Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hey guys, I'm looking for your thoughts on PhysX - not asking you for advice on whether I should invest in it because I already have a GTX280 but for your experiences with it. So far for me it's been something I'd rather have disabled in my games:

- it's a nice integration into CUDA but the effects run really slow in UT3 and generally drag down my framerate from the usual 60 to below 30... that Lighthouse map is especially bad, it looks like the bricks fall down and settle in slow motion!

- I've read and heard that Gears of War can use PhysX, but I have no idea whether the effects are on or off when I'm playing the game as there's no option like in UT3 to turn on Hardware Physics processing. Upon inspection of explosion effects in the game I can't discern any difference between accelerated and non-accelerated GoW.

- I haven't had time to try Splinter Cell Double Agent with PhysX but as far as I know there's no in-game option to enable PhysX either. Argh!

All in all I wish Intel had done something substantial with Havok.

I tried that 'physx pack' or whatever, and besides causing hard lockups requiring me to hold the power button to force a power down, it ain't worth scrap.

Could be the drivers themselves that are very beta buggy though, even non-physx things crash while 'gpu physics' is enabled.

My experience has been poor, but i blame it on the seperate hardware that Ageia had the balls to release. About $400 for slightly better visuals and a couple physics tricks, and then the usual lousy drivers, performance, and crashing that comes with new hardware types. Luckily i got my money back so it was a learning experience.

But now that the manufacturers are finally slaping physics CPUs onto the video card pcb and with Nvidia enabling it on regular video cards my hopes are a bit higher.

I just hope this thing becomes practical and wide-spread enough to justify developers properly including support in games and maybe we'll finally see something worthwhile in the near future.

So far it's another good-idea-but-poor-execution thing.

Oh and since i have a single 8800 right now i haven't tried converting it. That will wait for my next upgrade. For once i kind of regret buying a single PCI-E slot mobo.

agreed. I played that Crossover game...the Agiea only release. It was fun, but from what I was told even with the card it ran like a dog.

Honestly I'm not sold on the idea AT ALL. In my experience while physX's do take up some CPU, I think with the PhysX company gone and in the hands of NVIDIA they might turn it into something useful.

Unreal Tournament 3
Well as far as UT3 goes I am quite unimpressed, Tornado had near no destructible elements, and looking at the tornado dropped my FPS, Lighthouse had very few destructible elements, Heat Ray had no destructible elements that I could find and had hail spawning 12 inches off the ground looked really cool when you shot those gravity ball thingies tho.

I also saw several physics related bugs namely objects sliding very slowly not reacting to nearby explosions or direct gunshots. I even saw some glass free falling in slow mo (under normal gravity) also the destructible items behaved quite unpredictably and inconsistently, you shoot section c and section c, b and a are destroyed leaving d and e intact.

When you destroy a glass screen it is replaced with a cracked texture that appeared to be premade instead of generated and new glass fragments spawned from nowhere leaving the original screen completely intact but cracked.

The only things I saw that something like the source engine wouldn't be able to do were completely visual not affecting gameplay in the least.

Warmonger: Downtown Destruction
I also tried Warmonger and was rather impressed compared to UT3 the cloth simulations were plentiful, looked great and accurate even when ripped. Ripped cloth needs some polishing as it currently looks heavily polygonated, But this could be solved with some type of dynamic transparencies applied to the textures along the ripped edges. These cloths have a minor affect on gameplay.

The environments while not completely destructible were more-so than UT3. Altho when you blow a brick wall in Warmonger it graks off in large chunks while in UT3 it goes into individual bricks, but this appears to be purely cosmetic.

Warmonger has lots of papers flying through it which looked nice, also the floating blowing embers in one of the levels (they look quite similar to the hale in Heat Ray on UT3 but much lighter and affected by the wind. I liked it lots.


In both games I saw lots of collisions of non gameplay objects and in the case of UT3 gameplay objects as well.

Demos
They looked Really cool and impressive but lac creativity and artistic value.

Uhh on second thought maybe I should take another look at them.

CellFactor: Revolution
Does not support Nvidia Hardware.

Thoughts
I hope one day we will see games with fully destructible environments, with real looking simulations of walls being broken instead of being clearly, partially scripted (Warmonger) or Unpredictable UT3

I can imagine a simple touch to a game like police tape blowing in the wind will look great and be quite easy to implement. Also effects like snow, rain, hale and water flowing have great potential.

