| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
ggrobot
Elite Member
Joined: 28 May 2004
Posts: 45726
|
 Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 8:03 pm Post subject: Epic's Tim Sweeney talks PhysX, Havok FX [21568] |
 |
|
nV News has conducted an interesting interview with Epic Games CEO & Lead Programmer Tim Sweeney talking about Ageia's PhysX and Havok's Havok FX physics acceleration technologies, among other topics. Sweeney sheds some light on the PhysX implementation in the upcoming Unreal Tournament 2007, which is o
Read more...
Source: GGMania headlines
GGMania.com - Daily Gaming and Tech news |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
xxxx
Elite Member
Joined: 07 Jun 2004
Posts: 1755
Location: Canada
|
| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 8:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I am extremely saddened by the fact Epic is supporting this bullshit card. But I still don't comprehend what idiot out there will run a PhysX card to play online.. come on.. I've seen videos of this card in action and it's a bloody joke. It looks like a card more aimed at n00b gamers. If it relieved the GPU and CPU of ALL Physics involvement then fine, but it doesn't, not even close and actually appears to chew up a lot more CPU as well. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
yhancik
Senior Member
Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 286
Location: Belgium
|
| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 11:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
"blood spurts" is definitely the stupidest use of "physics"
ridiculous |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jarhad
Contributor
Joined: 23 Feb 2006
Posts: 24
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 12:19 am Post subject: |
|
|
| xxxx wrote: | | I am extremely saddened by the fact Epic is supporting this bullshit card. But I still don't comprehend what idiot out there will run a PhysX card to play online.. come on.. I've seen videos of this card in action and it's a bloody joke. It looks like a card more aimed at n00b gamers. If it relieved the GPU and CPU of ALL Physics involvement then fine, but it doesn't, not even close and actually appears to chew up a lot more CPU as well. |
Apparently you are not familiar with the use of the PPU outside GRAW.
There is a PPU demo with 3k boxes all stacked on each other. (unlike the driver demo where each pyramid is seperate, having that many blocks ontop of each other increases workload immensly. Performance goes is no longer 1-3fps.
Read
Okay, the PPU decreases CPU work and increases physics performance. The reason the PPU doesn't relieve ALL physics from the game to the card is because it's use Ageia... AND HAVOK. Unless you blow a car in GRAW using a grenade, Ageia does nothing. You want to see a game that uses Ageia and a PPU entirely? Check out Cellfactor. In the target field of a shortcut put:
"C:\Program Files\Artificial\CellFactor\SystemGame\CellFactor.exe" EnablePhysX=false
and you can now load the demo without a PPU. Try the game for yourself. Get in the aircraft and shoot stuff. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jarhad
Contributor
Joined: 23 Feb 2006
Posts: 24
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 12:24 am Post subject: |
|
|
| xxxx wrote: | | I am extremely saddened by the fact Epic is supporting this bullshit card. But I still don't comprehend what idiot out there will run a PhysX card to play online.. come on.. I've seen videos of this card in action and it's a bloody joke. It looks like a card more aimed at n00b gamers. If it relieved the GPU and CPU of ALL Physics involvement then fine, but it doesn't, not even close and actually appears to chew up a lot more CPU as well. |
Apparently you are not familiar with the use of the PPU outside GRAW.
There is a PPU demo with 3k boxes all stacked on each other. (unlike the driver demo where each pyramid is seperate, having that many blocks ontop of each other increases workload immensly. Performance goes is no longer 1-3fps.
Read
Okay, the PPU decreases CPU work and increases physics performance. The reason the PPU doesn't relieve ALL physics from the game to the card is because it's use Ageia... AND HAVOK. Unless you blow a car in GRAW using a grenade, Ageia does nothing. You want to see a game that uses Ageia and a PPU entirely? Check out Cellfactor. In the target field of a shortcut put:
"C:\Program Files\Artificial\CellFactor\SystemGame\CellFactor.exe" EnablePhysX=false
and you can now load the demo without a PPU. Try the game for yourself. Get in the aircraft and shoot stuff.
...And what do you mean by bullshit card? Are you doubting Tim Sweeney, as if you have any credentials that make your oppinion matter. You're comparing yourself to a successful game developer.
