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Nvidia PhysX 5.0

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Re: Nvidia PhysX 5.0

#21

Post by dagmx »

rasz wrote: post #15
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #3

For the younger crowd, back in the day before Nvidia bought Ageia, you'd have to buy dedicated PhysX accelerator cards and stick them in your PC in order to use this tech in the few available games that supported it. Wild stuff. After that, PhysX API was accelerated via CUDA and the dedicated PhysX ASICs were discontinued. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/bfg-ageia-physx-card/

Dont forget to mention it was pure scam, PhysX PCI "accelerator" actually ran those supported games slower, sometimes Two times slower, than software. https://www.anandtech.com/show/2001/4

You miss the important bits:

> As we said before, installing the hardware automatically enables higher quality physics. We can't get a good idea of how much better the PhysX hardware would perform than the CPU, but we can see a couple facts very clearly.

So what you call a scam is down to implementation details. In a true like for like scenario the PPU would usually outperform the CPU implementation as long as your sync boundaries were clean to get stuff back from it, and pipe the transforms back to the GPU.

I wish people like yourself wouldn’t reach for incendiary language by default. It ruins any and all nuance in discussion.

Re: Nvidia PhysX 5.0

#22

Post by djmips »

dagmx wrote: post #4
zmk5 wrote: post #2

I'm happy to see this! Hopefully Nvidia starts open sourcing a lot more stuff.

PhysX has been source available since 2015 (3 clause BSD since 2018) , so I wouldn’t take this as an indicator in that regard.

And only on PC and Mobile. Not on console.

Re: Nvidia PhysX 5.0

#23

Post by the_pwner224 »

jansan wrote: post #5
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #3

For the younger crowd, back in the day before Nvidia bought Ageia, you'd have to buy dedicated PhysX accelerator cards and stick them in your PC in order to use this tech in the few available games that supported it. Wild stuff. After that, PhysX API was accelerated via CUDA and the dedicated PhysX ASICs were discontinued. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/bfg-ageia-physx-card/

Interesting. What was the target group of these cards? Gamers or engineers and scientists?

This is from later (2012) but shows some of the effects that PhysX enables in games. The "apex turbulence" in the second half of the video is pretty cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5qhaEghJ74

Re: Nvidia PhysX 5.0

#25

Post by arketyp »

What are some games that have impressive physics nowadays? I remember being very impressed with Half-Life 2 back in the day, seemed like a leap. All spectacular looking games with crude physics nowadays remind me of those hi-res ports of old console titles, in an ajar way.

Re: Nvidia PhysX 5.0

#26

Post by evnix »

arketyp wrote: post #25

What are some games that have impressive physics nowadays? I remember being very impressed with Half-Life 2 back in the day, seemed like a leap. All spectacular looking games with crude physics nowadays remind me of those hi-res ports of old console titles, in an ajar way.

apart from games going from 2k to 4k to 8k, there hasn't been any noticeable improvement in realism in the past 10 years. ray tracing if enabled looks nice but that's pretty much the height of it, characters look just as janky as they did 10 years ago.

I feel the primary reason are the consoles, game devs can't push the boundaries as most consoles are around 5-6 years behind gaming PCs.

Re: Nvidia PhysX 5.0

#27

Post by fps-hero »

djmips wrote: post #22
dagmx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PhysX has been source available since 2015 (3 clause BSD since 2018) , so I wouldn’t take this as an indicator in that regard.

And only on PC and Mobile. Not on console.

Consoles and open source do not mix. NDAs prevent code using their APIs from being released.

That said, a lot of open source projects have console ports, they just can’t be shared publicly.

Re: Nvidia PhysX 5.0

#28

Post by retSava »

evnix wrote: post #26
arketyp wrote: post #25

What are some games that have impressive physics nowadays? I remember being very impressed with Half-Life 2 back in the day, seemed like a leap. All spectacular looking games with crude physics nowadays remind me of those hi-res ports of old console titles, in an ajar way.

apart from games going from 2k to 4k to 8k, there hasn't been any noticeable improvement in realism in the past 10 years. ray tracing if enabled looks nice but that's pretty much the height of it, characters look just as janky as they did 10 years ago. I feel the primary reason are the consoles, game devs can't push the boundaries as most consoles are around 5-6 years behind gaming PCs.

Have you played The Last of Us part 2? The amount of details all over the world, smooth animations that blend midway into another, etc, really is a step forward imo.

Re: Nvidia PhysX 5.0

#29

Post by dagmx »

evnix wrote: post #26
arketyp wrote: post #25

What are some games that have impressive physics nowadays? I remember being very impressed with Half-Life 2 back in the day, seemed like a leap. All spectacular looking games with crude physics nowadays remind me of those hi-res ports of old console titles, in an ajar way.

apart from games going from 2k to 4k to 8k, there hasn't been any noticeable improvement in realism in the past 10 years. ray tracing if enabled looks nice but that's pretty much the height of it, characters look just as janky as they did 10 years ago. I feel the primary reason are the consoles, game devs can't push the boundaries as most consoles are around 5-6 years behind gaming PCs.

I think your comment is wrong and perhaps speaks to your own visual senses than any factual effect.

There’s been so many advancements in the last ten years outside of raytracing. Better character motion, better character AI, spatial audio, audio materials, speech matching just off the top of my head.

Every single thing about games has gotten noticeably better for realism.

One only needs to watch a Digital Foundry video or a GDC talk to see the big uplifts.

10 years is a long time too and spans all the way back to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era. So your comment is nonsensical at best

Re: Nvidia PhysX 5.0

#30

Post by bni »

cypress66 wrote: post #16
bni wrote: post #9

I always deselect this when I install the nVidia driver in Windows. I play none of the few games that are supposedly enhanced by it.

You probably do, as unreal engine and unity both use physx. Just not the old system level libraries that are used for old games.

ok, cool, didn't know that
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