Uh huh, and otherwise, we'd all be playing at 2560x1600 instead.
Thats possible, I could be gaming at 2560*1600 in five years, like it matters..
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Mirror's Edge PhysX Performance: PPU vs GPU vs CPU
- Thread starter Final8y
- Start date
Thats possible, I could be gaming at 2560*1600 in five years, like it matters..
Bullet is starting to look quite good - it could very well be a strong contendor - tho it doesn't yet have the stablity of physx.
Very interesting reading, as until now I was under the impression that a dedicated physx card (whether it be a ppu or gpu) didn't give much gains.
I've actually got a GTS320 sat around doing nothing which would be perfect for this to slot in alongside my GTX280, but I think plugging it in will make my PCI-E lanes drop to 8x, is this correct? (Nforce 650i Ultra chipset).
I've actually got a GTS320 sat around doing nothing which would be perfect for this to slot in alongside my GTX280, but I think plugging it in will make my PCI-E lanes drop to 8x, is this correct? (Nforce 650i Ultra chipset).
It does not matter what it takes to what cryostasis does as it still looks unimpressive to me. The ATI Toy Story give me a bigger wow factor when i first ran it.
I have seen just as good or better than mirrors edge for 90% of the effects besides the tearing of cloth, & the only thing obviously different is that on PhysX it takes allot more resources. I don't care nore does the majority if its real-time or pre calculated as long as it looks GOOD.
I see many games with cloth that looks real enough to me that even wrap around body parts.
As things stand now, the only reason that users want to run PhysX is because of more eyecandy on screen & not because of more accurate physics, because even the review says that its only really eyecandy & not the physics.
Even Painkiller looks better physically & that's all CPU.
Thats your problem right there accuracy, the avg gamer would not know what accurate physics is, so why waste hardware & programming resources doing so when the gamer will never appreciate it.
Lots of simple convincing physics is enough as this is about games having fun or if you keep pushing for high accuracy you end up with a simulator which does not have a broad appeal across game types & becomes boring for many.
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Yeah one thing that made me chuckle about this physx stuff is something I saw with those weird 'plastic strip curtains' (don't know what the correct term is) which you can brush through and make them move around - I'm sure Splinter Cell (or possibly Pandora Tomorrow) managed the same thing 5+ years ago in some kind of hospital lab / mortuary or something. Perhaps not as 'realistic' but certainly good enough to be convincing when you are just playing a game and not trying to nitpick every tiny flaw in the engine.
Havok.
But yeah, for its time, Painkiller did have some pretty awesome physics effects. I mean to get the full game some day, but I remember this boss in the demo, he pounds the floor and debris goes flying up in the air, it's mad.
You'd have to be a game developer to really appreciate what I'm saying here but the difference in accuracy that I'm talking about is the difference between 2 systems, one the "old" way that just isn't good enough any more and the new method with proper interaction with the scene.
As an example guns in a game like quake 3 would fall straight to the floor - always at an exact perpendiuclar angle towards "straight down" and if the surface was a slope or uneven they wouldn't align themselves to it - in a newer game using a proper physics engine they would interact with the geometry to align themselves properly and that code takes a lot more processing however inaccurate you make the precision.
Realism wasn't the issue with those cloth effects (which were very nicely done in splinter cell - and it was quite an old version of splinter cell) the problem was you could only use a very limited number of those affects active in any one scene before performance plummeted from nice and smooth to single digit framerates. With hardware physics you can have say 20 of those effects running in a single scene and it will still be giving you smooth framerates.
Yep And is like a person in a Motorcar race still at the starting line to busy looking under the bonnet while the rest are having fun & nearly finished & is moaning that the cars are actually electric with a loud speaker for the motor sound.
Which 99% of the gaming community are not developers so we will not be nit picking.
And the rest you described would not mater to a large amount of games. And gamers would not even be looking out for it in the first place in the types of games where that would have an influence unless it was pointed out & there is nothing worse then having to point it out for it to be noticed.
Why would you need 20 of them in the first place, you would end up with a CellFactor with lots of just because we could, not because its needed to be convincing.
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Except it isn't...
Its a bit wide... but heres an example...
The first bit shows bounding box to static mesh collision as typically used in older games, very very fast, ok for most people if you've seen nothing better.
Second part shows a low accuracy convex to static mesh collision as you might see in some newer games, still fairly fast you can have a few instances of this on the CPU without much slowdown... but if you start making more complicated games it quickly starts to bog things down.
The last bit shows a concave collsion mesh to static mesh collision... quite detailed, looks much more realistic... and is very processor intensive... you can only have a very few instances of this before you bog down the CPU.
This is just an example of the difference, but when you start applying it to every part of the game theres so much more you can do and the overall world becomes so much more realistic.
Its a bit wide... but heres an example...
The first bit shows bounding box to static mesh collision as typically used in older games, very very fast, ok for most people if you've seen nothing better.
Second part shows a low accuracy convex to static mesh collision as you might see in some newer games, still fairly fast you can have a few instances of this on the CPU without much slowdown... but if you start making more complicated games it quickly starts to bog things down.
The last bit shows a concave collsion mesh to static mesh collision... quite detailed, looks much more realistic... and is very processor intensive... you can only have a very few instances of this before you bog down the CPU.
This is just an example of the difference, but when you start applying it to every part of the game theres so much more you can do and the overall world becomes so much more realistic.
Thats the problem... you don't understand how games are made so you aren't seeing the huge issues... which I can assure you are very real.
Man of Honour
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Very nice illustration of your point, Rroff.
my mirrors edge game freezes up after a around 20mins of running. I thought that 1.01 patch would have fixed it but it didnt... Surely it cant be my hardware since im still able to quit the game through task manager... anyone got a solution?
Unfortunatly I'm not very good at explaining this stuff and I can't show decent comparisons without breaking a few NDAs :|
No! I play the games & not analytically study them & the point of the games maker is to make games for the games players & not to try and impress other games makers with inclusions that only gamers makers would notice & appreciate.
I rest my case - if only it was that simple.
No it is not! The point is your trying to convince gamers what we need to have a good time & we are telling you that we don't need that sort of accuracy that hogs so much recourse as for what is in Mirrors Edge is a joke for what power it used visually.
Your case should have never been open on a non developer forum because you cant see it from a gamers perspective & to be a successful one, you have to see it from our view. I don't need to see a game from a developers view to buy & play it.
You cant tell us that something is good just because it uses a technology.
It has to be implemented in a way that we openly & obviously can see for ourselves.
If improvement in accurate physics has to be pointed out all the time to be noticed then it has failed for its intended audience, the gamer.
I'm all for good psychics, but that's not what I'm witnessing atm. all I'm seeing is big talk with lacklustre results.
You have to sell it to us by results, not talk.
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