Physics are only going to get more intense, and don't think for a second graphics won't. So unless you have quad-SLI, SLI setups even with a 2.9ghz conroe (search XS forums) do shitty physics. Dual- and quad-core won't eleviate the burder from physics; even if quad core gave 4x the performance, you're looking at going from 1-3fps to 4-12fps in a simple, non-graphical demo (see aboev). GPU won't help nearly as much because anything less than a two-card SLI gets trashed in games like Oblivion. Graphics will get more intense, average framerate will decrease on current hardware. And you want to throw physics onto the GPU as well? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
lmer
Elite Member
Joined: 28 Mar 2005
Posts: 329
Location: Zagreb, Croatia
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 2:41 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Ok Jarhad. Please tell me what is the point of having three thousand boxes stacked on top of each other? No wait, that was a stupid question. Please tell me what you think where can such a card have a purpose. Can you imagine a situation where 3 thousand objects need to be calculated? You can exclude particle effects cause such stuff can be done with basic fractals. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
El_Coyote
Elite Member
Joined: 09 Jun 2004
Posts: 611
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 3:09 am Post subject: |
|
|
| lmer wrote: | | Ok Jarhad. Please tell me what is the point of having three thousand boxes stacked on top of each other? No wait, that was a stupid question. Please tell me what you think where can such a card have a purpose. Can you imagine a situation where 3 thousand objects need to be calculated? You can exclude particle effects cause such stuff can be done with basic fractals. |
if everyone had that attitude, we'd still be living in caves and hunting food with clubs and stones... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
yhancik
Senior Member
Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 286
Location: Belgium
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 4:09 am Post subject: |
|
|
no, we'd be stacking three thousand clubs and stones  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jarhad
Contributor
Joined: 23 Feb 2006
Posts: 24
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 6:42 am Post subject: |
|
|
| lmer wrote: | | Ok Jarhad. Please tell me what is the point of having three thousand boxes stacked on top of each other? No wait, that was a stupid question. Please tell me what you think where can such a card have a purpose. Can you imagine a situation where 3 thousand objects need to be calculated? You can exclude particle effects cause such stuff can be done with basic fractals. |
I can answer your stupid questions with one word: water.
Water - how do you think it's done in games? It uses thousands of thousands of tiny, invisible spheres that act according to the laws of physics, then a transparent mesh covers all the connecting spheres. But we're not talking about a mere 3k. Try hundreds of thousands of spheres.
And let's not forget environment deformation! How incredibly realistic and awesome is it to run a tank into a house and.... the tank comes to a complete hault and a the house continues to flawlessly exist. I would think several tons of steel could break apart the concrete holding bricks together very easily. What if the wall were to break in half, fall onto the tank, then shatter into thousands of individual bricks?
Or how about a flamethrower that melts everything it touches? Say a texture of plastic is melted; it could turn into a liquid (using tiny objects you hate so much) then fall. The temperature could lower and starts to dry again in whatever state it's in.
Using tiny cubes and boxes are exactly how more advanced physics tehcniqued are done. We can't simply say if I throw this up in the air at 5mph it will decrease in speed, stop, increase, reach terminal velocity, hit an object, and bounce. We need to use physics inside objects to make them more lifelike. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
lmer
Elite Member
Joined: 28 Mar 2005
Posts: 329
Location: Zagreb, Croatia
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 11:54 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Whatever, i'm not into flaming. Have fun with your latest gadgets from the gaming market. Seriously, all the best. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
miglaugh
Elite Member
Joined: 02 Feb 2005
Posts: 362
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 2:36 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| epic is exactly the kind of company we want using this technology, and providing feedback to ageia. This way it has a chance to mature and actually become usefull. Everything has to start somewhere and this didn't start off on the right foot. I think epic will take it in the right direction though, and if not, then no harm no foul, because they are using it in such a way that it won't affect gameplay (thats what I'm upset about). |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jarhad
Contributor
Joined: 23 Feb 2006
Posts: 24
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 3:34 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Yeah, they'll just have PhysX-only.  Btw, the Ageia SDK is free even for non-developers, so you can get SDK 2.3.2 which has PPU support. Mods can implement it into games without it. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
yhancik
Senior Member
Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 286
Location: Belgium
|
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 5:34 pm Post subject: |
|
|
but it just can't affect gameplay
or not on a major scale
because PhysX support will always be an option
- or you make your game require the PPU
but
* not everyone can/will afford another 200€ card when you already spend that (if not more) on the video card
* if this PPU thing lives long enough, we'll have different cards on users machines, with different processing power
you can have some kind of scalability with graphics, so that your game runs on a GeForce 4 or on a GeForce 7xxx without affecting the gameplay too much (if you code your game well, which is already rare :p)
because basically the graphics aren't intimately linked to the gameplay
if the physics has a major influence on the gameplay, there's a problem
what if the gameplay needs 3 millions stacked boxes ? (:p)
and if i have a card that can only process 300 000 stacked boxes ?
