Comments on: AMD and PhysX: History of the Problem

By: Stefem

Stefem — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:01:28 +0000

GenL

[Black-PR? Maybe. But i personally prefer to support people who says “proprietary standarts should and will die” because i agree, while others say “PhysX is the only right way for physics, and we’ll do anything we can to provide support for devs with it”.]

Yes, but if you’re saying that “proprietary standards should and will die” and you are using Havok for your “physics on GPU” implementation, something is wrong with what you’re saying.

And…. helping Bullet dev is not an AMD prerogative, in fact the developer is using NVIDIA hardware and their code sample.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15642/1/

http://tech.icrontic.com/news/nvidias-take-on-amds-open-source-bullet-physics/

By: Emm

Emm — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:49:31 +0000

idk why I wrote 90… it’s a 5870, so? an answer?

By: Emm

Emm — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:00:30 +0000

Gibor, give me a PhysX driver from my 9800GTX that works along side a 5890 on Win 7. Otherwise, I support the “nvidia lied” quote!

By: GenL

GenL — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:07:20 +0000

Gibor, it’s too easy to say that amd lied too. But then nvidia would have already responded to that publically. When they say they had conversations about technology, it’s not something real people would lie about.

Comparing DX10.1 with PhysX is useless. First one is a generic gfx standart of Misrosoft OS which is not a property of any GPU vendor.
It’s actually quite obvious that nvidia would never allow any other vendor to support PhysX@GPU, no matter what. And you’ll also see that it won’t be ported to anything but CUDA, no matter what. Because that’s what nvidia about.

By: Gibor

Gibor — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:51:23 +0000

GenL, you didn’t expect ATI to say “we refused the proposition then, now its too late”, right ?
so they said “nvidia lied” and you eat that without looking back. typical for blind ATI fans.
if the proposition was a lie, you would know that back then. long time has past, not only they (probably) refused the proposition, but also virtually killed PhysX and spawn false accusation.
sure, they can now “go whistle”, as they DO NOT DESERVE another PhysX proposition from NVIDIA.

regarding DX10.1, if you accuse NVIDIA for not supporting it back then, you should also accuse ATI for not supporting PhysX back then.
only difference is NVIDIA made sure GPU PhysX is integrated in games, while ATI haven’t done sh*t with DX10.1, as they always talk more than do.

By: GenL

GenL — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:24:28 +0000

Gibor, they already said that nvidia lied about that proposition. Source: http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/interviews/2010/01/06/interview-amd-on-game-development-and-dx11/1

As for DX11, it’s just silly to assume they would refuse it. They refused DX10.1, and look – there are almost no games using it right now. We could play Assassin’s Creed I with higher fps, but they won’t allow us. A key word here is “limiting”, not a “progress”.

By: Zogrim

Zogrim — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:54:53 +0000

But i personally prefer to support people who says “proprietary standarts should and will die” because i agree, while others say “PhysX is the only right way for physics, and we’ll do anything we can to provide support for devs with it”.
I actually prefer people who not just say, but do

As for rest, well, lets just see how it will turn out)

By: Gibor

Gibor — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:51:02 +0000

GenL, the only thing “wrong” here is ATI f*cking their customers by refusing to support PhysX.

if Nvidia refused to support DX11, would you then think DX11 should die ?

By: GenL

GenL — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:24:35 +0000

Black-PR? Maybe. But i personally prefer to support people who says “proprietary standarts should and will die” because i agree, while others say “PhysX is the only right way for physics, and we’ll do anything we can to provide support for devs with it”.

PhysX titles? Yes, they are coming out, but that is only causing further confusion for PC gamers. You know – PC, not %gpu_vendor_here% PC.

Free SDK tools? I think they always should be free, that’s why everyone should support open standarts. I know, for example, DX itself is not really *open*, but at least it is supported by all vendors from the beginning.

Devs are not interested? Maybe true, but i’m sure there will be at least more progress for fully-destructable-environment projects, because hardware acceleration would minimize optimization needs for the engine. And these projects could be used by many games already, developers won’t hesistate to use solutions which are not vendor-locked.

For now i just think we all should hope that many good projects with OpenCL/DirectCompute will emerge, and that no one will try to prevent this.
When you must buy a new hardware to upgrade your PC, it’s fine. But when for specific features of the gameplay experience you have to stick with some particular vendor, something is wrong. And DX11 is not a case.

By: Zogrim

Zogrim — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:28:15 +0000

GenL
When i think about it, i really can’t say that ati/amd is to be blamed for absence of game titles with their physics technology
But they can be blamed for constant griefing of opponents technology. Especially when attack mostly have black-PR nature.

I may be wrong, but i think that not all these ideas came to developers from their own mind. And sometimes it feels more like another tech-demo instead of a game.
It’s obvious that mostly effects are implemented with help of Nvidia content-devs, but people prefer to see negative sides from this, and how about positive:
1) GPU PhysX titles are really coming out (not on slides or paper), and such effects are really echancing immersion.
2) GPU PhysX content supply free CPU/console PhysX SDK and following tools. Isn’t that good for developers ?
Compared to other free physics engines, PhysX SDK (with all its Ageia/Nvidia proprietary stuff) is much much more widely adopted.
Even semi-free PC Havok initiative (started in May 2008 by Intel), supposed to kill or at least counter free PhysX SDK, haven’t much effect.

I think, if PhysX@GPU somehow would be *freely* available for both vendors by 2008 already, we would have more games utilizing it by now.
I don’t think so. History is showing that mostly devs aren’t interested in hardware accelerated physics of any kind. Havok is a good indicator:
Devs require better authoring tool ? They created Havok Cloth and Destruction
Devs require better integration of physics with other game engine systems ? They created Havok Animation, AI and Behaviour
Devs require hardware physics ? Seems no, and all such Havok projects failed (btw, forced by GPU manufacturers all the time).

From my POV, it’s better to have at least something, than nothing