The Bureau is a great example why PhysX might not be good solution

[Aver]

The Bureau is a great example why PhysX might not be good solution

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cud3y6c1Ez0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06ghcKMpdEc

You know... It's not a good idea to turn off physics for 80% of your customers. />/>

 

[CostinRaz]

You have have screen space reflection on which causes a lot of framerate issues in that game. Furthermore the game has optimization issues in general, not just PhysX.


EDIT: Don't you also have an AMD card?

 

[Aver]

Guy has screen space reflection on which causes a lot of framerate issues in that game. Furthermore the game has optimization issues in general, not just PhysX.

Nah, reflection is not a problem. When I have Physyx turned off it never drops below 60 FPS. It's because PhysyX tries to calculate physics on my CPU and it's designed to calculate physics on GPU.

EDIT: Don't you also have an AMD card?

Yes and that's the point. Whenever game use PhysX it doesn't work on anything other than nVidia. So there are no physics on AMD cards nor on consoles and games look quite funny this way. Everything feels so unnatural and stiff - worlds without interactions between the objects. Fortunately very few games use it, but it sad that CDPR wants to join them.

 

[CostinRaz]

Well PhysX doesn't work on AMD cards, pure and simple. However AMD users do not represent 50% of the market share let alone 80%.

Fortunately very few games use it, but it sad that CDPR wants to join them.

You mean it's sad CDPR is one of the very companies who is willing to push gaming graphics forward.

 

[Aver]

Well PhysX doesn't work on AMD cards, pure and simple. However AMD users do not represent 50% of the market share let alone 80%.

Consoles + AMD card owners represent. I would say that even more than 80%, but I wanted to be nice

You mean it's sad CDPR is one of the very companies who is willing to push gaming graphics forward.

There are plenty of companies that do that because graphics are the best selling point for games and especially now, during switch between generation of consoles everyone everyone aim to vow us with their graphics. But I don't really care about graphics, I always cared more about other elements like physics and AI. DICE, Crytek, Respawn and many others keep improving physics without using exclusive for nVidia owners solutions.

 

[CostinRaz]

Except that PhysX does work on consoles. Both Xbone and PS4 have PhysX support.

 

[Aver]

Except that PhysX does work on consoles. Both Xbone and PS4 have PhysX support.

They have the same support that AMD cards does have. So yeah, world made out of the plastic.

 

[CostinRaz]

Or what will happen is that PhysX for consoles will run just as good as PC PhysX using an Nvidia card, except that PC AMD cards won't be able to handle it.

 

[Georgie_Porgie]

I would prefer that there were more examples like Crytek, having their own build in physics engine causes less issues and looks damn impressive

 

[Aver]

Or what will happen is that PhysX for consoles will run just as good as PC PhysX using an Nvidia card, except that PC AMD cards won't be able to handle it.

AMD cards can't even try to run PhysX. It's locked out for them.

 

[CostinRaz]

Agbeth: Well of course that's the most ideal solution.

Except CDPR doesn't have the 600 developers that Crytek had to make that engine and Crysis 3.

Aver: I very much doubt developers would bother with PhysX then, the number of them who are implementing it is growing however.

 

[M4xw0lf.978]

You need to distinguish between CPU-accelerated Physx and GPU-accelerated Physx. All effects can technically be displayed on any system, only more expensive stuff like cloth simulation is too much parallel workload for the CPU.
If a developer doesn't even bother to go for the eye-candy options like cloth simulation, Physx is computed by the CPU just like any other physics middleware. Therefore this will be the standard in multiplatform titles, if they use physx.

 

[Aver]

Aver: I very much doubt developers would bother with PhysX then, the number of them who are implementing it is growing however.

Nvidia confirmed that PS4 and Xbox One will support only CPU based PhysX. It's logical, because AMD cards that are inside them don't have CUDA that is required to run hardware accelerated PhsyX.

