Nvidia Gameworks at Gamescom 2015

[eggcup]

Excellent . I loved gameworks in Batman Arkham Knight.... oh wait..

 

[Gregster]

Most of these effects have little performance hit if done properly.

The performance hit on what you would recognise as typical NV PhysX is insane, its way over what it should be. And those effects if done independently from Nvidia also don't care what GPU it runs on.

Same with W3 Hair Works, the amount of Tessellation in that is madness, a massive drain on resources for no visual benefit what so ever if compared with much less Tessellation.

This is something Game Developers should be doing themselves.

I would love to see what you have done from scratch as you seem to know better. Any links/vids and I do mean scratch, not pre-compiled libraries.

 

[humbug]

Well, that is obvious, the API opens up the same hardware access so of course a developer can do the same thing. You are missing the entire point of Gameworks, developers simply don't have the time, staff, resources and often skill to do these things. It is just like any other library out there. Why use a physics library instead of investing thousands of hours into programing your won. Why use a library to load jpeg images when you can spend thousands of hours coding your own wavelet transforms. Why use the C++ standard template library when you could spend millions coding your own.


If the Game developers dont have the time, skill, resources or money then you simply end up with games without those features, o the features look worse, or most likely the features run really slowly.



Yeah, physics simulations is just a Sunday afternoon job for an intern. Game developers could get primary school kids to code an HBAO algorithm.

You may recognise some of the following as Nvidia's PhysX, as seen in Metro LL for example.

Thats not what it is, it looks similar, but it wasn't even done with any of Nvidia's tools or their hardware, this wasn't even run on an Nvidia GPU.





I have some ridged body Physics, Real time GI and fluid body physics uploading, but its taking longer than i thought it might... a few hours yet.

 

[D.P.]

So nothing new then?

The Gameworks effects are actually highly optimized and very efficient

 

[D.P.]

You may recognise some of the following as Nvidia's PhysX, as seen in Metro LL for example.

Thats not what it is, it looks similar, but it wasn't even done with any of Nvidia's tools or their hardware, this wasn't even run on an Nvidia GPU.




I have some ridged body Physics, Real time GI and fluid body physics uploading, but its taking longer than i thought it might... a few hours yet.

And how much engineering time and money have Crytek put into developing their own physics engine!

Most game developers don't have a few million dollars lying around to write physics from scratch. Heck most dont have the money to develop their own engine, and instead will use Cryengine, UE4, etc.

 

[Scougar]

The Gameworks effects are actually highly optimized and very efficient

I have written code that was extremely optimized, but it didn't make it fit for purpose and we had to cap it a certain level due to the real-time nature of the software.

 

[humbug]

And how much engineering time and money have Crytek put into developing their own physics engine!

Most game developers don't have a few million dollars lying around to write physics from scratch. Heck most dont have the money to develop their own engine, and instead will use Cryengine, UE4, etc.

Physics like that always comes from somewhere, a starting point, in the case of Cryengine it has a Bullet Physics back-end, its nothing special that Crytek did, they simply used what was already available and i made use of it inspired by NV PhysX .

 

[D.P.]

I have written code that was extremely optimized, but it didn't make it fit for purpose and we had to cap it a certain level due to the real-time nature of the software.

Good job gameworks effects are fit for purpose ad work well for most people.

 

[D.P.]

Physics like that always comes from somewhere, a starting point, in the case of Cryengine it has a Bullet Physics back-end, its nothing special that Crytek did, they simply used what was already available.

Sp there you go, they used a 3rd party library. You have just proven my point.

 

[mmj_uk]

So Humbug you're using demos you've made using middleware to argue that developers should not use middleware? lol

 

[Mr Oblong]

It's hard to be against these features as such, more pretty is always good.

However, the silly over-tessellation of hairworks is a problem that hurts everyone- quite the opposite of good.

 

[humbug]

Sp there you go, they used a 3rd party library. You have just proven my point.

My point is they don't need Nvidia to do it for them, i didn't.
Its not a library, Blender's back end is Bullet for Christ sake, those are the sort of tools they could use.

Anyway. news is on. time for dinner.

 

[andybird123]

Erm, so bullet isn't a library eh?
So why does it say this as the main intro to their website;

Home of the open source Bullet Physics Library

How little do you know about coding to not realise that bullet physics exactly IS a library

 

[D.P.]

My point is they don't need Nvidia to do it for them, i didn't.
Its not a library, Blender's back end is Bullet for Christ sake, those are the sort of tools they could use.

Anyway. news is on. time for dinner.

They could have gone with PhysX, they went with Bullet, both are libraries! What they didn't do was develop an entire physics engine form scratch like you were trying to imply, instead they used middleware just like Gamesworks.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Erm, so bullet isn't a library eh?
So why does it say this as the main intro to their website;



How little do you know about coding to not realise that bullet physics exactly IS a library

His point is a full on studio should be able to get the job done easy enough without involving a party who have motives that are clearly not bennefiting both sides of the gpu market. It should be all about making a good game end of story. Gameworks is starting to come across as a tool to benefit Nvidia and not a tool to benefit us gamers.

 

[Gregster]

So Humbug you're using demos you've made using middleware to argue that developers should not use middleware? lol

That's exactly it.

 

[D.P.]

His point is a full on studio should be able to get the job done easy enough without involving a party who have motives that are clearly not bennefiting both sides of the gpu market. It should be all about making a good game end of story. Gameworks is starting to come across as a tool to benefit Nvidia and not a tool to benefit us gamers.

Nonsense.

He doesn't make that point at all, he makes the complete opposite by proving that not even Crytek could develop a physics engine themselves and used a 3rd party library just like PhysX.


Most game developer simply don't have the resources to code into things like physics, fludi dynamics, facial simulation, HBAO form scratch. That is why they use 3rd party libraries like Bullet/Havok/PhysX for physics and things like Gameworks for graphics effects. If the developer could easily do it themselves they would, but they can't, which is exactly why Gamesworks exists and some developers incorporate it in their games.


Gamesworks is a vendor-agnostic tool-set that benefits all gamers, unlike say Mantle which would only run for certain AMD owners.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Nonsense.

He doesn't make that point at all, he makes the complete opposite by proving that not even Crytek could develop a physics engine themselves and used a 3rd party library just like PhysX.

M
Most game developer simply don;t have the resoruces to put into thigns liek physics, fludi dynamics, facial simulation HBAO. That is why they use 3rd party libraries like Bullet/Havok/PhysX for physics and things like Gameworks for graphics effects. f the developer could easily do it themselves they would, but they can't, which is exactly why Gamesworks exisst and some developers incorporate it in their games.


Gamesworks is a vendor-agnostic tool-set that benefits all gamers, unlike say Mantle which would only run for certain AMD owners.

Yea game studio's don't have the resources to do what Humbug can do and you say i am talking nonsense . The tools are there so get them used instead of letting a biased party get involved. It's there job to be able to do this and we pay for what should be the best end product.

I don't have a problem with Nvidia or Amd being involved in order to optimize drivers and such so the games run good on each set of hardware. Advertising is also not a problem but for me leave the game up to the developers.

 

[D.P.]

Yea game studio's don't have the resources to do what humbug can do and you say i am talking nonsense .

What humbug is doing is exactly what game developers that use Gamesworks are doing, using middleware to reduce development cosst.

The tools are there so get them used instead of letting a biased party get involved.

No, the tools are not there. How many libraries do you know that that can do state of the art facial animation or fluid dynamics?

It's there job to be able to do this and we pay for what should be the best end product.

Do you want to games to cost $200 a pop to cover the additional development expenses, and end up Slower and buggier due to time constraints? Do you think a game developer should never use a game engine like Unreal 4, or Cryengine and every one should start coding form scratch?

I don't have a problem with Nvidia or Amd being involved in order to optimize drivers and such so the games run good on each set of hardware. Advertising is also not a problem but for me leave the game up to the developers.

The game is up to the developers, they are free to choose whatever middleware they want and integrate however they want.

 

[Gregster]

D.P is spot on here and some very valid points.