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Game publishers will build PhysX physics processing support into video game titles worldwide

Physics processing in video games promised a lot when it first came to market, but the reality was that physics processing hardware like the Ageia PhysX card was simply not very good and added little in the way of realism or performance to games.

NVIDIA acquired Ageia in February of 2008 and quickly moved the PhysX processing from dedicated physics accelerators to a process that could be ran on its video card GPUs. Shortly after the purchase of Ageia, NVIDIA announced that its GeForce 8 series graphics cards would get a software PhysX engine.

This week NVIDIA announced that both EA and Take-Two have licensed its PhysX technology to integrate into video game titles coming in the future and a few that are available now.

EA's Tim Wilson said in a statement, "PhysX is a great physics solution for the most popular platforms, and we're happy to make it available for EA's development teams worldwide."

In a separate statement, Take-Two's Jacob Hawley said, "We are very impressed with the quality of the PhysX engine, and we licensed it so our studios can use this solution early in development."

NVIDIA showed some clips from mirrors Edge to illustrate the difference in PhysX turned on or off in the game and the results were impressive. Banners and curtains fly in the PhysX version when wind blows or shots are fired into them. The whole world in the game looked much more realistic and intriguing.

Jon Peddie form research firm JPR told CNET News, "It's a GPU thing, and the fact that EA and Take-Two are coming out (with support) gives you a clue why. This really is a significant event, enabling the GPU to do physics."

AMD is taking a somewhat similar approach to physics processing on its GPU and CPU technology. AMD says that it will use physics processing on its ATI GPUs when appropriate and when not it will offload the physics processing to the CPU.

AMD's Korhan Erenben said in a statement, "The GPU is a great place to do processing. We'll do the offloading (to the GPU), where it makes sense. (But) we are aligned with Havok, in terms of working on a future direction of physics. Right now, it is on the CPU, and we think that serves the broad installed base. Taking it to the next step would be to have a capability on the GPU--where and when it makes sense."

AMD may see that moving physics processing to the GPU makes sense rather quickly. The GPU is much better at parallel processing thanks to the vastly superior number of cores available to process data. Parallel processing of complex physics calculation on a GPU will be provided much faster than those ran on a CPU with only two or four cores compared to the GPUs 200 or more cores.

Peddie talked about a technique called Same Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) with CNET News saying, "The same instruction is the physics equation. Things fall toward Earth all the time. And the multiple data will be what the things are. It might be a rock, might be a person, might be the wheel of a car. You have to be able to process this stuff and have it behave in a realistic fashion. To do that, you have to process it very quickly. The advantage that GPUs bring is that they have this humongous number of processors. Certainly as good as the (Intel) 486 ever was. So they're really good processors, and you've got hundreds of them literally inside the GPU."

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Hopefully
By FITCamaro on 12/9/2008 1:15:40 PM , Rating: 5
In another generation or two, we'll actually have physics that are more than just eye candy. Games where say you don't want to take the front door to enter a building. So you blow a hole in the side of it. Would be awesome.




RE: Hopefully
By FITCamaro on 12/9/2008 1:17:25 PM , Rating: 3
Oh and yes I know this has been done a little in games like Red Faction. But even those games had their limits.

Honestly I want games where with too much destruction, you screw up your ability to progress. So you have to reload a save. Like causing a tower to collapse that you needed to go into.


RE: Hopefully
By Myg on 12/9/2008 2:20:44 PM , Rating: 2
How about games that focus less on trying to replace reality and more on enjoying a few moments of time outside of it?


RE: Hopefully
By Myg on 12/9/2008 2:25:00 PM , Rating: 2
pong anyone? :-)


RE: Hopefully
By FITCamaro on 12/9/2008 2:43:16 PM , Rating: 5
Because action games that force you along a single path could use some spicing up.


RE: Hopefully
By Cuddlez on 12/9/2008 4:15:24 PM , Rating: 5
Because in real life I can't blow up anything I want (at least without repercussions).


RE: Hopefully
By FITCamaro on 12/9/2008 8:35:41 PM , Rating: 2
The world would be in flames if I could blow things up without them. Oh to be god for a day.......