If anyone has any free mods or games that support PhysX acceleration for me to try or inexpensive games <$30 to recommend then I am interested and will gladly add them to this review.[/b]

Yeah I noticed alot of slow-mo stuff in UT3 too (while everything else is going on in real time) as well as the lack of polish with the glass breaking. I'll have to check out that Warmonger game you mentioned though, seems like it's a little more optimized than what these disillusioned eyes are used to.

Don't get your hopes up too high, google force within, you should be able to find your way from there, the Nvidia download manager is leet.

Off topic but oooo when did my staus get to 'Insider'? I feel so nerdy.

I guess i may as well summzrize my feelings on physx again.

Past and now = boo.

Potential future = Yay!

Realisticly = may be redundant in a couple years.

Ow... A PhysX thread. Yum yum :P
Prepare for a quotefest...

- it's a nice integration into CUDA but the effects run really slow in UT3 and generally drag down my framerate from the usual 60 to below 30... that Lighthouse map is especially bad, it looks like the bricks fall down and settle in slow motion!
>>Lots of debris = less fps than on vanilla maps... but "slomo" with a card like yours ?? Did you try the latest drivers ?

- I've read and heard that Gears of War can use PhysX, but I have no idea whether the effects are on or off when I'm playing the game as there's no option like in UT3 to turn on Hardware Physics processing. Upon inspection of explosion effects in the game I can't discern any difference between accelerated and non-accelerated GoW.
>>And that's where people get confused about PhysX : you can't always accelerate it using a GeForce or Ageia card ! It's basically only a part of a game's engine dedicated to physics (gravity and such). Lots of games use it - but very few feature hardware PhysX support or advanced Physx effects... GoW, like all UE3-based games, uses PhysX - but unlike UT3, it doesn't support hardware acceleration of PhysX afaik.

- I haven't had time to try Splinter Cell Double Agent with PhysX but as far as I know there's no in-game option to enable PhysX either. Argh!
>>Same here. I think you don't even need to install the PhysX drivers except for multiplayer mode (not sure). No hardware support anyway.

All in all I wish Intel had done something substantial with Havok.
>>and I wish nvidia will do sth substantial with PhysX ! :lol: (Still very few titles at the moment...)

agreed. I played that Crossover game...the Agiea only release. It was fun, but from what I was told even with the card it ran like a dog.
>> :?: What is that game ??

Unreal Tournament 3
Well as far as UT3 goes I am quite unimpressed, Tornado had near no destructible elements, ... Lighthouse had very few destructible elements, Heat Ray had no destructible elements that I could find ...
>> :shock: Were you playing with your eyes closed ? Or in Spectator mode ?? :lol:

-Tornado : all concrete walls ! windows ! red steam pipes ! energy balls/locks !
-Lighthouse : barrels ! passages through bricks walls, concrete floors and ceilings ! windows ! wood planks !
-Heat Ray PhysX : barricades ! neon signs (yeah, even that dragon over there) ! wooden platforms ! gas canisters !

Thoughts
I hope one day we will see games with fully destructible environments, with real looking simulations of walls being broken instead of being clearly, partially scripted (Warmonger) or Unpredictable UT3
>>Unpredictable ? Play a couple rounds and you know exactly which parts of a brick wall will break on Lighthouse. C'mon, advanced PhysX deserves more than a 2-minute ride on each map ! And I'm not saying so just because I'm a declared 'worshipper' of that stuff :mrgreen:

I can imagine a simple touch to a game like police tape blowing in the wind will look great and be quite easy to implement. Also effects like snow, rain, hale and water flowing have great potential.
>>Realistic cloth movement (i.e not just an animation loop) already exists in lots of games and doesn't require PhysX's capabilities. It's tearable cloth I'd like to see everywhere !
You should try Switchball (no hw acceleration required, since the game is alas capped at 30 fps...), it has a clever (though sadly underused) way of using this feature : cloth platforms will sustain the weight of a marble ball, but will break under a metal ball - thus leading to "death"... or hidden alternate routes ! :)

"Climatic debris", wind effects and water are interesting too, but I'm not sure PhysX is really appropriate for these. As non-gameplay elements, they'd need to look good before all, and in phase with each game's aesthetics/mood/atmosphere - and PhysX tends to look so like... PhysX. :?

I certainly hope we'll have a new Cellfactor that's compatible with PhysX on GeForce soon. Though unrefined/beta FPSs, the previous Cellfactor titles were a real showcase of what a heavy dose of PhysX can bring to the table - new gameplay possibilities and pure insane fun !

btw: it was cellfactor.

Just so you know.