Unpopular Tech Opinions

[CerealExperimentsLain]

In some ways I think we've wasted a lot of gaming hardware in games.  While games to slowly get better, the returns are diminishing while the hardware demands keep growing.  Meanwhile, I don't think I've seen AI in games get much more clever or fun to play with in the last 15 years despite massive leaps in CPU power in that time.

 

I'm not even so sure I want 'hard' AI?  Especially in a single player game, it's not like enemies should be as good and capable as the human player, you might as well play online then, but a clever and *fun* AI to interact with has not evolved.  In game AI is gets pretty predictable and you can cheese it if you know what you're doing.

[Bombastinator]

16 hours ago, XGoodGuyFitz said:

Samsung is better than Apple. Apple is overpriced. Enough said. 

Samsung knows I think that if they weren’t hamstrung by android they could beat Apple. Be hard for them not to.  Apple uses a lot of Samsung parts.  Screens in particular.  They even used to fab their processors.  They keep on trying to do their own version though and it keeps on not working.  

[rafe_28]

I dont think apple products are generally bad but you can always find a more ethical and powerful, maybe cheaper android product, without needing to changwe ur Habits from your current phone.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, rafe_28 said:

I dont think apple products are generally bad but you can always find a more ethical and powerful, maybe cheaper android product, without needing to changwe ur Habits from your current phone.

Android has only one problem: the over the shoulder peeking at literally every thing you do that it does.  It depends on how bad you think that is. It creeped me out so much I switched to iPhone to if not exactly get away from it, at least make it a whole lot less offensive.

[FakeATF]

Higher refresh rate/frame rate makes more of a difference than outright resolution

[Blademaster91]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Android has only one problem: the over the shoulder peeking at literally every thing you do that it does.  It depends on how bad you think that is. It creeped me out so much I switched to iPhone to if not exactly get away from it, at least make it a whole lot less offensive.

Both of them take your data, but having a higher device cost and still giving targeted ads for example isn't worth switching in my opinion. I prefer a mid range Android phone, because of more features at a lower cost, there are plenty that get 3-4 years of updates, I use a browser with an ad blocker, and I don't keep personal stuff on my phone.  I think apple is overpriced, and I won't buy their products because of the device cost, and their anti-consumer stance on repair.

[Bombastinator]

37 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Both of them take your data, but having a higher device cost and still giving targeted ads for example isn't worth switching in my opinion. I prefer a mid range Android phone, because of more features at a lower cost, there are plenty that get 3-4 years of updates, I use a browser with an ad blocker, and I don't keep personal stuff on my phone.  I think apple is overpriced, and I won't buy their products because of the device cost, and their anti-consumer stance on repair.

One takes 1/20th as much and it’s not data that could be used for identity theft or the predicting of decisions.  It’s just device use data for maintaining device functionality.

[Amias]

On 5/4/2021 at 2:36 PM, Intoxicus said:

Except people dismissed it as a gimmick like was being done with Ray Tracing initially.

PhysX is no gimmick either. It was THE big push to put physics in games.
Exactly like RTX is THE big push to put Real Time Raytracing in games.

Nvidia can be frustrating and whack.
But it's that they keep pushing tech like PhysX and RTX forward in ways that pushes gaming as a whole forward is why I generally prefer NVidia.

I'll tolerate some of their bullshit to make the future happen now.

Okay one more time.

 

Physical simulation in video games is not PhysX. PhysX was original a poorly utilised propriety engine with hardware acceleration. 

 

It did not put physics on the map, it came later and delivered no significant industrial changes to games.

 

Again. It's only practically used in only 40 games. It's failed.

 

Physics in games has not. And they're are quite a few engines (havok) that preceded PhysX by over and produced far better acceptance and adoption of physics in games.

 

 PhysX survives only as a software accelerated physics engine in supporting game engines. Completely devoid of its original intent of hardware accelerated game physics. Nvidias attempt at cornering that market failed.

[Bombastinator]

51 minutes ago, Amias said:

Okay one more time.

 

Physical simulation in video games is not PhysX. PhysX was original a poorly utilised propriety engine with hardware acceleration. 

 

It did not put physics on the map, it came later and delivered no significant industrial changes to games.

