• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

First Look: Unreal Tournament 3 With PhysX

Pottsey said:
“some how i can;t see a physics card being all that good if they haven;t even demoed a nuke effect like the one in crysis.”
You have to take into account that’s a tech demo they cannot pull that off in game. Don’t expect to see effects like that in Crysis when/if you buy it.

I still perfew the PPU method its faster then the CPU.
Click to expand...


from what iv read the ppu is slower than the cpu since it drops fps when ppu is used. and it does funny stuff like make doors stand on edges in GRAW. did they ever manage to sort that out?


also that nuke effect looked like it was actual gameplay since the player was moving around. only time will tell. if the physics in crysis really are as good as the videos show then in my opinion crysis will mark the death of the ppu.
 
Last edited:
“from what iv read the ppu is slower than the cpu since it drops fps when ppu is used. and it does funny stuff like make doors stand on edges in GRAW. did they ever manage to sort that out?“
Well a lot of websites are misleading they run the PPU at much higher settings then the CPU then go, look the CPU is faster. When you run the PPU and CPU at the same settings the PPU is faster.

I am sure I explained this many times in the past the door problems and physics problems in GRAW are done by Havok. So no Ageia cannot sort it out as they are not the cause of the problems. A lot Havok physic problems are being blamed on Ageia which is unfair.

As for the PPU slowing thing down no it doesn’t anymore. There was a major driver bug which effected performance but its been fixed.

When you run the same physics on the PPU and the CPU the PPU speeds things up a lot up to 30% or more. Only when you run higher physic settings on the PPU then the CPU do you sometimes lose FPS as the 3dcard has to draw more.

Look at GRAW 2 you have 3 options.

Option 1, Run the standard physics on the PPU and get a FPS boost.
Option 2, Increase the physics so it’s higher then the CPU and still get a FPS boost only smaller then option 1.
Option 3, Run extreme physics for a small FPS drop, so short you cannot see it. The drop happens dueing explosions but a FPS boost on the rest of the phsyics.



EDIT:
“also that nuke effect looked like it was actual gameplay since the player was moving around.”
It’s not. Find one of the videos with the devs talking or the text that’s meant to go with it. They explain it was a tech demo to push the engine as far as it goes and see what’s possible. It’s like the Nvidia face demo, fine for a tech demo, not fine for a game yet.
 
Last edited:
Some people here need to read Pottseys posts, as i bet he is getting sick of repeating himself.

I will be ordering this card, as soon as i have a game (that ill play allot) that supports it, 80 quid is a bargain imo.
Roll on UT3 :)
 
See, what I can't figure out is how they can call this "effects" physics....looks like the same stuff Ageia does (only better imo).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMjgssWkRE0

It's interactive, therefore gameplay. So I don't get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLgb9AdnaBI&mode=related&search=

Same with this video above. Note he says its running on a X1600 series gpu. I'm pretty sure this was done when the X1600Pro and X1600XT's were around too, not the X1650 series.

So thats a 4 pipeline, 12 pixel shader card running that physics.

You can pick up a X1600 for £50ish. Hell, I'm willing to bet the 2600 series are even better at physics, and they are just as cheap.
 
“....looks like the same stuff Ageia does (only better imo).”
Better! Physics wise that was simple with no high end physics. Those two demos don’t do any of the high end physics effects a PPU does.

Also it’s a tech demo what you can do in tech demos are x10 better then what you can do in real games. A bunch of box’s in a tech demo are very easy to do even a CPU can do that. It’s the higher end physics effects that matter and so far we have not seen an ATI card do the hard to do physics effects.






“See, what I can't figure out is how they can call this "effects" physics....”
All the physics done on the GPU via Havok FX cannot be sent back to the CPU or game engine. So the objects can interact with other objects done on the GPU which is good for explosions as the bits and rocks and fly off each other. But as far as the rest of the world is concerned those rocks are not there and not hitting anything. Say those flying rocks hit a person nothing happens. The Person doesn’t get knocked back doesn’t take damage e.c.t hit a window it doesnt break as it cannot tell its been hit.

The game engine needs to see the end results of the physics math to work out how to change gameplay and what happens.






“Hell, I'm willing to bet the 2600 series are even better at physics,”
Considering the game support for physics is x1000 times worse then Ageia does it really matter on price?




EDIT:
“It's interactive, therefore gameplay. So I don't get it.”
It’s a marketing trick its not 100% interactive. Its one way interactive. You can interact with the bits, but the bits cannot interact with you or the rest of the world.
 
