BFG Tech AGEIA PhysX PPU

"Compare it with the PPU-enabled screenshot on the right: dozens of realistic-looking sparks fly about, bouncing on the road and the car body itself. They fade away after a few seconds, but unlike the rock / stone debris, this is at least in line with reality."

Um, you mean, "even less in line with reality"?

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/mpmain.html#flashingbullets

 

I'm sorry but I dont see the point in AGEIA... It feels as if it's technologi thats coming out too late. I would have understood if it was 2 years ago. Maybe I'm naive or I dont know, but its just like Geoff said:

"CPU manufacturers: both AMD and Intel already have dual-core processors and quad-core is on their radar screens. What else would you do with four-processors-in-one than use one or more for physics calculations? After all, PlayStation 3 has seven such SPEs..."

So when these quad-core's come out for the desktop what then? What can AGEIA give us that 4 core's can't?? In my eyes they are facing some serious issues.

Anyways just my opinion

 

Well, for a start, the more cores come out in CPU's, the more cores games will use. But I think just as importantly is, a CPU core and PPU core will be entirely dissimilar. You wouldn't expect your GPU core and your CPU to be the same, and it would take a lot more raw power in CPU form to do the same work that lots less GPU power could do, because a GPU is designed for graphics, and a CPU for fairly basic super fast maths. Just as thats the case, a PPU will be designed for physics, so as things get more and more complicated, the Physics processor is going to become more and more essential.

 

The PPU core is specially designed for accelerating physics. A CPU is by design very generalised, as specofdust says. There's no doubting the PPU will do a better job. My comment about quad-core was simply to suggest that if you throw enough raw GHz at a problem and it will go away.

So just as Havok FX on GPU *may* produce a similar result to AGEIA PhysX using a PPU, then perhaps the rumoured Microsoft physics API will do the same on a qual or quad-core CPU. At the end of the day, it ALWAYS comes down to developer support. The greatest number of worth-playing games will determine the dominant solution.

 

I'm not sure if anyone else was under this impression or not, but i always thought of the ppu not as a way to gain extra candy, as has been done in graw, this seems like a bad move as obviously adding more geometry to an already taxing scene will drop the frames.

I thought the purpose of the ppu was to enable high quality physics like that of objects in hl2 and ragdolls in oblivion to be done on much larger scales without affecting cpu load or hopefully reducing it.

i feel the goal of the ppu should be to take load off the cpu not put more on the gpu and i hope thats how future implementations are done

 

LOL, ok, so the flashing bullet thing is NOT a reflection of reality - I will admit that much. What I meant is that IF one had a load of sparks flying everywhere (maybe from an angle grinder) thanks to the PPU they would fly and bounce around the screen realistically, and the fact that they fade away shortly after is also what happens in real life.

Contrast that that with small rocks etc flying out of a stone wall - they look cool and bounce around but then disappear almost instantly.

People should not pre-judge the entire AGEIA PhysX PPU project based on GRAW. The game itself has wonderfully large open levels without loading screens every 5 yards yet as a clear trade-off to this tremendous *level geometry* draw distance is the fact that regular non-physics eye candy has a bloody AWFUL draw distance.

We will show this in our game review but it is akin to pop-up in Oblivion - the streets & buildings in GRAW are all there, but a coke can on the ground is only drawn 2 seconds before you trip over it. It is THIS engine "limitation" that may well be the cause of the PhysX eye-candy fading away so quickly, not because the PPU couldn't calculate the on-going physics.

Rise of Nations will be out in the couple of weeks - I'm looking forward to seeing what differnce the PPU makes in a 3D RTS. I expect loads of extra explosion debris etc but 3D RTS is a different animal to FPS

 

Looks a bit more promising than I was expecting, great article, good that you took the time to say wich mobo's are compatable with SLI, a PhysX card and another PCI card.

I think this boxing stuff is getting out of hand, I mean this must be starting to cost quite a bit to come up with these ideas and make them, I'd rather have a rectangular box just big enough to fit everything inside and save a few quid than have a fancy box.

I would've liked it though if you did a third test with a single high end card, and not just high end SLI and a mid range card. But it got the point across anyway

 

That was something that we wanted to do, but unfortunately we ran out of time. We had to choose between ultra high end, high end and mid-range and chose either end of the spectrum.

 

That's not quite right. Physics on the graphics card has two major drawbacks:

1. It can't be used for anything other than eye candy, since the new positions of objects cannot be read back into the main memory from the game.
2. It requires two graphics cards, of which one must then be dedicated to physics processing.

I'm not sure how permanent either of these drawbacks is. Perhaps someone could shed light on this?

I see two drawbacks with the PhysX card so far:

1. High price.
2. Lack of applications.

The price should naturally go down over time. The lack of applications is not permanent, as mentioned in the article.

Personally, I wouldn't buy a PhysX card right now, but I'll be buying one the day UT2007 comes out.

 

i might be the first to watercool one though

They do have a long road ahead though before the properly intergrated into a game engine the cell factor demo is pretty intense but even that slows down when the action gets stupidly intense

 

RARGH

the card wasnt designed to only make chunks of debris fly off walls when you shoot stuff. Its a physics processing unit so it manages everything physics-related basically. So if HL2: Episode 2 optimized the game for the PPU, barrels flying,wood breaking, and object throwing would be handled by this PPU, taking a load off your other units. Quad-core CPUs may be an expensive solution, but if youre builing a PC from scratch (like me) its probably a better deal than getting an PhysX card.

 

What's with all the thread revivals this week?

 

whats the point watercooling? not like it does anything anyway

 

HL is based on a joint effort between Valve and Havok iirc (don't hold me to that) so it won't support PhyisX. If GoW was on the PC it would because it's UT3 engine.