Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Wishlist => Topic started by: Rockdog on October 08, 2008, 07:40:11 PM

Title: PhysX support
Post by: Rockdog on October 08, 2008, 07:40:11 PM
Now that Nvidia has added PhysX support for its current batch of 8, 9, and 200 series cards is it time to revisit this? I would think that this SIM of all things could benefit from a dedicated physics processor and the gritty realism it can add. I think that GVs and Ships would benefit the most, but it would also make little things like a rip in the wing that much more interesting.

How about it HTC?
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Lukanian-7 on October 09, 2008, 03:25:19 PM
Wow, That Was A Really BAD CHOICE To Put That Up Luckily Noones Eaten You Alive Yet, Not Only Do People Not Like Graphics In This Community But Even I Who Has Asked For Eye-Candy-type Requests Oppose This, ugh A Video Card Can't Make That Stuff Happen I'll Just Leave It At A

I Disagree

(Sorry For Being A Dick)
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: mechanic on October 09, 2008, 03:39:47 PM
personally i thought the physx stuff worked well on 3D action games but it is meant to give a 'more real' feel to the obviously cartoon gameworld. While AH is also quite cartoon based, IE nice and colourfull and well defined, it also has a hard worked physics model that gives a far more real feel to the game than something that is designed to give a gobal realism punch to any format of 3D game rather than flying specificaly. I may be talking out of my arse of course.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Motherland on October 09, 2008, 04:15:09 PM
I'm not sure how this works, but it sounds like it could take some of the strain off of your CPU?
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: mechanic on October 09, 2008, 04:26:38 PM
Does it mess with the games programming or just enhance 3D rendering? The only thing ive seen it on was a pirate game and it wrecked my frame rates just looking at an area of water. From what i understood it was coded into the game and then also installed onto your system and only compatible with games designed for it. Sounds like a nightmare for your average ah2 player.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Rockdog on October 09, 2008, 06:31:17 PM
It turns an unused gpu into a dedicated CPU for physics computations. it allows game developers to make the world inside the game more interactive by assigning physical properties to all objects. instead of a building in town having only two states 100 percent and destroyed, you would see real damage to the structure.  Drop a bomb on a fuel depot and see barrels flying through the air in a realistic way. ships that sink because of holes in the hull instead of sinking because the damage reached a predefined threshold cuing the sinking animation.

physics add realism to simulations, not eye candie.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: mechanic on October 09, 2008, 06:44:38 PM
would the game then still run on 64mb internal vid cards as it does quite comfortably at present?
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Yossarian on October 09, 2008, 06:55:29 PM
It turns an unused gpu into a dedicated CPU for physics computations. it allows game developers to make the world inside the game more interactive by assigning physical properties to all objects. instead of a building in town having only two states 100 percent and destroyed, you would see real damage to the structure.  Drop a bomb on a fuel depot and see barrels flying through the air in a realistic way. ships that sink because of holes in the hull instead of sinking because the damage reached a predefined threshold cuing the sinking animation.

physics add realism to simulations, not eye candie.


In that case, I would LOVE for this to be added!!!!!!!!
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Rockdog on October 09, 2008, 10:50:29 PM
would the game then still run on 64mb internal vid cards as it does quite comfortably at present?

I'm sure they could still support the old as well, but come on, it's time.... WHile you are at it, toss out the tape drive, and that 4 megs of 32 pin you paid a fortune for.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Noir on October 10, 2008, 12:03:02 AM
PhysX can be used without having a late nvidia card, its just that the cpu will do all the work.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Denholm on October 10, 2008, 08:27:51 AM
would the game then still run on 64mb internal vid cards as it does quite comfortably at present?
Probably not, since those cards don't have the PhysX GPU.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: rabbidrabbit on October 10, 2008, 10:58:12 AM
It would be nice to see.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Vulcan on October 10, 2008, 04:13:31 PM
Drop a bomb on a fuel depot and see barrels flying through the air in a realistic way. ships that sink because of holes in the hull instead of sinking because the damage reached a predefined threshold cuing the sinking animation.

physics add realism to simulations, not eye candie.

physx cannot add realism to simulations, only twitcher games.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Krusty on October 10, 2008, 04:18:59 PM
The physx allows you to program more crap in there than your CPU can handle. If you don't have the hardware you're not going to see the benefit. You might even take a major hit if you're trying to process it all without this hardware.

On top of that it brings up many questions. If the presence of the card gives more realistic interactions, what does the absence do? Will you experience things differently than the guy shooting at you? Will you be in 2 places at once because on the other end there's no physx card to keep up with you? Also, what of all the "CHEAT!! He turned off his physx card!!!" cries that come up so folks can aim with ease.


