Should Witcher 3 use PhysX instead of Havok?

[prince_of_nothing]

Should Witcher 3 use PhysX instead of Havok?

Nvidia's hardware accelerated PhysX API is the most advanced physics API available to game developers these days. Compared to PhysX, Havok is practically in the stone age.

While it's still very capable, Havok has no support for GPU accelerated physics, and thus many of the advanced particle effects you see in PhysX titles, cannot be accomplished using Havok without a steep decline in performance.

You could use GPU accelerated physics to do so many things that are anywhere from impractical, to unfeasible with software physics.

Imagine Geralt and Triss having realistic looking, and moving hair (Triss could finally let her hair down). Or the dress of a sorceress that reacts to her movement. Or how about mist or fog in a moon lit forest, that reacts to the movement of the characters or monsters.

You could make some cool looking spell, bomb or sign effects with PhysX as well, and make them much more destructive, realistic and spectacular to behold.

CDPR already used Nvidia's 3D Vision for the Witcher 2, so there's no reason they can't go the extra mile and implement hardware accelerated PhysX as well..

Here's the Borderlands 2 PhysX trailer for anyone that wants to see what GPU accelerated PhysX is capable of.

BTW, how the hell do you embed youtube videos? />

 

[Garrison72]

Good point. Havok is ancient, and clothes in TW2 all had the glued-on effect.

 

[GuyNwah]

PhysX may be better, a lot better, but it is also nVidia proprietary. These forums have already seen their share of griping by AMD users who felt they'd been shortchanged when CDPR didn't support Eyefinity. Making the highest settings on the new game available only to nVidia users would result in a whole new round of complaints, whether or not the better look and performance justify it.

 

[Garrison72]

PhysX may be better, a lot better, but it is also nVidia proprietary. These forums have already seen their share of griping by AMD users who felt they'd been shortchanged when CDPR didn't support Eyefinity. Making the highest settings on the new game available only to nVidia users would result in a whole new round of complaints, whether or not the better look and performance justify it.

I have to be honest here Guy. I might just buy Nvidia for my next PC if we can avoid glued-on clothes for TW3. PhysX just seems so far ahead when you see it enabled in games like Arkham City.

 

[prince_of_nothing]

PhysX may be better, a lot better, but it is also nVidia proprietary. These forums have already seen their share of griping by AMD users who felt they'd been shortchanged when CDPR didn't support Eyefinity. Making the highest settings on the new game available only to nVidia users would result in a whole new round of complaints, whether or not the better look and performance justify it.

Hardware PhysX can run on AMD powered systems with a powerful enough CPU. The performance will not be nearly as high as on a GPU and you will likely have to run the PhysX at the lowest setting, but it will still run.

By powerful enough CPU, I mean a Core i7 class quad or hex core processor with a clock speed of 4.5ghz and greater.

PhysX can accomplish so much more, it's totally worth ditching Havok imo. Especially since Witcher 3 will be coming out next year or the year after, so the latest hardware at that time will be even more powerful than what you have now.

I have to be honest here Guy. I might just buy Nvidia for my next PC if we can avoid glued-on clothes for TW3. PhysX just seems so far ahead when you see it enabled in games like Arkham City.

Yeah, Arkham City was a great example of what PhysX can bring to a game. Borderlands 2 is probably an even better example.

Those gravity grenades are fucking awesome with PhysX enabled..

 

[Aditya]

The difference with and without it I have seen playing Arkham City is quite remarkable! While guy has a point, I would like to see physx implemented in TW3. With Dx9 already the game beats the shit out of ALL other games there is, wonder what heights what CDP can achieve if they don't hold back on the other things

 

[witchermasterofrolling]

they already have optimized the game engine for Nvidia they may as well support PhysX. I don't like the fact that its proprietary but I don't see anyone creating something that's on par with it, that will run on all systems in fact I don't know why AMD is not trying to come up with a physics driver that's as good Nvidia's AMD falls so fare behind on drivers its not funny.

 

[Sirnaq]

I know where i want to see physx. Cyberpunk 2077 needs physx if they really consider that trailer to be target graphics.

 

[Aver]

I'm against popularizing engine that is designed for one type of graphics cards. Also next consoles will have both CPU and GPU made by AMD, so I doubt that they will use engine that works poorly on them.

I don't know why AMD is not trying to come up with a physics driver that's as good Nvidia

Like making another physics engine that work well only on one type of graphics cards would be a good thing for gamers. What we need is good physics engine that works well on all PCs.

Also Havok has his own pretty good cloth physics engine - Havok Cloth, but so far it was used only in Heavy Rain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr1SvQ7oN2g

 

[username_2635215]

They wouldn't have to support PhysX if they introduced the Euphoria Engine to the RedEngine. Grand Theft Auto 4 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed already had it and you could see some nice moving clothes in The Force Unleashed. Of course that could be very expensive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bKphYfUk-M

 

[CostinRaz]

I'm against popularizing engine that is designed for one type of graphics cards. Also next consoles will have both CPU and GPU made by AMD, so I doubt that they will use engine that works poorly on them.

