Unpopular Tech Opinions

[dalekphalm]

53 minutes ago, Intoxicus said:

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.


 

Just a clarification here - NVIDIA didn't invent PhysX. Hell, Ageia didn't even invent PhysX (though they're the ones that came up with the branding).

 

It was originally from a Swiss company called NovodeX AG, when they created Physics simulation software. Ageia bought the company in 2004 and started development on the original PhysX PPU (though the actual software was based on the previous work from NovodeX). The first game to use PhysX (pre-NVIDIA) was 2005.

 

NVIDIA acquired Ageia in 2008.

 

Guess when Havok came out? 2000, originally.

 

Intel bought them in 2007 (a year before NVIDIA acquired Ageia).

 

Also, since we've established that the first game to use PhysX was in 2005 ("Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport" for anyone who cares) - guess what came out a year before?

 

Oh yeah. Half-Life 2 in 2004. The game that literally put Physics based Gameplay on the map.

 

I'm not trying to downplay PhysX's achievements - it made Physics Based Gameplay accessible to third party studios that couldn't devote the internal resources that Valve could to a custom physics engine (though anyone who wanted to use Source Engine could).

 

Point being, there was Physics based gameplay before PhysX. PhysX came out well before NVIDIA was involved. There are lots of reasons why that kind of technology has become more integrated into every game - but giving PhysX all of the credit is just wrong on multiple levels.

[pythonmegapixel]

All smartphones should record with the aspect ratio set to horizontal by default. If you want vertical you should have to consciously choose it with a specific button, and there should be a confirmatory popup warning you about the terrible decision you're about to make.

 

Vertical video is stupid on any standard-dimensioned non-mobile device as it's impossible to scale it to make good use of the available screen space without bits getting cut off.

[Bombastinator]

58 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

All smartphones should record with the aspect ratio set to horizontal by default. If you want vertical you should have to consciously choose it with a specific button, and there should be a confirmatory popup warning you about the terrible decision you're about to make.

 

Vertical video is stupid on any standard-dimensioned non-mobile device as it's impossible to scale it to make good use of the available screen space without bits getting cut off.

That isn’t the worst idea I think. The only reason vertical video even exists is because of smartphones and we’ve seen enough of it to show there is precious little advantage in it while there are several major problems.

[Intoxicus]

On 5/11/2021 at 11:32 AM, dalekphalm said:

Just a clarification here - NVIDIA didn't invent PhysX. Hell, Ageia didn't even invent PhysX (though they're the ones that came up with the branding).

 

It was originally from a Swiss company called NovodeX AG, when they created Physics simulation software. Ageia bought the company in 2004 and started development on the original PhysX PPU (though the actual software was based on the previous work from NovodeX). The first game to use PhysX (pre-NVIDIA) was 2005.

 

NVIDIA acquired Ageia in 2008.

 

Guess when Havok came out? 2000, originally.

 

Intel bought them in 2007 (a year before NVIDIA acquired Ageia).

 

Also, since we've established that the first game to use PhysX was in 2005 ("Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport" for anyone who cares) - guess what came out a year before?

 

Oh yeah. Half-Life 2 in 2004. The game that literally put Physics based Gameplay on the map.

 

I'm not trying to downplay PhysX's achievements - it made Physics Based Gameplay accessible to third party studios that couldn't devote the internal resources that Valve could to a custom physics engine (though anyone who wanted to use Source Engine could).

 

Point being, there was Physics based gameplay before PhysX. PhysX came out well before NVIDIA was involved. There are lots of reasons why that kind of technology has become more integrated into every game - but giving PhysX all of the credit is just wrong on multiple levels.

The point is NVidia pushed the innovation forward and was like "we're making this a thing."


You're completely missing the point.

[dalekphalm]

18 minutes ago, Intoxicus said:

The point is NVidia pushed the innovation forward and was like "we're making this a thing."


You're completely missing the point.

I'm not missing the point - I'm correcting some rather large inaccuracies in your post - giving NVIDIA credit for things that happened before they even owned the company, and giving PhysX credit for things that happened before PhysX was a thing in gaming.

 

Particularly the comment about:

On 5/11/2021 at 12:28 PM, Intoxicus said:

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.

These two points are just straight up, 100% wrong. Half-Life 2, which came out a year before the first PhysX game, did more for both of those points than anything PhysX did.

 

PhysX definitely did push the industry forwards with Physics based simulations in games. As did Havok. As did Source Engine. You're giving them all the credit when they only deserve some of it.

