. However I won't be so foolish as to say "lol who needs more complex physics? thats so useless im gonna spend my $$$ on a second graphics card b/c thats much more awesomer".
As for people saying that CPUs and GPUs could be used to do physics, that's already done now, and as you can see the effects are generally not very great. I hate shooting objects and leaving a decal on them instead of breaking or shattering them. Now, depending on how the multi-core processors work out and how software ends up taking advantage of them, it might be harder to push dedicated hardware physics... but as someone said, because the hardware is dedicated to doing specific things, you'd expect to be able to get better performance per dollar.
I would be very exited if I saw real word physics in games, but I'm just not exited by what I see in these tech demos.
So the question remains. Is this because physx is not powerful enough to make games more exiting or is it just bad programming. One would expect a tech demo to show the best that the hardware can perform.
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