 

Again. It's only practically used in only 40 games. It's failed.

 

Physics in games has not. And they're are quite a few engines (havok) that preceded PhysX by over and produced far better acceptance and adoption of physics in games.

 

 PhysX survives only as a software accelerated physics engine in supporting game engines. Completely devoid of its original intent of hardware accelerated game physics. Nvidias attempt at cornering that market failed.

Gonna try this same thing from another angle:

Physical simulation pretends to imitate reality.  PhysX merely attempts to make it LOOK like they’re imitating reality from a given preplanned state.  A magic trick.  The difference between stage magic and closeup magic is with stage magic it’s vastly easier to control direction of view because there are seats that don’t move.  A lot of stage magic tricks just look silly when viewed from the side.   This is actually one reason I think ray tracing will be such a massive game changer.  Rasterizing is like stage magic.  A bunch of tricks that only look like they work if you set up everything right.  Ray tracing is like closeup magic.  You don’t have to worry about set dressing and angles anymore.  There are a LOT more options for game designers and it will be a lot faster. It’s really kind of needed for VR.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Amias]

55 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Gonna try this same thing from another angle:

Physical simulation pretends to imitate reality.  PhysX merely attempts to make it LOOK like they’re imitating reality from a given preplanned state.  A magic trick.  The difference between stage magic and closeup magic is with stage magic it’s vastly easier to control direction of view because there are seats that don’t move.  A lot of stage magic tricks just look silly when viewed from the side.   This is actually one reason I think ray tracing will be such a massive game changer.  Rasterizing is like stage magic.  A bunch of tricks that only look like they work if you set up everything right.  Ray tracing is like closeup magic.  You don’t have to worry about set dressing and angles anymore.  There are a LOT more options for game designers and it will be a lot faster. It’s really kind of needed for VR.

What the hell are you on about?

 

Physics in video games has been around long before PhysX. PhysX was born to be a hardware accelerated solution to doing mass computational physical calculations. They released the PPU which was a complete failure. Then Nvidia bought them and ported the accelerated software over to their CUDA enabled GPUs.  Again this practically failed (cera 40 ish games) actually using accelerated physical calculations. PhysX only survives by open sourcing its basic software into game engines, and every so often a PhysX 'enabled' game, ergo accelerated, gets released but it doesn't change the game.

 

Physics in games is either pre-baked, which is basically animations. Example 1. This is the latest example I can find that kind of impacts game play. The skyscraper collapses the same everytime. This is pre-baked.

 

Or it is cosmetic, think 99% of PhysX accelerated games. Example 2. Looks cool, but has zero impact on your gameplay.

 

Or it's real and interacts and impacts the game world. Think most of physical implementations in games. Example 3. Half Life 2 delivered what I can currently remember as the first really integrated and useful physics engine in a game. There are likely lots of example pre-Half Life 2. But this game really bought real time physics to the forefront of games. Also note. Half Life 2 does not use PhysX, it uses the Havok physics engine.

 

Other examples of note, but still mostly niche games are Rockstars game engine utilises Euphoria Physics engine, enabling animations to react real time with Physical objects. Example 4. Again this does not use PhysX.

 

Other examples of great physics are Control. Example 5. This, like Half Life 2, was integral to the gameplay. Again this does not use PhysX.

 

Another excellent example of physics simulation in gaming is Red Faction Guerrilla. Example 6. This allows not only physical destruction, but the computation of load and stress across remaining physical structures enabling break away, collapse and other facisnating physical interaction with the world. Again this does not use PhysX.  

 

So to return to your analogy about real vs fake stage magic. Firstly RTX is not real time ray tracing, it is merely patching up holes in razterisation. I would recommend watching Linus's recent video on the matter. It's heavily gimmicked right now and poorly supported. Ray Tracing is the future, but RTX is merely dipping a toe into the ocean.

 

But returning to your belief that physics is merely fake and PhysX is real. Bulls***. Not only have I provided you plenty of examples of real physical calculations interacting in real time in games, all not using physX. In fact looking at all PhysX real, 'accelerated' examples. These are actually 'fake' physics.