Games with the option, because that's what it really is, to work with Nvidia PhysX still work fine on AMD hardware, it's just that they don't have all the bells and whistles.

Now I am not an expert but I have to assume that the Nvidia PhysX is either the best in terms of quality, or gives the best perfomance or is the easiest to program to understand why companies are using it more then other options.

 

[berrysenpai90]

Yeah I think they should since 2K used it for Borderlands 2 and it made the game to wonderful to look at with it.

 

[Aver]

Games with the option, because that's what it really is, to work with Nvidia PhysX still work fine on AMD hardware, it's just that they don't have all the bells and whistles.

Let's make game look worse for half of customers! Great idea!

Now I am not an expert but I have to assume that the Nvidia PhysX is either the best in terms of quality, or gives the best perfomance or is the easiest to program to understand why companies are using it more then other options.

Actually Havok is way more popular physics enigne. It was used in over 200 games. PhysX was used in over 50 games.

Also Havok has big advantage over PhysyX if it comes to great looking games that require a lot of GPU power. Havok uses only CPU, PhysyX uses mostly GPU. So you would need even more powerful GPU than now. That's why games that require a really good GPU don't use PhysyX. Only exception is Metro.

 

[CostinRaz]

I am not talking of past popularity here for the overall engine but rather for those specific features like cloth. ( which as you mentioned was only used in one game with the Havok engine ).

But Havok is older then Nvidia PhysX so it stands to reason that more companies would use it.

 

[Aaden]

Games with the option, because that's what it really is, to work with Nvidia PhysX still work fine on AMD hardware, it's just that they don't have all the bells and whistles.

Problem with that "option" is, that part of the deal seems to be to make it look really crappy on non-Nvidia-systems. Instead of decent physics for all, you get (mostly) way better physics (depends on how it's done, e.g. Mafia 2's shred and shard overkill was ridiculous) on Nvidia-GPUs and minimalistic to none at all on AMD-GPUs.
And this is absolutely no issue of powerful hardware. Modern CPUs are more than powerful enough to process some decent physics effects - not at maximum PhysX's degree probably, but something decent.

Besides, anything proprietary is a scourge to the freedom of the user and to progress in general. I don't want to be bullied into buying Nvidia cards the same way I'm bullied into using Microsoft's OS for DX. An universal physics standard would be able to perform similiar simulations, if there was any real effort to develop it - which there is not, for business reasons.

 

[Aver]

I am not talking of past popularity here for the overall engine but rather for those specific features like cloth. ( which as you mentioned was only used in one game with the Havok engine ).

But Havok is older then Nvidia PhysX so it stands to reason that more companies would use it.

And in how many games used PhysX to make realistic clothes? Two? Batman and Mafia? Maybe something else, but overall it seems that it's not problem with engines. Devs seem to not care about realistic clothes.

But Havok is older then Nvidia PhysX so it stands to reason that more companies would use it.

Still:
Number of games that use PhysX and were released in 2012: 8 (and I've never heard about half of them: Gas Guzzlers: Combat Carnage, Deep Black, Depth Hunter, Passion Leads Army)
Number of games that use Havok and were released in 2012: 49

 

[CostinRaz]

Here's a list of games with Nvidia PhysX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardware-accelerated_PhysX_support

It's more then just 2 at least ( Borderlands 2 also had it ). Now of course most developers don't care about it, but then again the vast majority of developers don't care about top of the line graphics. CDPR does however.

Though sure if someone can make technology which works on all systems and provides cloth simulation ( because if there's one major complaint in TW2 that I have it is with regards to hair and clothes and how they move ) then I'm all for it, but since there isn't and one can't expect CDPR to make their own PhysX engine ( or can we? ) because of their resources then well we shall have to take what we have.

There's a reason Nvidia is winning the race.

 

[Aver]

Here's a list of games with Nvidia PhysX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardware-accelerated_PhysX_support

It's more then just 2 at least ( Borderlands 2 also had it ).

I checked video presenting PhysX in Borderlands 2 and they used cloth physics only for environment - tents and flags: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k1idbbr2pw . So still they didn't care about character's clothes.

There's a reason Nvidia is winning the race.

Again:
Number of games that used PhysX and were released in 2012: 8 (and I've never heard about half of them: Gas Guzzlers: Combat Carnage, Deep Black, Depth Hunter, Passion Leads Army)
Number of games that used Havok and were released in 2012: 49

I don't see any sign of "winning" here unless definition of "winning" was dramatically changed.

 

[Aaden]

[...] Deep Black, Depth Hunter, Passion Leads Army [...]

Those sound like some weird adult movies.


Could you give us a source for those numbers? I'd be interested in what games all of those were, so that I can judge how physics was handled and to see how many major productions were among them. Numbers alone aren't worth much.

 

[Aver]

Those sound like some weird adult movies. />


Could you give us a source for those numbers? I'd be interested in what games all of those were, so that I can judge how physics was handled and to see how many major productions were among them. Numbers alone aren't worth much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardware-accelerated_PhysX_support

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havok_(software)

Also I was checking on official sites if they didn't miss anything.