Fortunately I don't play Free to play games or games like Star Trek or Passion Leads Army, so I'm barely ever affected by it. Actually only 2K makes games that are interesting for me and support CUDA, but they had deal with nVidia since ever, so it's not actually surprising for me. Fortunately most of engine creators makes their own physics engines that are way better optimized than PhysX, so I see bright future ahead for physics in the games.

You need to distinguish between CPU-accelerated Physx and GPU-accelerated Physx. All effects can technically be displayed on any system, only more expensive stuff like cloth simulation is too much parallel workload for the CPU.
If a developer doesn't even bother to go for the eye-candy options like cloth simulation, Physx is computed by the CPU just like any other physics middleware. Therefore this will be the standard in multiplatform titles, if they use physx.

Well, Heavy Rain, Crysis, Havoc or Nocturne (made in 1999 by 2K) showed us that you can make better cloth physics than what we see in Bureau without hardware acceleration .

 

[M4xw0lf.978]

Nvidia confirmed that PS4 and Xbox One will support only CPU based PhysX. It's logical, because AMD cards that are inside them don't have CUDA that is required to run hardware accelerated PhsyX.

CUDA isn't really necessary - the PS4 also uses DX11.2 level features, without even running an DirectX environment. Physx could be run under OpenCL just as well.

 

[Aver]

CUDA isn't really necessary - the PS4 also uses DX11.2 level features, without even running an DirectX environment. Physx could be run under OpenCL just as well.

I checked it on Google and it seems to not be actually true. nVidia said that it's technically possible and that they might port PhysX to OpenCL in the future, but right now they don't have such plans.

 

[M4xw0lf.978]

I checked it on Google and it seems to not be actually true. nVidia said that it's technically possible and that they might port PhysX to OpenCL in the future, but right now they don't have such plans.

Yeah, but as I said, CUDA is not per se necessary.

 

[10th]

Wasn't it rather that PhysX would run better on CPU if they would just optimise it? And nVidia being all business obviously doesn't want to do that, because then there would be one major selling point lost in comparison to AMD.


Moreover, why doesn't everyone just use other physics middleware like HAVOC, which has no problems with either?

 

[adridu59]

They got rid of x87 instructions in the latest iterations (maybe they're using ICC?). Anyways, what's the test setup specs? What's the CPU it's ran on? Obviously not an objective comparison. Lastly, it might just be a badly optimized implementation. I'm not denying the fact that it could indeed be fairly poorly made for AMD GPUs configs but we just can't settle at this point.

 

[Aver]

Wasn't it rather that PhysX would run better on CPU if they would just optimise it? And nVidia being all business obviously doesn't want to do that, because then there would be one major selling point lost in comparison to AMD.


Moreover, why doesn't everyone just use other physics middleware like HAVOC, which has no problems with either?

Most of them use it. Havoc is the most popular physics engine on the market. Others like DICE, Crytek or Valve makes their own physics engines for their games. Seeing list of games that use Physics I would say that they have something like ~5% of market.

I just want to point out that I don't criticize CDPR for using PhysX per se. I don't know anything about development process of TW3, so I don't want to be smartass and talk like I know better even tho I might sometimes sound like that. I'm just concerned about their decision of using PhsyX, because every single game that used PhysX had extremely bad physics when hardware acceleration was turned off - like clothes that don't move at all. It really looks horrible and stands out. From what I have seen so far it's really consumer unfriendly solution, because only fraction of your customers can see game's world that seems natural. Others see Legoland .

Maybe CDPR will prove me wrong and they will show us that PhysX might be implemented well and game won't be looking horrible on consoles and PCs with AMD cards. Maybe they will prove that game might look believable even without CUDA.

But until I see that I will remain concerned about that, because my experience with PhysX in the past was really horrible.

 

[CostinRaz]

You are going to have to accept the fact PhysX don't run well for AMD users and that CDPR decided to use it.

Simple as that.