ATi's Physics Solution....What ya thinking?

jrodga2k5 · 19 Jun 2006 at 10:30

http://www.ati.com/technology/crossfire/promotions/physics/index.html

Ati have talked about how they plan to implement a 2nd or 3rd card to handle all physics in a game, become their version of Ageia, what ya think?

In an article it mentions that the card for the Physics handling was an x1600 and this would mean looking at the £100 mark which is a good ammount cheaper than Ageia's solution, is this already sending the death nail to Ageias coffin?

At's documentation is basic but another article is a lot more indepth explaining how it all works

I think so

p.s if this has been posted previously i do apologise

Dark_Angel · 19 Jun 2006 at 10:31

I think you should remove the link to site with "games" in the URL (the first one). it talks about naughty stuff, not allowed in this forum.

jrodga2k5 · 19 Jun 2006 at 10:34

done, forgot about the naughty things lol

Dark_Angel · 19 Jun 2006 at 10:38

jrodga2k5 said:
done, forgot about the naughty things lol

In the main body of text, you are still mentioning the site... not in URL form.

At's documentation is basic but an article.

I not meaning to be a pain mate, its just better you edit it, than a mod.

neo-omega · 19 Jun 2006 at 11:30

I think that in some ways its a good idea as it allows you to keep a hold of your older generation graphics card and use them in your rig rather than having a very expensive paperweight or having to flog it.

also the fact that you can run the offset crossfire for physics is handy for people, like myself, with a X1xxx series card and thinking of upgrading to an x1900.
Also because there is competition ageia will be putting the price of the physx down (hopefully)

GO ATi!

SteveOBHave · 19 Jun 2006 at 11:37

Personally I think it's a great idea... as long as you use ATI and already have an x1000 chipset VGA card.

There has been a 'counter argument' from Ageia stating that the Havok implimentation only does 'effects based physics' whereas the PhysX implementation does 'interactive env physics'. The ATI video demo that I have seen looks suspiciously like interactive physics to me, making the Ageia argument kinda moot.

I'm just hoping that the Nvidia option is as attractive as ATIs offering. You can't deny that Ageia got the ball rolling, it's just that they may have hit a few walls on the way down and are about to get stomped on by the big boys... oh well...

LoadsaMoney · 19 Jun 2006 at 11:45

Sounds like a good idea to me, as you can even use a cheap x1300 to do it, which is even cheaper, just get a crossfire mobo, bang in an x1900, and use an x1300 in the other slot that will solely do the Physics, have to see what happens, but looks interesting.

Depends on developers to, as ATi use Havok, and no one knows how many developers would design for their solution yet, yet theres supposed to be loads of games already in production for the Ageia solution.

Pottsey · 19 Jun 2006 at 12:52

“I'm just hoping that the Nvidia option is as attractive as ATIs offering.”
It’s not as it’s next to useless. It only does 1way none gameplay physics. Unless they change is I don’t see it takeing off.

“There has been a 'counter argument' from Ageia stating that the Havok implimentation only does 'effects based physics' whereas the PhysX implementation does 'interactive env physics'.”
I was under the impression ATI Havok does interactive environment physics but Nvidia Havok only does effects based physics. ATI's biggest problem right now is getting devloper support.

SteveOBHave · 19 Jun 2006 at 13:24

Pottsey said:
“I'm just hoping that the Nvidia option is as attractive as ATIs offering.”
It’s not as it’s next to useless. It only does 1way none gameplay physics. Unless they change is I don’t see it takeing off.

Easy tiger - sweeping statement there.

Pottsey said:
“There has been a 'counter argument' from Ageia stating that the Havok implimentation only does 'effects based physics' whereas the PhysX implementation does 'interactive env physics'.”
I was under the impression ATI Havok does interactive environment physics but Nvidia Havok only does effects based physics. ATI's biggest problem right now is getting devloper support.

Not knowing exactly what it is that Nvidia is developing and having not seen any demos of their implementation in action, I'm a little loath to write it off immediately... Nvidia have been around for a while and I would be surprised if they lacked the ability to adapt with the demands of the gaming market.

As for ATIs dev support - surely anyone that is currently implimenting the new Havok engine would already be a foot in the door for the ATI Physics API? Either way, ATI doesn't need to build a dev base from scratch as they already have a really good name in the industry.

I think it might be time to have a little Google to see if I can glean some more info on the Nvidia physics offering...

SteveOBHave · 19 Jun 2006 at 13:49

Well after a bit of Googleing, there doesn't appear to be all that much out there regarding the Nvidia implementation, other than Nvidia seem to be doing something similar to ATI with the "use your old card" ethos. I haven't really seen anything entirely final regarding the 'interaction' capabilities of the Nvidia Physics engine either. I guess it comes down to what is included in the final API and whether developers will code the interaction aspect of the game.

I'm not entirely sure I understand how one physics implementation can be 'effects driven' and another is 'interactive'. Does it not take the people actually coding the game to decide whether the objects are to be 'interactive' or not? Isn't the physics engine merely plotting the path of the objects and where they are going to move based on collision and mavity etc?

I do wonder at the relevance of this current implementation and how it will be affected by DX10 and Vista. Once you have a DX10 VGA card installed, could you still use your old DX9 card as a physics card?

