[OT] Physics Processor?

[Rilex]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

However, there is rumbles that DX10 may (in theory) autosupport such hardware in that physic calcs are offloaded to the PGU. I haven't definitive proof, but w/ DX10 and a card - SH4 doesnt stutter on sequenced
explosions.

SH4 is not a DX10 game. It takes no advantage of DX10 and has no knowledge of DX10. It uses DX9Ex (on Vista). Thus, a PPU would make no difference (not that DirectX has any support for PPUs in the first place, unless you can find something relating to PPUs here that I'm not seeing).

As for GPU's mounting a physics card - while its possible I would expect that they would avoid it.

Nope, nVidia and AMD are already pushing in this direction. GPUs are becoming more general purpose thus using them as PPUs in the near future.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070222-8906.html

[minsc_tdp]

AGEIA is pioneering a new direction, but the product is a complete flop. Many people want what it can do and have the money, but they don't want the PhysX. Lack of game support killed it and it will never recover from that.

NVidia/AMD are pushing in different directions and they'll probably win. The first one to come up with a way to accelerate the physics of all games, regardless of developer participation, will win big. But that is probably impossible. If the next product like this requires developer participation, they'll have to have a hell of a lot of major titles supported and publicly acknowledged commitment from major publishers like EA and Ubi and major dev groups like CodeMasters, etc to sell any.

[GT182]

The one sim I have that has game physics is MOH Pacific Assault. If you kill an enemy soldier you can run into him and his body moves. Kill one in the water and he floats, plus he moves when you run into him. Water is so real looking that the dead floating can be seen above and below the water's surface. Shoot boxes and barrels and they move. And, I'm running it with an XFX 6800 XTreme 256mb 256bit card. If this is part of the physics advancement in graphics, it sure is cool.

[EAGLE_01]

The article in that link states they feel they are at the point that 3DFX was with video cards. I take that to mean the technology is barely beginning, and I think you guys are right, as systems grow to quad and 8X core systems, the physics will be handled in a different way, and having another card in a slot will be a thing of the past in a hurry.

It will be nice, though. The more realistic, the better .

[WernerSobe]

Physics Cards are not to improve the graphic. They are designed to calculate the movement of objects, fluids, gases etc... They relieve the CPU not the GPU. CPU is not designed to calculate such things.

However basicly it will improve the graphics in some way. Explosions, Fires and Fluids looks much more real. Objects that are being destroyed look much more realistic. Many things can be moved and fly around at same time.

in example you can have a game where you see cars crashing in each other and you can calculate the deformation in real time making every crash look different.

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by WernerSobe

Physics Cards are not to improve the graphic. They are designed to calculate the movement of objects, fluids, gases etc... They relieve the CPU not the GPU. CPU is not designed to calculate such things.

However basicly it will improve the graphics in some way. Explosions, Fires and Fluids looks much more real. Objects that are being destroyed look much more realistic. Many things can be moved and fly around at same time.

in example you can have a game where you see cars crashing in each other and you can calculate the deformation in real time making every crash look different.

Dead on - thats what I said

And to the gentleman regarding Vista running SH4 - vista doesnt HAVE DX9 - only DX10 (run dxdiag and see) and never heard of DX9Ex so uhm... ok. You got your view, I got mine - I simply am reporting the difference in actual gameplay. Seeing as how vista has more stuff in the background tying up cpu cycles, I am sticking with my view. But hey - its all good if ya disagree.

[Rilex]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

[
And to the gentleman regarding Vista running SH4 - vista doesnt HAVE DX9 - only DX10 (run dxdiag and see) and never heard of DX9Ex so uhm... ok.

Vista does indeed have D3D9. The entire Aero (Glass) interface is run by D3D9.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb173477.aspx

See figure 2.

And more information...

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb219801.aspx

[Chuck B.]

Originally Posted by WernerSobe

Physics Cards are not to improve the graphic. They are designed to calculate the movement of objects, fluids, gases etc... They relieve the CPU not the GPU. CPU is not designed to calculate such things.

However basicly it will improve the graphics in some way. Explosions, Fires and Fluids looks much more real. Objects that are being destroyed look much more realistic. Many things can be moved and fly around at same time.

in example you can have a game where you see cars crashing in each other and you can calculate the deformation in real time making every crash look different.

One thing to keep in mind is that while the Physics Cards indeed calculate the physics (if the game has dedicated support for this specific Physics Card (since there is no real standard at this point), otherwise the impact is exactly 0%) and thereby relieving the CPU of some work, the graphic card still has to display the improved physics. The tests of GRAW that I read stated that the graphics with a Physics Card actually slowed down, since the implementation of the Physics Cards was used to IMPROVE the existing physics model, thereby creating more fluids, explosion fragments, particles, etc. that were calculated very fast by the Physics Card, but required the graphics card to work harder, thereby slowing down the actual game ...

Totally useless at this point in time, IMHO.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by GT182

The one sim I have that has game physics is MOH Pacific Assault. If you kill an enemy soldier you can run into him and his body moves. Kill one in the water and he floats, plus he moves when you run into him. Water is so real looking that the dead floating can be seen above and below the water's surface. Shoot boxes and barrels and they move. And, I'm running it with an XFX 6800 XTreme 256mb 256bit card. If this is part of the physics advancement in graphics, it sure is cool.

Pffft not all that impressive.

You want to see some cool physics play Oblivion. No processor required.

[GT182]

MOH PA is the best I've got SW, but it works and looks good to me. I only play the WWII sims and FS9. I don't really care for the fantasy stuff, I'm too old for that.