[Amias]

On 5/11/2021 at 5:28 PM, Intoxicus said:

Post

This is almost entirely incorrect and can be refuted with a simple Wikipedia search. Thank you to @dalekphalm for explaining how.

 

While I commend Nvidia's attempt to drive PhysX and the physical enhanced games forward. It has been surpassed multiple times by many other games and engines. Even Epic is ditching it from their Unreal engine. The best physics in games is no longer and has never really been PhysX. 

 

The idea of hardware accelerated Physics is cool and could have merit in the future, however for now multicore high speed and high memory bandwidth CPU's integrated better with GPU's is the future. Console have it. PC's are moving to it.

[dalekphalm]

7 hours ago, Amias said:

This is almost entirely incorrect and can be refuted with a simple Wikipedia search. Thank you to @dalekphalm for explaining how.

 

While I commend Nvidia's attempt to drive PhysX and the physical enhanced games forward. It has been surpassed multiple times by many other games and engines. Even Epic is ditching it from their Unreal engine. The best physics in games is no longer and has never really been PhysX. 

 

The idea of hardware accelerated Physics is cool and could have merit in the future, however for now multicore high speed and high memory bandwidth CPU's integrated better with GPU's is the future. Console have it. PC's are moving to it.

I think in the future we'll start to see more physics engines just utilize on-GPU compute power in a non-proprietary way. Eventually all the major GPU brands will have dedicated hardware on-chip to handle stuff like physics simulations.

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I think in the future we'll start to see more physics engines just utilize on-GPU compute power in a non-proprietary way. Eventually all the major GPU brands will have dedicated hardware on-chip to handle stuff like physics simulations.

Would depend on how often simulated physics is needed on a per user basis.

[dalekphalm]

16 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Would depend on how often simulated physics is needed on a per user basis.

I mean, in gaming? Basically every game could benefit from simulated physics. If a well designed massively available, easy to use non-proprietary API is developed for simulated Physics, I think it would be a no brainer for GPU manufacturers to target that. Especially if they work together on it's development.

 

Very few games would not benefit from physics simulations.

[Danny Donkey]

1. It is a tragedy for Windows-users that Nokia and Microsoft fucked up and gave up Windows Phone. Despite Nokia Lumia being my first smartphone might make me biased, no other smartphones have offered the same integration with the Microsoft-ecosystem. The performance was great, the interface made sense, and the tile-based menu was brilliant. My current Android phone is just terrible in comparison.

 

2. Windows Vista was a great operative system to use and look at. All graphics and buttons and desktop featured were so cool(, although the latter indeed got removed for security reasons). In comparison Windows 7 changed the great design Vista had. Also Vista had the good old Windows Movie Maker, which got dumbed down in Windows 7.

 

3. Windows 8 was another underrated operative system, despite being controversially experimental as an OS for all possible devices giving the desktop users the brand new and impractical tile menu. Surely it is intuitive on a pad or anything with a touch screen, but it was never made with the desktop users in mind, forcing everyone to click that desktop-tile to get to the usual desktop.

[Amias]

43 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I think in the future we'll start to see more physics engines just utilize on-GPU compute power in a non-proprietary way. Eventually all the major GPU brands will have dedicated hardware on-chip to handle stuff like physics simulations.

So this requires significant GPU / CPU integration.

 

For example if you decided to stimulate an entire building, floors, walls and roof. You need your AI, bullet path, character and internal objects to know where everything is.

Offloading the work onto the GPU is fine for visual effects and the CPU needs very little info about that. However when you start tieing your real game world to the calculations you've got to get real good at blending back and forth all that information and data crunching.

 

is that building still there? Can your ai still pathfind through the rooms? Or is it collapsing and does your AI need to react to physical collisions.

 

Look at all the "enhanced PhysX" games and they're all mostly cosmetic.

 

Now look at the best physics in games, and those games use CPU acceleration.

 

Games in the past relied on single to dual core processors, it made sense too offload your physics. These days you're looking at 6 cores minimum and the future likely to hold 12+.

There's more than enough there for heavy physical calculations. Combine that with shared memory, and yes GPU compute units standardisation ... Plenty of horse power is available already. It's likely the limiting factor is the complexity of increasing the amount is physical objects in a game to actually code the game to still work.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I mean, in gaming? Basically every game could benefit from simulated physics. If a well designed massively available, easy to use non-proprietary API is developed for simulated Physics, I think it would be a no brainer for GPU manufacturers to target that. Especially if they work together on it's development.

