EA, Take-Two Announce Support for NVIDIA PhysX

[maroon1]

Game publishers will build PhysX physics processing support into video game titles worldwide

Physics processing in video games promised a lot when it first came to market, but the reality was that physics processing hardware like the Ageia PhysX card was simply not very good and added little in the way of realism or performance to games.

NVIDIA acquired Ageia in February of 2008 and quickly moved the PhysX processing from dedicated physics accelerators to a process that could be ran on its video card GPUs. Shortly after the purchase of Ageia, NVIDIA announced that its GeForce 8 series graphics cards would get a software PhysX engine.

This week NVIDIA announced that both EA and Take-Two have licensed its PhysX technology to integrate into video game titles coming in the future and a few that are available now.

EA's Tim Wilson said in a statement, "PhysX is a great physics solution for the most popular platforms, and we're happy to make it available for EA's development teams worldwide."

In a separate statement, Take-Two's Jacob Hawley said, "We are very impressed with the quality of the PhysX engine, and we licensed it so our studios can use this solution early in development."

NVIDIA showed some clips from mirrors Edge to illustrate the difference in PhysX turned on or off in the game and the results were impressive. Banners and curtains fly in the PhysX version when wind blows or shots are fired into them. The whole world in the game looked much more realistic and intriguing.

Jon Peddie form research firm JPR told CNET News, "It's a GPU thing, and the fact that EA and Take-Two are coming out (with support) gives you a clue why. This really is a significant event, enabling the GPU to do physics."

AMD is taking a somewhat similar approach to physics processing on its GPU and CPU technology. AMD says that it will use physics processing on its ATI GPUs when appropriate and when not it will offload the physics processing to the CPU.

AMD's Korhan Erenben said in a statement, "The GPU is a great place to do processing. We'll do the offloading (to the GPU), where it makes sense. (But) we are aligned with Havok, in terms of working on a future direction of physics. Right now, it is on the CPU, and we think that serves the broad installed base. Taking it to the next step would be to have a capability on the GPU--where and when it makes sense."

AMD may see that moving physics processing to the GPU makes sense rather quickly. The GPU is much better at parallel processing thanks to the vastly superior number of cores available to process data. Parallel processing of complex physics calculation on a GPU will be provided much faster than those ran on a CPU with only two or four cores compared to the GPUs 200 or more cores.

Peddie talked about a technique called Same Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) with CNET News saying, "The same instruction is the physics equation. Things fall toward Earth all the time. And the multiple data will be what the things are. It might be a rock, might be a person, might be the wheel of a car. You have to be able to process this stuff and have it behave in a realistic fashion. To do that, you have to process it very quickly. The advantage that GPUs bring is that they have this humongous number of processors. Certainly as good as the (Intel) 486 ever was. So they're really good processors, and you've got hundreds of them literally inside the GPU."

Source
DailyTech - EA, Take-Two Announce Support for NVIDIA PhysX

 

[Baez]

If only they would announce Support for Customers...

 

[Druid]

Nice; if the next crysis sequel gets some sweet physics, the game will be even more BA.

 

[Joeyboy]

so does that mean some future games wont work with ATI cards at all or not work well with them?

 

[veg1992]

so does that mean some future games wont work with ATI cards at all or not work well with them?

Nah, you just get better performance with nVidia.. because it'll load the PhysX on the Quantum Effects engine nVidia has..

 

[Poizen22]

you will just get better performence with nvidia. imo nvidia should release a console that takes keyboards and mice, and has the ability to have interchangeble gpu's.

 

[tastegw]

you will just get better performence with nvidia. imo nvidia should release a console that takes keyboards and mice, and has the ability to have interchangeble gpu's.

that is a solid idea!

 

[Poizen22]

that is a solid idea!

well it is because a descent cu can last you upwards of 3 years and the optimisation for the console would help spread the life pan even longer and once a year spend like 150$ on a new gpu. it would work very well compared to other consoles and i think the gfx would be able to keep up with the pc.

 

[ricanflow]

Great news indeed...i look forward to it being supported in many games down the road.

 

[Oreo]

You know my opinion.. i think it's a unrealistic physics engine, i don't like it - and it should be gone. A better engine should be made with good physics. for example the physics of cloth material on Marble Blast Ultra for the xbox 360 was way better, ragdolls of natural motion are way better, the only good thing PhysX is good for is simulating napalm, because all it's fluid rendering is extremely viscous like jelly.

Oddly in this video > YouTube - PhysX Cloth < the Physics look really good, yet in the games ive seen utilising it, it looks far worse ?