|
Re: How PhysX runs on Nvidia and AMD (ATI) systems
|
|
Here's the thing with PhysX
The amount of people running GPU's or PPU's that are capable of the more advanced PhysX effects, such as liquid and cloth, are very small. Developers simply aren't going to put these effects into games until everyone can use them, the few games that do decide to use these effects are going to have them tagged on as extras and they're never going to be meaningful to gameplay, they will simply be nicer graphical effects.
I don't like PhysX if I'm honest, it's Nvidia trying to corner the market on physics and that's never a good thing for gamers and we've already seen very good examples of this so far. For example the CPU performance of the more complex physics simulations is VERY BAD, it will only use about 50% of your CPU power, if you play something like Batman Arkham Asylum and enable advanced PhysX on the CPU, then check your CPU usage on something like a quad core, the entire game engine is not using more than about 50% of the CPU (about 50% on each core)
And why would Nvidia want to make it good for the CPU? They sell GPU's not CPUs, they want you to buy and Nvidia card, this is why them trying to corner the market is bad. There are much better physics libraries out there such as Havock which actually run really well on the CPU.
Until PhysX adoption is nearly 100% all we'll ever see is simply more pretty effects with more particles and whatnot, otherwise developers will be ruling out large portions of their player base. It will never be important to the game play, PhysX on the GPU is very bad at communicating with the rest of the game code which is running on the CPU so the PhysX information for simulated cloth and fluid will never be more than just nicer graphics it will never affect game play.
My prediction is that physics will be done on the CPU for Planetside for things like bullet trajectories and probably stuff like destruction in future as well as vehicle handling. If there are any advanced effects that need the GPU they will just be to make the game more pretty, probably cloth simulated flags and more particles in explosions.
|