RE: Hopefully
By AnnihilatorX on 12/10/2008 6:53:12 PM , Rating: 2
Many games uses Hollywood physics anyway
A single bullet or two can ignite any vehicles and gas tanks.
What more do you want?


RE: Hopefully
By FaceMaster on 12/9/08, Rating: 0
RE: Hopefully
By Creig on 12/9/2008 2:19:54 PM , Rating: 1
Ditto.


RE: Hopefully
By shin0bi272 on 12/10/2008 10:02:44 PM , Rating: 3
play warmonger ... it has that exactly. You can also do it in a few levels in ut3 on CTF maps ... makes getting to the flag room when you have the enemy flag so much faster ;)


I want more game Physics
By Mitch101 on 12/9/2008 1:19:22 PM , Rating: 3
I want more game Physics but until its standardized it will remain an eye candy factor in some games and not a core element. It doesn't help PhysX that market share is swinging ATI's way lately either.

Right now its just more debris and some flags. It's not key to playing the game yet.




RE: I want more game Physics
By UNHchabo on 12/9/2008 2:52:09 PM , Rating: 5
NVidia has said that the PhysX API runs on a platform that doesn't use their hardware at all, just slower than it does on their GPU. They said that Mirror's Edge will run at an acceptable framerate with all of the physics features turned on, if you have a Core i7 965 and an HD4750. Alternatively, buy a second Nvidia GPU to do the physics work, and you'll get higher framerates.

Yes, right now it's only debris and flags, but game devs can't put physics in a gameplay-affecting manner until everyone has the hardware to handle it. Today's eye candy is tomorrow's needed feature.


RE: I want more game Physics
By Mitch101 on 12/9/2008 4:34:59 PM , Rating: 2
Yea I also read that Physics in games would add a lot more network traffic being as death by debris/shrapnel can be a factor.


RE: I want more game Physics
By shin0bi272 on 12/10/2008 10:06:02 PM , Rating: 2
currently death by debris isnt a factor. the debris becomes passable as soon as it is deemed "destroyed". so you shoot a rocket into a concrete barrier and it crumbles in front of you... you can walk right through the crumbles as if they werent there. Later on though that might change.


RE: I want more game Physics
By Jedi2155 on 12/11/2008 4:22:20 PM , Rating: 2
And as such, the debris can be calculated entirely client side, similar to how the source engine deals with Physics in CS:Source where everyone see's the dead rag dolls different.


RE: I want more game Physics
By Reclaimer77 on 12/9/2008 4:35:58 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
It doesn't help PhysX that market share is swinging ATI's way lately either.


They could help THAT by not making thousands of GPU's that rolled off the assembly line with defects or " time bomb " defects that would show up later and brick a video card.

I just threw away my second REPLACEMENT 8800 GTS because, like the first, it slowly destroyed itself to the point where playing ANY 3d game was impossible. And after that, even in 2d is would randomly reboot my PC.

Nvidia, you suck and I'm done with you for forever. Its bad enough that you cornered the market to such a point where you got away with charging $600 bucks for a freaking video card. But what did you do with your position as GPU leader ? You go slack, made a bunch of crap cards, and got sued over it.

Capitalism/competition FTW ! Ati is back in a big way. The HD 4870 is a great card, and it doesn't cost a billion dollars either. And its NOT plagued with horrible hardware faults and bad drivers either.

They can shove PhysX up their wrinkled asses. My 8800 had PhysX too. But whats the point then the cards don't last long enough to freaking USE the features ?

You had it all Nvidia. You truly had your oppenent, ATI, down on the ground with your boot on its neck. But you blew it.


RE: I want more game Physics
By FITCamaro on 12/9/2008 4:42:37 PM , Rating: 2
I'll admit I haven't played my PC a ton lately but haven't had any issues with the 8800GTS 512s I bought.


RE: I want more game Physics
By Reclaimer77 on 12/9/2008 4:56:51 PM , Rating: 3
I know. There are lots of people who haven't had issues. Some " in the know " geek friend of mine told me the 512's were fine, but the 256's ( just my luck ) were plagued with problems.

You might remember earlier this year Nvidia's stock dropped 30% because of this. They were actually sued by their own shareholders because they f'ing KNEW about the problems and tried to cover them up.

