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Battlefield 3 physics

Caporegime
Joined
13 May 2003
Posts
34,443
Location
Warwickshire
Hi all

A lot of the Google results that might help me are blocked at work, so here I am.

What's the situation with physics in BF3? Would having a Physx card make any difference? What about a separate GPU dedicated to physics, is that possible in BF3?

Many thanks.
 
No problem, there's not much to say really, although it does put physX to shame(not starting anti physX, I personally like it!) as the explosion effects are better than anything I have seen physx do.

I don't knock physx, its a good library of decent physics modelling, the issue is NO game will EVER need the level of accuracy physx tries to produce, and physx libraries of super accurate things don't do a whole heck of a lot when crap dev's implement it badly.

The most awesome application of physx wouldn't come through physx being great, or accurate, but through good game design, and that takes time, nothing less.

Physics in games come down to game design, the engine to run it doesn't NEED to be super accurate. As I always mention, you CAN'T possibly know if that one particle would fall half an inch to the left, or half an inch to the right. simplifying equations massively cuts out power required, MASSIVELY, and the end user couldn't possibly ever tell.

BF3 is good in that regard, not because Frostbite is great, but simply for the time and effort they put in and the company/project managers deciding it was worth putting that time in.

physx isn't rubbish, it never has been, its just pointless for gaming, that won't ever change.

In terms of physics in games, there is very very little that is hard to implement, we're not talking quantum physics there, most of the things are incredibly basic but every time you add one item that can interact with 20k other items in a game, you're massively increasing the workload.
 
The destruction physics in BF3 are pretty poor if you ask me. It seems like mostly scripted events that you simply trigger when you fire at something. You can even see the fracture lines if you zoom into a building from a distance. There's nothing amazing about it at all and you could probably pull it off on a dx8 level engine with some time and effort.


I still think the destruction in Red Faction Guerrilla is far more impressive. The level of granularity in the destruction is much finer than in BF3 and every single piece seems to react realistically; they aren't just there for show like in BF3. The engine also takes into account gravity and weight, whereby taking out the lower supports in a building will cause the whole structure to tremble and then suddenly (or slowly) collapse under it's own weight or sometimes it will just continue to tremble (with small bits falling off) untill you give it another nudge. The collapses themselves are also always unique, and will collapse in different directions or collapse incompletely depending on how you attack it. Plus with taller building you can make them collapse into other building for collateral damage. It's pretty damn awesome and makes BF3 seem very tame in comparision.
 
The destruction physics in BF3 are pretty poor if you ask me. It seems like mostly scripted events that you simply trigger when you fire at something. You can even see the fracture lines if you zoom into a building from a distance. There's nothing amazing about it at all and you could probably pull it off on a dx8 level engine with some time and effort.


I still think the destruction in Red Faction Guerrilla is far more impressive. The level of granularity in the destruction is much finer than in BF3 and every single piece seems to react realistically; they aren't just there for show like in BF3. The engine also takes into account gravity and weight, whereby taking out the lower supports in a building will cause the whole structure to tremble and then suddenly (or slowly) collapse under it's own weight or sometimes it will just continue to tremble (with small bits falling off) untill you give it another nudge. The collapses themselves are also always unique, and will collapse in different directions or collapse incompletely depending on how you attack it. Plus with taller building you can make them collapse into other building for collateral damage. It's pretty damn awesome and makes BF3 seem very tame in comparision.

I would wait until the Strike at Karkland pack comes out, apparently DICE has been having issues with the physics engine so they have cut it down a little. Apparently the Karkland pack comes with a fix for these issues so the destruction has been turned on fully.

It could turn out better, could turn out worse, or it could even be both, we'll just have to wait and see.
 
@drunkenmaster and titaniumx3, I know what you are both saying, but, at the end of the day they are all games and I don't read too much into 'realism' as I'm not into shooting folk in the head and blowing things up in the real world.:D

It's just a shame the big green dudes lock out half of the targeted audience with hardware physX if they have a card from the red team in a rig, if they left it truly(without the need for hacking the physX driver) up to all users choice regardless of what gpu they use, they would make more money(as obviously you would ultimately have to use a Nvidia card for hardware physX) and devs would maybe make more of an effort as anybody would be able to enjoy what physx brings to the table.

Once again I'm not having a dig at Nvidia in any way, ultimately it's their tech and up to them what happens with it.

@Bobisuruncle54, thanks for the info, I didn't have a clue about that.
 
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