 

"effects for clothing and particles, APEX Turbulence effects"

"particle effects based on APEX Turbulence, cloth simulation"

"HairWorks, PhysX effects, APEX effects, HBAO+ and Nvidia's FaceWorks"

"GPU accelerated paper debris. Apex based smoke generated by the Batmobile"

 

It's 80-90% cosmetic solutions to physical calculations. 'stage magic'. Making your game require PhysX hardware acceleration would lock it out of all the consoles (switch wouldn't do much with what it has available) and a large portion of the PC market (ergo a deadgame). 

 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Amias said:

What the hell are you on about?

 

Physics in video games has been around long before PhysX. PhysX was born to be a hardware accelerated solution to doing mass computational physical calculations. They released the PPU which was a complete failure. Then Nvidia bought them and ported the accelerated software over to their CUDA enabled GPUs.  Again this practically failed (cera 40 ish games) actually using accelerated physical calculations. PhysX only survives by open sourcing its basic software into game engines, and every so often a PhysX 'enabled' game, ergo accelerated, gets released but it doesn't change the game.

 

Physics in games is either pre-baked, which is basically animations. Example 1. This is the latest example I can find that kind of impacts game play. The skyscraper collapses the same everytime. This is pre-baked.

 

Or it is cosmetic, think 99% of PhysX accelerated games. Example 2. Looks cool, but has zero impact on your gameplay.

 

Or it's real and interacts and impacts the game world. Think most of physical implementations in games. Example 3. Half Life 2 delivered what I can currently remember as the first really integrated and useful physics engine in a game. There are likely lots of example pre-Half Life 2. But this game really bought real time physics to the forefront of games. Also note. Half Life 2 does not use PhysX, it uses the Havok physics engine.

 

Other examples of note, but still mostly niche games are Rockstars game engine utilises Euphoria Physics engine, enabling animations to react real time with Physical objects. Example 4. Again this does not use PhysX.

 

Other examples of great physics are Control. Example 5. This, like Half Life 2, was integral to the gameplay. Again this does not use PhysX.

 

Another excellent example of physics simulation in gaming is Red Faction Guerrilla. Example 6. This allows not only physical destruction, but the computation of load and stress across remaining physical structures enabling break away, collapse and other facisnating physical interaction with the world. Again this does not use PhysX.  

 

So to return to your analogy about real vs fake stage magic. Firstly RTX is not real time ray tracing, it is merely patching up holes in razterisation. I would recommend watching Linus's recent video on the matter. It's heavily gimmicked right now and poorly supported. Ray Tracing is the future, but RTX is merely dipping a toe into the ocean.

 

But returning to your belief that physics is merely fake and PhysX is real. Bulls***. Not only have I provided you plenty of examples of real physical calculations interacting in real time in games, all not using physX. In fact looking at all PhysX real, 'accelerated' examples. These are actually 'fake' physics.

 

"effects for clothing and particles, APEX Turbulence effects"

"particle effects based on APEX Turbulence, cloth simulation"

"HairWorks, PhysX effects, APEX effects, HBAO+ and Nvidia's FaceWorks"

"GPU accelerated paper debris. Apex based smoke generated by the Batmobile"

 

It's 80-90% cosmetic solutions to physical calculations. 'stage magic'. Making your game require PhysX hardware acceleration would lock it out of all the consoles (switch wouldn't do much with what it has available) and a large portion of the PC market (ergo a deadgame). 

 

 

 

Re: “what the hell are you on about”

 

im trying to explain the difference between for lack of a better phrase looking like you’re doing something and actually doing it.  PhysX  is an accelerated system for doing Newtonian physics math, but the real physics is a bit like real lighting.  There’s often too many bits for even a desktop computer to handle.  You can do a ball because it’s a deforming sphere and make it look like it bounces right with fudge factors and stuff, but even a rubber ball is really complex.  Bodies are much more so.  Real physics can be simulated…. With a supercomputer. That’s how they’ve dealt with designing nuclear stuff without blowing up bombs to test things. A desktop computer isn’t exactly the simulation center at los alamos though. So liberties are taken.  All they have to do is make them look reasonably believable. 
 

re: the history of PhysX:

ok.  So?