I know from time to time everyone gets bad electronics. And while its easy to flip out and condemn the company forever, I did a lot of digging on my own. Mostly Google searches and PC discussion forums. And what I found, frankly, shocked me. There are literally THOUSANDS of people I found describing my exact same issues with Nvidia cards.

Believe me, I'm glad that you and others have not had my problems. I would not wish this RMA hell on anyone. Waiting for a week or so for a video card, without the use of their PC. TWICE in one year.

But for me and my money, its ATI all the way from now on.


RE: I want more game Physics
By Mitch101 on 12/9/2008 5:45:27 PM , Rating: 2
It bites but be glad yours was a video card.

My NVIDIA issues came from the NCQ/Chipset/Driver problems which corrupted all sorts of data on two of my hard drives. I lost a lot of photos and documents to the NCQ bug. I returned 2 hard drives for replacement and threw out one external drive enclosure thinking it had a problem. Every couple of weeks I would get the dreaded MFT$ errors and the drives would disappear. It wasn't until I got my new machine that the news broke about the issue and I pulled out the drives from the closet and put them in the new machine. Never a problem since.

My OS was on an IDE but my data was on a SATA drives. It was the SATA drives that were a constant nightmare with the nforce chipset and that's where my data was. Lucky me.


RE: I want more game Physics
By SilentOptionGR on 12/10/2008 3:22:20 PM , Rating: 2
I know you got a job. Geeze stop being nvidia hater. I rather have AmD/ATI and Nvidia competing one another. Because of it their top of the line card is around 500 not 600 dollars.

If you don't like the performance of you 8800 GTS upgrade.
Also you don't have to buy a GTX 280. For 500 bucks plus,
You can get a gtx 260 216 processor or a little over 300 bucks a piece.

You probably have a job so you can afford it unless you live with your mom.


RE: I want more game Physics
By Reclaimer77 on 12/10/2008 6:24:23 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
If you don't like the performance of you 8800 GTS upgrade.


Can you read you fu$%@%^% idiot !?? Both of them FAILED. DEAD. NO FUNCTION. BROKEN !

Understand ?


Havok is Intel
By ltcommanderdata on 12/9/2008 1:16:29 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
AMD is taking a somewhat similar approach to physics processing on its GPU and CPU technology. AMD purchased physics processing firm Havok in June of 2008.

Havok is actually owned by Intel and even the DailyTech article you linked to reports that fact. But, it is curious that both AMD and Intel has been quiet despite quite a few nVidia/PhysX announcements recently.

Now that OpenCL is officially ratified and released today and nVidia has stated they are moving to make CUDA OpenCL compliant, maybe PhysX will make the transition to OpenCL too so it'll run on ATI, Intel, S3 or anyone else who makes a GPGPU.




RE: Havok is Intel
By chizow on 12/9/2008 2:06:15 PM , Rating: 3
Yep half the article is just [b]factually wrong[/b].

Truth is AMD has no answer for accelerated physics and Intel has no incentive to change that until they have their own form of hardware acceleration beyond what a CPU can accomplish. AMD will most likely wait for it to become a free feature with DX11, however Nvidia will still continue to market and license their own brand of physics under the PhysX label (much like Creative does with EAX).


RE: Havok is Intel
By walk2k on 12/9/2008 2:07:05 PM , Rating: 2
This sounds like a good idea if the GPU can run these processes much faster than the CPU, but it seems to me like most modern games have a lot more spare CPU cycles than GPU cycles, especially at higher resolutions.


RE: Havok is Intel
By chizow on 12/9/2008 4:01:29 PM , Rating: 2
Actually a bunch of benching when the GPU PhysX driver first launch showed a GTX 200 class card showed very little penalty rendering both graphics and performing physics calculations. Performance with physics overall does decrease however, due to the increased CPU overhead required for additional physics. Desktop CPUs have always been poor performers when it comes to arithmetic and floating point operations, so its basically impossible to run advanced physics on the CPU regardless how many additional cycles you have.

Here's some good comparisons done by FiringSquad when GPU PhysX was released:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce...

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/physx_performance_...


HUH? O_o
By voodooboy on 12/9/2008 6:00:13 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
AMD purchased physics processing firm Havok in June of 2008.