No, I don't think it will work. Not only for the reasons above, but because the game has to be coded from the ground up to take any advantage of it, and AH is not. That would require a major from top-to-bottom recode of everything that interacts with anything, particles, light, whatever. That's just not going to happen any time soon for AH.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Chalenge on October 10, 2008, 07:12:51 PM
I dont know what it would do in AH but in GRAW the Physx card made only minor improvements in graphical effects. I read in an review before buying the ASUS Physx card that the processing would allow users in the immediate area of a PhysX user to also see improvements but I never played it online. I have seen some improvements in Crysis from using the 8800s with the PhysX drivers added and since the 4870 X2 those improvements are not so visible. I think any particle system like smoke and flame could benefit from PhysX but I asked about it (two years ago?) and was told the lower end systems would have issues (I may have imperfect recall on that).
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Rockdog on October 10, 2008, 07:23:51 PM
physx cannot add realism to simulations, only twitcher games.

You know not of what you speak my friend. Imagine clouds that react as your plane flys through creating little vortexs off the wing tips. Dirt begin blasted over the front of you tank and obstructing your gun site. instead of a pre canned oil spash on the wind screen, the oil would splatter as in real life and would slowly thin from the rushing wind. And if you were following someone with an oil hit, you would get oil splatters on you as well. Diving out fast enough could put out flames from the source. They could take it as far as simlutating radar and radio signals. Drop behind a hill to hide in its radar shadow, but lose your vox for the same reason.


It will be added to SImulations, buy Based on Krustys comment, I agree that it will most likely not be this one. But a sim like that would definitely merit an upgrade to your old pentium 75..... I think I may have just come up with my next million dollar idea.

Nvidia FAQ on PhysX http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_faq.html (http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_faq.html)

From the Nvidia Website: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_physx.html (http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_physx.html)


Delivering physics in games is no easy task. It's an extremely compute-intensive environment based on a unique set of physics algorithms that require tremendous amounts of simultaneous mathematical and logical calculations.

This is where NVIDIA® PhysX™ Technology and GeForce® processors come in. NVIDIA PhysX is a powerful physics engine which enables real-time physics in leading edge PC and console games. PhysX software is widely adopted by over 150 games, is used by more than 10,000 registered users and is supported on Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC.

In addition, PhysX is designed specifically for hardware acceleration by powerful processors with hundreds of cores. Combined with the tremendous parallel processing capability of the GPU, PhysX will provide an exponential increase in physics processing power and will take gaming to a new level delivering rich, immersive physical gaming environments with features such as:

Explosions that cause dust and collateral debris
Characters with complex, jointed geometries for more life-like motion and interaction
Spectacular new weapons with incredible effects
Cloth that drapes and tears naturally
Dense smoke & fog that billow around objects in motion  
The only way to get real physics with the scale, sophistication, fidelity and level of interactivity that dramatically alters your entertainment experience will be with one of the millions of NVIDIA PhysX-ready GeForce processors.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Noir on October 11, 2008, 02:00:55 AM
nice NVIDIA propaganda :)

BTW the XBOX 360 has got an ATI video card.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: SectorNine50 on October 12, 2008, 06:34:19 AM
PhysX support wouldn't change how things look on people's screens in terms of where enemies are.  The carriers would still have to sink at a predetermined damage level due to the online environment.  The support would only add visual goodies to the client side of the game.  If you didn't have the card, those goodies would not show up, or would be less detailed.  If you watch videos showing how PhysX works, it basically processes where an explosion would throw debris, how clouds react to their environment, etc. etc..

In my opinion, the amount of work it would take HiTech to add PhysX to this game would make it not worth it.  It's hard to design a game where a hardware component is optional.  There is always going to be some disadvantage or advantage to having or not having that piece of hardware.  I don't know of any games to date that have been updated to support PhysX, which leads me to believe it either isn't possible, or isn't cost/time effective.

My $0.02
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Kev367th on October 12, 2008, 02:58:20 PM
Having spoke to Skuzzy and HT last year about Physx I hate to dissappoint you all -

If Physx support was added it would be used on the flight models, not eye candy.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: moot on October 12, 2008, 03:21:28 PM
The GVs could use some better behavior.. Either on their own against terrain, or against each other.. E.G. GVs oblivious to large explosion shockwaves.
Title: Re: PhysX support
Post by: Yippee38 on November 25, 2008, 12:52:25 PM
I'd love to see particle clouds and smoke (fuel/oil leaks).  How about vortices as planes fly through the clouds and contrails?