Pottsey · 19 Jun 2006 at 14:25

“I'm not entirely sure I understand how one physics implementation can be 'effects driven' and another is 'interactive'. Does it not take the people actually coding the game to decide whether the objects are to be 'interactive' or not?”
The problem with the physics is they are not fed back to the CPU after the GPU gets the data. So the CPU cannot change gameplay based on the physics or do more physics based on the results for the first lot of physics. The physics are 1 way so once they get sent to the GPU there is no feed back for the game to change.

See http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20060321130932.html
And http://www.havok.com/ index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=187&Itemid=77 (link might be wrong, filtered out at work so I cannot check this is correct)

SteveOBHave · 19 Jun 2006 at 14:35

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/06/19/can_ageia_uk/

Worth a read...

SteveOBHave · 19 Jun 2006 at 14:51

Interesting quote from: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/06/19/can_ageia_uk/page7.html

As things stand now, we would venture to say that the Havok FX physics engine has a better chance of becoming established than Ageia's PhysX. Nvidia's announcement that future drivers will include hardware support for the Havok engine is definitely a point in that engine's favour. The same goes for the fact that existing and very popular titles such as Oblivion and Half Life 2 already use the Havok FX engine. Ageia will need to achieve the same kind of presence in the market or risk its card being perceived as a beta project. If that happens, buyers will most likely decide to wait and see how compatibility and game support evolve. At any rate, what nobody needs is two technologies that are completely incompatible with one another.

It is one hell of an uphill battle for Ageia and as the reviewer pointed out - ATI and Nvidia are building around the Havok Physics engine whereas Ageia have developed their own. As mentioned, Ageia need to produce something jaw dropping soon other wise there is going to be an ongoing chorus of "Oh, is that it?"

Marc Fraser · 19 Jun 2006 at 15:15

Ageia's physics engine has been around for a while. It was called Novodex. I have had a play around with their SDK and it seems pretty powerful. The demos that come with it are certainly impressive.

Ageia are offering their SDK a lot cheaper than Havok. I believe if a developer includes support for the PPU they were giving the SDK away free. Otherwise a licence of $50,000 is payable per title.

As far as I am aware the licence fee for Havok FX SDK (so you can use SLI physics) is in addition to the standard Havok SDK and in the region of $200,000.

Darkwave · 19 Jun 2006 at 16:03

At least they're using Havok physics, that was quite possibly Agiea's first big mistake. Either way, thanks to Ageia I am not really excited at all about physics processing anymore, so I'll wait until ATi's implimentation is actually out and then give it a look.

Pottsey · 19 Jun 2006 at 17:01

“At least they're using Havok physics, that was quite possibly Agiea's first big mistake.”
Am I the only one wondering why not using Havok was a mistake?

Marc Fraser · 19 Jun 2006 at 17:18

I think people are being unduly harsh on Ageia without fully understanding the purpose or issues surrounding Physics acceleration. This is mainly due to the poor use of the Physics Engine in games i.e GRAW and the fact that people were expecting an increase in FPS. At present a fair comparison over whether there is an increase in FPS can't be made as you cannot test the current games with all the effect enabled if you do not have a PPU.

The current games (GRAW in particular) are not showing anything near the full potential of the Ageia Physics engine.

If you want to see the kind of physics that can be produced you can register as a developer with Ageia and download the SDK. This has lots of sample programs you can run and if you are into programming can test it out for yourself.

Darkwave · 19 Jun 2006 at 17:20

Pottsey said:
Am I the only one wondering why not using Havok was a mistake?

Havok is more widely used than Ageia PhysX, with a list of already released titles such as Half Life 2 and Oblivion supporting it, you'd expect a company making a physics processor to go for that as opposed to making game developers copy your own home-brew version, particularly one so successful as Havok.

SteveOBHave · 19 Jun 2006 at 19:52

Marc Fraser said:
Ageia's physics engine has been around for a while. It was called Novodex. I have had a play around with their SDK and it seems pretty powerful. The demos that come with it are certainly impressive.

Ageia are offering their SDK a lot cheaper than Havok. I believe if a developer includes support for the PPU they were giving the SDK away free. Otherwise a licence of $50,000 is payable per title.

As far as I am aware the licence fee for Havok FX SDK (so you can use SLI physics) is in addition to the standard Havok SDK and in the region of $200,000.

$50,000 or $200,000? Neither of these are really an issue when you are talking about games dev budgets these days. Besides at $50,000, perhaps this provides some explination for the over priceing of the PhysX hardware.

Pottsey · 19 Jun 2006 at 20:57

“Havok is more widely used than Ageia PhysX, with a list of already released titles such as Half Life 2 and Oblivion supporting it, you'd expect a company making a physics processor to go for that “
Is it really more widely used? Its just I have never seen any numbers relating to how many games use Havok or Ageia. I just know it’s a lot for both. I don’t have a clue which has the most games. Got any links?

It doesn’t really make sense for Ageia to use Havok when they already have there own API used in lots of games. At least with there own API they can sell it cheaper or give it away to developers for free if they support the PPU. If they use Havok they would have to sell the Havok API for £200k which means less games supporting the PPU. I could be wrong but I bet half the games that are coming out with support for the PPU would not support it if they had to pay £200k

The Ageia API is also free for Non-commercial use unlike the Havok API.

Think about it from developers point of few. You can use Ageia for free and support the PPU or you can pay Havok £200k.

Havok is popular but a lot of major develops have dropped support for it like Unreal 3 and all the games based off it.

"$50,000, perhaps this provides some explination for the over priceing of the PhysX hardware."
Its only 50k if you dont support the PPU.