 

 

[Amias]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

im trying to explain the difference between for lack of a better phrase looking like you’re doing something and actually doing it.  PhysX  is an accelerated system for doing Newtonian physics math, but the real physics is a bit like real lighting.  There’s often too many bits for even a desktop computer to handle.  You can do a ball because it’s a deforming sphere and make it look like it bounces right with fudge factors and stuff, but even a rubber ball is really complex.  Bodies are much more so.  Real physics can be simulated…. With a supercomputer. That’s how they’ve dealt with designing nuclear stuff without blowing up bombs to test things. A desktop computer isn’t exactly the simulation center at los alamos though. So liberties are taken.  All they have to do is make them look reasonably believable.

 

 

 

I don't think you understand physics in games and what you think you understand you are vastly overestimating what physX offers, nor what it actually delivers.  Physical calculations are easy to calculate. The issues is the magnitude of objects and detail of those objects. Do you calculate a box as a single cube, or calculate the wooden planks in the box, or calculate the grains in the wooden boxes planks, or calculate the individual atoms of the wood cells.  Typical games have 40-50 physical objects interacting. More advanced games bump that number up to a few hundred to maybe thousand. However as you increase each object the difficulty of calculating increases exponentially so you hit a threshold of playable vs slideshow.

 

Nuclear weapon programmes utilise advanced super computers to simulate fission, fusion reactions on a magnitude of millions to billions of particles interacting. This takes up petabytes of data and weeks to calculate. They do their best to model something occuring within a few square cm's. Real world physical calculation on this scale is impossible.

 

PhysX offers nothing in terms of more advanced physical computation or accuracy. Its whole schtick was to offload the computational calculation off of the CPU enabling more objects to be physically calculated. This failed and was always going to fail. For physical computations to become useful in games, the CPU needs to be involved as it needs to know where everything is going, interacting and landing. As a result the dedicated PPU failed. Nvidia has it on life support on CUDA enabled cards, however even then as it can't directly interact with the game world and can only offer cosmetic upgrades (particle effects etc) and thus its impact on the game is negligible. Ergo you can play pretty much all their games without any loss of capability with it turned off. 

 

Right now there are multiple physics engines that games can utilise to run physical calculations in real time in their game. PhysX only now exists as a software add in for Unreal (however Epic are coding their own now) and Unity. Likely through free licensing. It uses your current CPU to calculate.

Other developers use Havok (just as if, not more capable) or write their own. PhysX does not hold an advantage nor competitive edge over any other engine. It's purely down to the developers and how they optimise their game engine on the available hardware out there.

 

The only thing that will dive physics forward in games is better hardware. Not Nvidia nor PhysX. That or smart developers optimising the calculations for their games (see Control).

 

 

[Bombastinator]

Re: I don’t understand

perhaps.  Your complaint was made in the rudest most combative possible way without using actual profanity to say that you didn’t understand what I was saying.  It was designed to cause anger. So I guess we both maybe don’t understand. 
 

Re: the middle bit (I don’t know what else to call it)

this seems to be a repetition  of what amounts to  “I’m a games developer and you’re not!” (true) that was made effusively clear last time.  I’m just a person who plays video games and knows what chirsciro is and how art works. You learned to code, I learned to draw. Ironic we might meet at opposite ends of the same thing.  It happens I also happened to read about the history of magic and took some classes in it as a child.  I’ve never been a magician. I think the comparison holds though.  Turning 2d into 3D is what chiaroscuro does.  It’s just a multi hundred year old visual trick that was continuously adapted and refined for most of that time.  There are other methods besides chiaroscuro.  Russian iconography uses one though that system is basically forgotten.  It attempts to push out from the picture plane rather than drop back from it.  Something a photograph or a computer monitor can’t do.  A human brain can with enough training though. Those weird bloated looking madonnas as actually arent.  They’re actually realistic.  Just using a vastly different and artificially created system with its own conventions. 

re: physical calculations are easy to calculate.