Last edited:
Gotta say I wasn't wowed at all in that video... wasn't so much as 'holy crap he just blew a whole in the wall'.... more of 'why the heck has a rectangle been removed from the wall'

PhysX looked so promising when we all first heard about it, but it really has flopped big time.

I've had UT3 preordered for about 2 or 3 years now, everything I've seen has got me real excited towards its release... I realise this was just a tech demo and the idea was to show its potential.... whether it was just a poorly shot tech demo or what.... but this just got a big MEH from me
 
helmutcheese said:
Neither, look his Sig.

" Pottsey – Warning, known PowerVR and Ageia fanboy."
Click to expand...

I know, at least been a fanboy of ATi or NV has got something going for it, Ageia is going down a dead end. Now if NV or ATi seen something in Ageia and decided to buy em out, then it would have a future.
 
“Ageia is going down a dead end. Now if NV or ATi seen something in Ageia and decided to buy em out, then it would have a future.“
Ageia currently have more games out then Havok lots of major developers are swapping to them. They are not going down a dead end. There are to many greats games that sold millions that use Ageia.
 
I watched the vid, haven't read the thread through.... very nice effect but notice the lack of one thing in that vid for UT3 - a multiplayer game. the lack of other players.......

The aegia PPU really does some nice effects and for single player and can enhance the experience with pretty effects. And its been known that the Unreal engine 3 supports it for quite some time, but this is destined to be the same as the UE2 engine supporting the rumble mouse effect (was a logitech effort I think and I think Black&White had support too) ended up being a novelty

There is a major problem with any kind of physics implementation in Multiplayer games, and that is latency and consistency across clients. Even in UT2k4 ragdolls effects are unique to clients. I remeber that UT2k3 had video showing swinging lights hung from chains, that were cut from release. Crysis has some impressive videos showing buildings beings demolished in real time using calculated physics, you wont be seeing that in multiplayer
 
Thing is, if there is nothing that looks better so far on PPU's then whats the point buying them?
It's all well and good a piece of shrapnel boucing off a wall exactly as it should, but if it can be simulated (as it is now) via scripts to act sufficiently to make it look good enough then whats the point?
a lot of people here have given vids and such saying they look good, and you rightly say that they arent high end physics, yet the videos surely proove that they dont have to be?

Be it companies not utilising the card properly, or the card simply not being able to deliver something that is visually a step up from existing technologies at the moment why would people want to buy one for what is quite literally a minor difference?

Now on the other hand if they utilised a ppu to make movie quality physics like this (prolly posted before)
http://www.nextlimit.com/realflow/img/videos/demoreel06.html
They would have a selling point for the card
At presant there isnt really a siginificant difference between ppu and cpu physics in terms of visual "wow" factor which is what counts to the common gamer

I wanted to believe a ppu is worth buying, but nothing posted here or elsewhere has made its case a strong one tbh, the only reason to get one so far is marginally better effects and reducing load on the cpu, which to be honest i dont find as an issue at all as if i am playing games i dont particularly mind if its going full pelt
 
Last edited:
So hands up who's gonna blow £93.99 on a PPU card:D

If they were cheaper I'd buy one, But from what I can see its £93.99 for a tiny bit of eye candy.

BTW, Are there any expected price drops on PPUs?
 
Sniper123 said:
So hands up who's gonna blow £93.99 on a PPU card:D

If they were cheaper I'd buy one, But from what I can see its £93.99 for a tiny bit of eye candy.

BTW, Are there any expected price drops on PPUs?
Click to expand...

for 40 quid id be tempted, but for over 90 quid im not gonna bother.
 
I'm not impressed by that at all. We've had proper physics in games since HL2, possibly before, but there were plenty of times I blew something up to get a better shot at something in HL2. You could also move boxes, throw things, have things float/sink etc.

What exactly will a gamer notice from using a PPU apart from it possibly taking work from the cpu?
 
“What exactly will a gamer notice from using a PPU apart from it possibly taking work from the cpu?”
Depending on what the game implants 3d Liquids, cloth, soft metal, wind, more and better particles, large performance boost up to 30 or 50%





“We've had proper physics in games since HL2,”
HL 2 had low end physics now. It has no 3d Liquids, cloth, soft metal, wind none of the hard to do demanding physics.




“Thing is, if there is nothing that looks better so far on PPU's then whats the point buying them?”
Well there’s the large speed increase and it does look better the wind makes GRAW 2 look tons better.
 
If Crysis can do physics that good without the PPU then it's pretty safe to say there is no need for one.

I don't care if Crysis doesn't do real time wind/fluids, whatever it does looks great and I think 99% of people would agree, the 1% being the people who bothered buying a PPU.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom