When are physics cards going to take off?

Dolph · 4 Jun 2006 at 09:52

Physics cards will take off when they provide a clear benefit, and not before, and that benefit has to be more than simply making explosions with more bits.

PhysX reminds me of PowerVR in many ways, an interesting idea, but it's not going to be 'the one'.

I do believe PPU's will have their place, just like GPU's do now but how many people here remember the Voodoo 1 passthrough cards and the like and their software support....

Being an early adopter often sucks, it's why I don't do it any more

neoboy · 4 Jun 2006 at 10:42

Chances are they'll take off when they are a lot cheaper.

Reppyboyo · 4 Jun 2006 at 10:49

I cant see them taking off until we finally have a "must have" game.

Such as the Voodoo 1 had GLQuake.
The PhysX best bet is UT07

HangTime · 4 Jun 2006 at 11:01

The thing is, UT2007 is going to be playable without a PPU. It's not like GLQuake which you can't run without an opengl accelerator

Being a multiplayer FPS, I reckon quite a lot of people will be more concerned with the gameplay and framerate than any kind of fancy physics anyway.

The only way we will see a 'killer app' is when a great game is released which either REQUIRES a PPU, or performs so badly without one that it's significantly worse without one.

As for the long term future of PPUs, I'm not sure. I guess it depends on how much the technology improves and how CPU speeds increase in the coming years.

Reppyboyo · 4 Jun 2006 at 11:04

Remember most people played Quake in a software renderer before GLQuake came out.
People flooded to the Voodoo as there was a huge difference between Quake and GLQuake for playability, plus already being a kick ass game that EVERYONE wanted at the time threw the Voodoo to stardom and effectivly gave birth to the GPU industry.

It would have to be the same with UT07, some clear benefit between the non-PPU & PPU versions of the game.

RaMDOM · 4 Jun 2006 at 12:28

Psyk said:
I think maybe a GPU based solution will catch on better. I think this is the idea Havok and Nvidia have been playing with. Instead of handing the work over to a seperate physics chip, it can be handled by the GPU since they are good at the type of calculations needed.

The latest Custom PC did an article on these and I will quote some specs of the chip they outlined. I don't think that a modern GPU can match up to these:

"For a start, the PhysX PPU has 'many cores'. No information has been provided about exactly how many cores it has, or how they work and what their specific job is, but we know that they offer parallel processing over a variety of different tasks. This makes the PhysX PPU quite a different piece of silicon from your average GPU, which will have loads of pixel and vertex pipes dedicated to carrying out similar tasks, but with different sets of pixel or vertices. This is because PhysX has to process many different types of information simultaneously and it needs to do this in parallel to have minimal impact on gaming frame rates.......... You can see that PhysX has a lot of different data to calculate which is why it has to have multiple cores that can handle different types of calculations simutaneously"

When they put it like that £200 quid doesn't sound like a lot.

Anyway like every one has pointed out modern games do as much physics as we would like them to do - in the game play. Imagine having a totally active back ground, with rocks and dust continuously moving and making the whole world come alive. Look at the nice back grounds in HL2, Quake, and DOOM3. Nice aren't they. But they do not move, they are static. Even the background environmental movement in Oblivion might as well be static for all that it does and responds to the player. Now imagine it if every little rumble or movement caused real effects that create ther own equal and opposite effect. This would make the game come alive in a way that has never been done before. At the moment physics are only in the gameplay and are player controlled, these PPU's will allow the physics to be world generated as well and allow the player to interact with them in a realistic fashion.

The way that the cards are being used now is only the beginning. I fully believe that these will be as essential as a good GPU in the future if you want to play the games they way they are mean't to be.

Sweetloaf · 4 Jun 2006 at 12:56

They should take off nicely when used in conjuction with one of these:

Psyk · 4 Jun 2006 at 13:22

RaMDOM said:
The latest Custom PC did an article on these and I will quote some specs of the chip they outlined. I don't think that a modern GPU can match up to these:

Actually that was one of my thoughts about it. How can a GPU do all these physics calculations AND still do the graphics? But it sounds like the GPU designers have found a way to get it to do some useful physics stuff as well as doing graphics. I assume they don't perform as well as PPU, but I think the idea would catch on better.

Ugley_Matt · 5 Jun 2006 at 12:41

HangTime said:
The only way we will see a 'killer app' is when a great game is released which either REQUIRES a PPU, or performs so badly without one that it's significantly worse without one.

And who is propared to take the risk in releasing a game that requires that upgrade?

HangTime · 5 Jun 2006 at 23:18

Precisely. It's a chicken & egg type situation, developers need to include legacy support to avoid losing potential sales. It's one of the reasons why I can't see games coming out which REQUIRE DX10 for a while.

Dolph · 6 Jun 2006 at 10:54

HangTime said:
Precisely. It's a chicken & egg type situation, developers need to include legacy support to avoid losing potential sales. It's one of the reasons why I can't see games coming out which REQUIRE DX10 for a while.

Which is why it'll take another GLquake. Playing quake on the software renderer was perfectly adequate, it worked well, it was fast, and for the time it was reasonably good looking. However with GLquake, GLquake blew normal quake out of the water. It was everything Quake was, but much cleaner, crisper, and it was a game where everyone could clearly see the difference between the software and hardware accelerated game. It wasn't simply a case of it running a little bit quicker, or simply running in a higher resolution, it was much more than that. (even little things like water transparancy when playing multiplayer made a huge difference)

Psyk · 6 Jun 2006 at 13:01

Dolph said:
Which is why it'll take another GLquake. Playing quake on the software renderer was perfectly adequate, it worked well, it was fast, and for the time it was reasonably good looking. However with GLquake, GLquake blew normal quake out of the water. It was everything Quake was, but much cleaner, crisper, and it was a game where everyone could clearly see the difference between the software and hardware accelerated game. It wasn't simply a case of it running a little bit quicker, or simply running in a higher resolution, it was much more than that. (even little things like water transparancy when playing multiplayer made a huge difference)

Well it would be feasible for a dev to do that for the PhysX. They would just have to put in a huge amount of visual physics effects. I'm thinking stuff like grass and foliage that moves when the player walks into it, maybe more realistic water effects, etc. It would make a huge difference to the visual experience but gameplay could remain pretty much the same.

LoadsaMoney · 6 Jun 2006 at 17:41

Never.

Ozzie Dave · 7 Jun 2006 at 01:13

To really take off it will need a triple A title that sells extremely well, or a few slightly lesser but just as popular games. And all of them utilising the physics in a fun/impressive/meaningful way......a hook basically, that other games just don't have.