Sure. They’re not wildly complicated.  The issue is the number of them that need to be done. calculating stuff for an individual molecule isn’t either.  The problem is they interact and there are a whole heckuva lot of them. To get the accuracy that is needed. Just like ray tracing.  there are as many molecules (give or take) in a rubber ball as there are in a lump of plutonium. The physics of the way a ball bounces can be massively simplified to various levels depending on purpose.  There are bajillions of molecules of rubber in a ball.  You could look at how they act on each other as well, but it’s not needed to get a pretty good idea of where the ball will probably land which is all that is needed for purposes of making something look believable enough.   Which is my point.  A lot of them cancel each other out so you can get usefully close with only a few hundred thousand for say a human body with its joints and clothing and whatnot.  You can make it land in close enough to the right place and look convincingly enough rag doll to keep a gamer focused on the game because the body has done more or less what was expected of it.  This is why game physics stuff can often look realistic enough to make things seem beleievable enough for the player.  There’s a difference between the accuracy necessary to make a game look well enough and what is needed for other things though.  

Re: describing what specifically the ‘physX’ brand game engine is.

Still don’t care.  Just like last time.  
You seem to be arguing that when I said ‘PhysX’ I was talking not about physics simulations in general (which I was) but about a specific branded system for such things. So the whole thing is based on “you said PhysX, and PhysX is a specific thing in my world” It kind of isn’t in mine.  Thinking about very specifically physX, as differentiated from other systems I do t really know a whole lot. Mostly I just know That particular branded system is extremely old.  I had an 8800gt once upon a time that was very proud of its PhysX brand game engine compatibility and at the time was in the lineup near where the 3060 or 3070 is now.  The thing was a good bit weaker than what a 730 is now. PhysX looked realER than stuff before it but it still did not look real enough to be mistaken for the real thing. There is muscle attachment and skeletal connections via ligaments etc.. it’s just a lot of stuff. such things have gotten a lot more realistic looking, but as you say, it’s  apparently tweaked by hand. 

 

You do understand that I was not even talking about physics and programming right? I was talking about stage magic and visual arts. Currently In order to work games need to be staged visually.  To seem like they follow expected systems.  They don’t ACTUALLY do so anymore than an actor actually IS the person they are portraying. Generally it’s a lot easier to do that with a fixed camera. When things can ACTUALLY be simulated though. A fixed camera won’t be needed.  I don’t even know what that will look like, but if the historical progression of visual arts is any measure it’s going to look really really different. 

[SteveiJobs]

21 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

One takes 1/20th as much and it’s not data that could be used for identity theft or the predicting of decisions.  It’s just device use data for maintaining device functionality.

This is something I feel like I need to keep clarifying to people. 

 

Does Apple collect a lot of telemetry data? Sure. But it's what they do with it that matters. When Apple collects your data on your phone, they generally (to my knowledge at least) keep it mostly in house. Google (and by extension, Android) doesn't because they are an advertising company first, a software company second, and a hardware manufacturer last.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, SteveiJobs said:

This is something I feel like I need to keep clarifying to people. 

 

Does Apple collect a lot of telemetry data? Sure. But it's what they do with it that matters. When Apple collects your data on your phone, they generally (to my knowledge at least) keep it mostly in house. Google (and by extension, Android) doesn't because they are an advertising company first, a software company second, and a hardware manufacturer last.

The word that rings for me there is “ “telemetry” which I think is stuff more about the phone and how it is working than the person using it which is what the giant social media comanies seem interested in.

[Amias]

32 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

You seem to be arguing that when I said ‘PhysX’ I was talking not about physics simulations in general (which I was) but about a specific branded system for such things. So the whole thing is based on “you said PhysX, and PhysX is a specific thing in my world” It kind of isn’t in mine. 

 

Fair enough, but in the real world it is. PhysX is it's own brand of failed PPU and since just an open sourced license engine. There are many engines out there that do this. Don't equate the failure of physX with the failure of physics engines.

 

Advancing physical computation in games is the future. This we both agree on. 

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, Amias said:

Fair enough, but in the real world it is. PhysX is it's own brand of failed PPU and since just an open sourced license engine. There are many engines out there that do this. Don't equate the failure of physX with the failure of physics engines.

 

Advancing physical computation in games is the future. This we both agree on. 

PPU = Pending Pick Up? That is by far the most common use of the acronym.  I don’t necessarily equate obsolescence with failure myself.  PhysX is really really old and hasn’t been used for years, yet people still know the name. 