But...ummm... INTEL bought Havok?
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6178911.html
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/34291/Intel-Buys...
...and from Dailytech itself:
http://www.dailytech.com/Physics+Acceleration+Heat...

...and even the date is wrong. It was Sep 07, not June 08.

Either that, or a lot has changed since my last trip to Mars...




RE: HUH? O_o
By voodooboy on 12/9/2008 6:04:49 PM , Rating: 2
Okay...someone already bought that up...many hours ago. And yet, as of now, it stands uncorrected.


SIMD
By PrinceGaz on 12/9/2008 11:05:06 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Peddie talked about a technique called Same Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) with CNET News saying, "The same instruction is the physics equation...


Hmmm. I always that that SIMD was an acronym for Single Instruction Multiple Data. At least it has been for the last decade or longer.




RE: SIMD
By kilkennycat on 12/10/2008 12:34:58 AM , Rating: 2
Blogging on Anandtech is poor-man's technical journalism. The blogger does not have to get the facts completely right :-) :-)


EA and 2K
By metaltoiletry on 12/10/2008 9:35:05 AM , Rating: 2
Too bad they're two publishers/developers that I've stopped buying from.

Why is it that added physics only adds visual details? Is it because the Physics card takes care of the physics allowing the video card to display more visuals?




RE: EA and 2K
By Mr Perfect on 12/10/2008 12:52:46 PM , Rating: 2
The added visuals are kind of a consolation prize for buying their SecuRomed games.

Like sending a "Sorry I gave you the clap." card.


By VooDooAddict on 12/9/2008 1:41:13 PM , Rating: 3
Great ... one more component EA won't QA. Just what we need.

Then again maybe I'm wrong ... maybe impementing a standards based physics system will improve quality over homegrown physics ststems.

My pesamistic side though sees this as more of a gimic that will be added to games that could have done with a much simpler physics system.




Ran
By Soundgardener on 12/9/2008 2:01:37 PM , Rating: 3
NVIDIA acquired Ageia in February of 2008 and quickly moved the PhysX processing from dedicated physics accelerators to a process that could be ran on its video card GPUs.

Run. Could be run on its video cards. Ran is past-tense. You did it twice.

*raises one eyebrow and looks serious*




By chizow on 12/9/2008 2:11:13 PM , Rating: 3
Surprised there isn't a link to it, but here's the comparison of GPU PhysX On and Off. And before folks start crying foul, the videos are slowed down to show the physics effects.

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=53...




Come on AMD...
By Proteusza on 12/10/2008 6:08:37 AM , Rating: 2
Please dont buck the trend, just this once. Just license PhysX, so that it wont matter if you have an Nvidia GPU or an AMD GPU, you can still play the games with eye candy. Please?

Cos... otherwise I need to seriously consider getting an Nvidia card as my next card (currently have an 8800GTS 640) and I was looking forward to being able to choose between both.




By kilkennycat on 12/11/2008 8:10:24 PM , Rating: 2
It was reported about 6 months ago that nVidia offered to license PhysX to ALL 3rd-parties and also offered to license the technology for use in drivers from manufacturers of non-nVidia GPUs. At the same time, it was reported that there was direct communication from nVidia to AMD offering to license PhysX, but that AMD/ATi politely said no, since they had just got into bed with Havok/Intel. So, it seems that the non-PhysX "high-road" that ATi is presently taking in not integrating PhysX functionality into their GPU drivers is entirely of their own making, with business-politics no doubt playing its usual "not-invented-here" role. They could license PhysX tomorrow if they wanted to, as there is nothing in the ATi GPU architectures that prevents effective driver implementation.

Hopefully, the refusal to license PhysX does not damage ATi's medium-term profitability; it is going to be a long while until a more universal GPU hardware-accelerated physics alternate is available, presumably within the Dx 11++ family. It is pretty obvious from the fact that EA and Take Two have both licensed PhysX already, that their expectation of something more universal for game-related hardware-accelerated physics in the medium term is pretty low.

As for running the PhysX-enhancement of PC future games on desktop CPU cores when lacking the GPU driver support, there will be massive computational hits to the "frame-rates" of these games when PhysX is enabled. Certain types of computations are appropriate to current multi-core desktop processors and massively-parallel particle-physics algorithms are distinctly not in that group.




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