 

Very few games would not benefit from physics simulations.

Not all desktops are used (officially at least) for gaming.  I don’t know what the ratio is though.  If it was a majority I could see it being done.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Danny Donkey said:

1. It is a tragedy for Windows-users that Nokia and Microsoft fucked up and gave up Windows Phone. Despite Nokia Lumia being my first smartphone might make me biased, no other smartphones have offered the same integration with the Microsoft-ecosystem. The performance was great, the interface made sense, and the tile-based menu was brilliant. My current Android phone is just terrible in comparison.

 

2. Windows Vista was a great operative system to use and look at. All graphics and buttons and desktop featured were so cool(, although the latter indeed got removed for security reasons). In comparison Windows 7 changed the great design Vista had. Also Vista had the good old Windows Movie Maker, which got dumbed down in Windows 7.

 

3. Windows 8 was another underrated operative system, despite being controversially experimental as an OS for all possible devices giving the desktop users the brand new and impractical tile menu. Surely it is intuitive on a pad or anything with a touch screen, but it was newer made with the desktop users in mind, forcing everyone to click that desktop-tile to get to the usual desktop.

I’ll agree with number 3.  I consider win10 a downgrade.  It’s actually got less real functionality because a lot of stuff has been either made nearly impossible to get at or actually removed.  The only thin win10 had over win8 was compatibility.  There was a lot of stuff that would work with 7 or 10 but not 8

[dalekphalm]

16 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Not all desktops are used (officially at least) for gaming.  I don’t know what the ratio is though.  If it was a majority I could see it being done.

considering I was talking about GPU's, I thought it was fairly obvious I was referring to dGPU's.

 

Granted not everyone with a dGPU games, but it's definitely one of the primary functions of it.

[Bombastinator]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

considering I was talking about GPU's, I thought it was fairly obvious I was referring to dGPU's.

 

Granted not everyone with a dGPU games, but it's definitely one of the primary functions of it.

You were, but you then went on to talk about hardware physics engines in CPUs. It’s a fairly specialized thing.  I COULD see CPUs having a more generic floating point system added as that could be used for many things, but die space specifically allocated to just a physics engine?  It would have to be a very commonly used thing.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

but you then went on to talk about hardware physics engines in CPUs.

I did not.

 

Perhaps you're confusing my post with another?

[Andreas Lilja]

I don't get the whole insurrection when there are no FOV sliders.

 

[Intoxicus]

Mass Effect did something innovative in its time, and it's awesome in it's own right.

But it's not as good as people remember and the dialogue and storytelling is a lot shakier than many want to admit.

It's not that amazing of a story or storytelling. It's not "the best" ever by any stretch.

It's high level, very good, and solid.

But people have blown it up into more than it is because of emotional attachments and so on.

Bioware was never actually *that* great and got its reputation by trying to do things that were innovative more so than actually being that good at game design and development.

(This post inspired by playing Legendary Edition and cringing at a lot of the dialogue and some of the voice acting. A lot of it is much rougher than I remembered.)

[Rex Hite]

My unpopular tech opinion is that it is not the end of the world to connect win98, Win 2000, Win XP, Win7 and Win 10 on the same network by enabling the appropriate SMB setting.

 

 

[MultiGamerClub]

About to connect our oldest computer running win95 to get ONE driver..

 

Either it works or it dies and im fine with it.

[dalekphalm]

5 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Because windows 8 (especially 8 but also 8.1) sucks. 

Microsoft took one of their biggest products and make it for tablets first and desktops and laptops second.

I only ever liked 8/.1 on my surface rt.

Install Classic Shell on 8.1 and it’s basically Windows 7 SP3. Great system once you deal with the UI issue. 

[dalekphalm]

4 hours ago, Rex Hite said:

My unpopular tech opinion is that it is not the end of the world to connect win98, Win 2000, Win XP, Win7 and Win 10 on the same network by enabling the appropriate SMB setting.

 

 

If you’re talking about SMB 1.0 please fuck do not enable that. 

[SansVarnic]

-= Topic Cleaned =-

Pointless Derailment has been removed.

If you wish to make a pointless opinioned argument, do so in a topic of your own instead derailing this one.

Do not continue the removed arguments.

[Bombastinator]

On 5/14/2021 at 4:31 PM, dalekphalm said:

I did not.

 

Perhaps you're confusing my post with another?

Possible I misunderstood.  Wouldn’t be the first time.

[Derkoli]

The new Discord looks pretty bad.