Edited May 8, 2021 by Bombastinator

[rafe_28]

On 5/7/2021 at 10:36 AM, Bombastinator said:

Android has only one problem: the over the shoulder peeking at literally every thing you do that it does.  It depends on how bad you think that is. It creeped me out so much I switched to iPhone to if not exactly get away from it, at least make it a whole lot less offensive.

I knooow. Its so sad how much yoi get tracked nowadays. Linus even talked about this with Luke on the Wan Show because some company made adstvat told you why u see that exact ad anf it was scary what it all knew

[Amias]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

PPU = Pending Pick Up? That is by far the most common use of the acronym.  I don’t necessarily equate obsolescence with failure myself.  PhysX is really really old and hasn’t been used for years, yet people still know the name. 

You serious?

PhysX released a dedicated PCI card they called a Physics Processing Unit (PPU) ... it was literally their entire point. It was what put PhysX on the map ... you don't know this?

Quote

The first processor to be advertised as a PPU was called the PhysX chip, introduced by a fabless semiconductor company called AGEIA. Games wishing to take advantage of the PhysX PPU must use AGEIA's PhysX SDK, (formerly known as the NovodeX SDK).

 

 

In February 2008, after Nvidia bought Ageia Technologies and eventually cut off the ability to process PhysX on the AGEIA PPU and NVIDIA GPUs in systems with active ATi/AMD GPUs, it seemed that PhysX went 100% to Nvidia. But in March 2008, Nvidia announced that it will make PhysX an open standard for everyone,^[8] so the main graphic-processor manufacturers will have PhysX support in the next generation graphics cards. Nvidia announced that PhysX will also be available for some of their released graphics cards just by downloading some new drivers.

 

... smfh

 

[dalekphalm]

57 minutes ago, Amias said:

You serious?

PhysX released a dedicated PCI card they called a Physics Processing Unit (PPU) ... it was literally their entire point. It was what put PhysX on the map ... you don't know this?

 

... smfh

 

Let's step back and just cool down for a moment. Someone not knowing the meaning of an Acronym isn't grounds to be aggressive about it. He probably knew the PhysX card by a different name, or perhaps just forgot what PPU meant.

[Bombastinator]

5 hours ago, Amias said:

You serious?

PhysX released a dedicated PCI card they called a Physics Processing Unit (PPU) ... it was literally their entire point. It was what put PhysX on the map ... you don't know this?

 

... smfh

 

You said you wanted real life.  Google PPU.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

4 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

You said you wanted real life.  Google PPU.

Being in a space where CPU, Central Processing Unit, GPU, Graphics Processing Unit, and PSU, Power Supply Unit are common, if you read 'PPU' on this forum then googled it and the result did not show the U in 'Unit', I would instead say 'Hey, what does PPU mean?  I tried to Google it but obviously got the wrong thing' instead of 'I'm sure the first results in Google are correct.'

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Being in a space where CPU, Central Processing Unit, GPU, Graphics Processing Unit, and PSU, Power Supply Unit are common, if you read 'PPU' on this forum then googled it and the result did not show the U in 'Unit', I would instead say 'Hey, what does PPU mean?  I tried to Google it but obviously got the wrong thing' instead of 'I'm sure the first results in Google are correct.'

My first guess was Pick and Place Unit which would be a machine that builds motherboards.  It didn’t make sense in context though and I couldn’t even find anything that did.  So hey, top hit.

[Amias]

 

13 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Let's step back and just cool down for a moment. Someone not knowing the meaning of an Acronym isn't grounds to be aggressive about it. He probably knew the PhysX card by a different name, or perhaps just forgot what PPU meant.

 

4 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Being in a space where CPU, Central Processing Unit, GPU, Graphics Processing Unit, and PSU, Power Supply Unit are common, if you read 'PPU' on this forum then googled it and the result did not show the U in 'Unit', I would instead say 'Hey, what does PPU mean?  I tried to Google it but obviously got the wrong thing' instead of 'I'm sure the first results in Google are correct.'

 

For someone so intent on defending PhysX their sole source of fame, a dedicated Physic Processing Units should be a given. It would be like reaming someone out for not knowing what a GPU was while discussing Nvidia. "Ground Power Unit"? Green Party of Utah? General Processor Unit?