either launching the game will tell me "Aigea, the way it's meant to be played - except you can't play this game, you card is outdated, goodbye" or something will just be wrong in the gameplay...
so i'm afraid the PhysX card is condemned to only run MORE special effects
except, i already have a graphic card for that
i don't want bigger explosion and realistic blood spurts, basically, i want an interesting game, and i already tend to think that we focus too much on "effects", not on the goddamn gameplay
so i don't believe it's the way to go
(sadly, because i'm convinced physics is important) (but not that way, mkay?) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jarhad
Contributor
Joined: 23 Feb 2006
Posts: 24
|
| Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 2:54 am Post subject: |
|
|
| yhancik wrote: | but it just can't affect gameplay
or not on a major scale |
You're right, it won't affect gameplay at all IIRC. It'll be a reproduced event saying "huge land deformation here, use PPU for dibris" sent to each PC.
| yhancik wrote: | but
* not everyone can/will afford another 200€ card when you already spend that (if not more) on the video card |
Not everyone has a 512mb card to run Quake 4 in Ultra detail, but they go on living. There will be ways around it, but when Epic gets its hands on something new, they take full advantage of it; Non-PPU card users will get poor performance as 128mb cards do in Doom 3/Quake 4.
| yhancik wrote: | * if this PPU thing lives long enough, we'll have different cards on users machines, with different processing power
you can have some kind of scalability with graphics, so that your game runs on a GeForce 4 or on a GeForce 7xxx without affecting the gameplay too much (if you code your game well, which is already rare :p)
because basically the graphics aren't intimately linked to the gameplay
|
Yup.
| yhancik wrote: |
if the physics has a major influence on the gameplay, there's a problem
what if the gameplay needs 3 millions stacked boxes ? (:p)
and if i have a card that can only process 300 000 stacked boxes ?
either launching the game will tell me "Aigea, the way it's meant to be played - except you can't play this game, you card is outdated, goodbye" or something will just be wrong in the gameplay... |
Just like DX6 users did with Half-Life 2. Sorry, they can't scale all the way back to the stone age. Upgrade. :p MS is working on a universal API that Ageia and Havok will conform to (for better or for worse) that will create a standard. That means if you don't support the API, you can't play. It's fine for GPUs because we just tell people with geforce 4 mx to upgrade.
| yhancik wrote: |
so i'm afraid the PhysX card is condemned to only run MORE special effects |
...or effects a graphics card can't do, like water, environment deformation, volumetric and dynamic clouds and smoke.
Plus there are two kinds of physics effects. Gameplay and effect physics. For example: shooting a gun and shells fall to the ground and bounce. The CPU, PPU and GPU can do this because it doesn't affect gameplay and doesn't require the level to be rethought. Shooting a gun and the bullets are actual objets that ricochet and kill someone. A CPU and a PPU can do this, but a GPU cannot. That's why it's called CPU-GPU physics, because the GPU cannot send information back to the CPU to be rerended, a would have to still be done on the CPU. This is usually the more intensive phyics workload, so I don't see CPU-GPU physics getting as advanced as on a PPU.
| yhancik wrote: |
i don't want bigger explosion and realistic blood spurts, basically, i want an interesting game, and i already tend to think that we focus too much on "effects", not on the goddamn gameplay
so i don't believe it's the way to go
(sadly, because i'm convinced physics is important) (but not that way, mkay?) |
Well think about that when a game comes along and takes full advantage of the new technology, like Splinter Cell and dynamic lighting or Garry's Mod and physics, for example. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2666 phpBB Group
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