 

Not knowing what the PPU was while defending and constantly name dropping PhysX, and when I explicitly mention it was released by PhysX ("PhysX was born to be a hardware accelerated solution to doing mass computational physical calculations. They released the PPU which was a complete failure.") ... that's OPs bad.

 

Me only realising he has only a rudimentary understanding of this topic (physics engines) and little desire to learn more, so far into the conversation, that's my bad.

 

[Intoxicus]

On 5/8/2021 at 6:57 AM, Amias said:

 

I don't think you understand physics in games and what you think you understand you are vastly overestimating what physX offers, nor what it actually delivers.  Physical calculations are easy to calculate. The issues is the magnitude of objects and detail of those objects. Do you calculate a box as a single cube, or calculate the wooden planks in the box, or calculate the grains in the wooden boxes planks, or calculate the individual atoms of the wood cells.  Typical games have 40-50 physical objects interacting. More advanced games bump that number up to a few hundred to maybe thousand. However as you increase each object the difficulty of calculating increases exponentially so you hit a threshold of playable vs slideshow.

 

Nuclear weapon programmes utilise advanced super computers to simulate fission, fusion reactions on a magnitude of millions to billions of particles interacting. This takes up petabytes of data and weeks to calculate. They do their best to model something occuring within a few square cm's. Real world physical calculation on this scale is impossible.

 

PhysX offers nothing in terms of more advanced physical computation or accuracy. Its whole schtick was to offload the computational calculation off of the CPU enabling more objects to be physically calculated. This failed and was always going to fail. For physical computations to become useful in games, the CPU needs to be involved as it needs to know where everything is going, interacting and landing. As a result the dedicated PPU failed. Nvidia has it on life support on CUDA enabled cards, however even then as it can't directly interact with the game world and can only offer cosmetic upgrades (particle effects etc) and thus its impact on the game is negligible. Ergo you can play pretty much all their games without any loss of capability with it turned off. 

 

Right now there are multiple physics engines that games can utilise to run physical calculations in real time in their game. PhysX only now exists as a software add in for Unreal (however Epic are coding their own now) and Unity. Likely through free licensing. It uses your current CPU to calculate.

Other developers use Havok (just as if, not more capable) or write their own. PhysX does not hold an advantage nor competitive edge over any other engine. It's purely down to the developers and how they optimise their game engine on the available hardware out there.

 

The only thing that will dive physics forward in games is better hardware. Not Nvidia nor PhysX. That or smart developers optimising the calculations for their games (see Control).

 

 

Perhaps you're misremembering or made a typo? A big thing about PhysX was moving processing to the GPU from the CPU. Including the ability to use an older GPU for dedicated physic processing. The 2nd GPU for PhysX is a dead concept now, but was amazing at the time. 

I'm not sure how PhysX "failed." Even if PhysX isn't the best implementation, it's what pushed the idea forward into becoming a standard component of gaming.
*Which no one else was doing at the time!*

If that's "failing" then I hope RTX "fails" just as hard as you perceive PhysX did.

All these people trying to diminish what Nvidia did with PhysX proves my point.
Comparing Mario having momentum to ragdoll physics is a massive false equivalence that ignores the actual innovations of PhysX.
There was no ragdolls before PhysX. There was not every object has physics so that you walk around and kick things aside. 
There was not any physics puzzles like is a common thing these days.
There not physics based game mechanics until after PhysX made physics processing a "thing" at all.
I remember playing Unreal Tournament when PhysX was fresh new and ragdoll corpses were literally a brand new thing.
It was clearly a game changer, and people still shat on it.

Havoc Physics did not exists until Nvidia made PhysX and in game physics simulations a "thing" as far as I am aware. Nvidia innovated and then everyone else followed suit.

Would we have Ray Tracing on consoles if Nvidia had not aggressively pushed RTX? Probably most likely not.

If you think we would then explain how it took consoles pushing ReBAR and associated tech to make it happen when we could have had ReBAR years ago. The tech for stuff like ReBAR has been around. There was no push or motive to develop it though.

*And that's why RTX and PhysX are historically important innovations to gaming and tech.* 

Not because they're "the best" or anything like that.
But because they pushed innovative tech forward at the right time that it could get the foothold it needs to become standardized.