We’ve added new section to our website as part of advance plan – PhysX Articles. As the name implies, it will be dedicated was various PhysX benchmarks, reviews, etc.

Also, we would like to present our first article:

Best PhysX SDK powered indie games – List of most decent PhysX SDK based indie games, which you can download and play freely.

Meanwhile, we are looking for authors, who wants to share their PhysX experience with other people – just like we are.  Hardware related topics and benchmarking preferred. Send your offers/suggestions/remarks to support@physxinfo.com or leave them on forum.

Korean, Unreal Engine 3 and PhysX SDK powered music MMO Mstar (also knows as Nurien) was one of the first titles featuring support for hardware accelerated physics effects. Many of you can remember Nurien benchmark from GeForce PowerPack #1.

Now it’s officially announced, that the operation of this title is to be stopped. Thanks to its excellent graphics, Mstar has faced much difficulty in popularization because of its high PC system requirements.

Source indicates, that some large online game company still takes interest in Mstar, and probably game is going to be relaunched, but with tweaked system requirements – it’s hard to say if GPU PhysX support will be kept in this case.

Source: mmosite.com

We’ve uploaded PhysX comparison video for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfigter 2. Developed by GRIN for PC, this game came out in 2007, featuring Ageia PhysX support, and was augmented with GPU physics processing later via PhysX driver update. Still looks decent.

Our GRAW2 PhysX info mini-site is located here

Note: For this comparison video (and for others too), we are using comparison sign “PhysX ON” vs “PhysX OFF” just for brevity. More properly it must sound like “extra hardware accelerated effects ON” vs “extra hardware accelerated effects OFF”,  as PhysX SDK itself is working it both cases, calculating ragdolls and other standart physics stuff on CPU.

Note#2: This game was made with Ageia PPU support in mind, and some effects can’not be directly applied to GPU PhysX reality (for example, setting PhysX option to “Extreme” will add some destructible objects, but their rigid body parts will be calculated on CPU in any way)

JX3 (Jianxia 3) – does this name make any sense for any of you ? for us too)

JX3 is chinese MMORPG, developed by KINGSOFT, that will incorporate GPU PhysX effects soon.

According to press-release, APEX toolset will be used to provide realistic weather and environmental effects system – leaves flowing in the wind, trees and flowers interacting with characters, etc

Original press-release

Translated version

Video, showcasing PhysX SDK integration into indie Neutron 3D engine was added to YouTube recently

As you may see, implementation includes rigid bodies, joints, tearable cloth and softbodies.

After whole year of silence, PCgameshardware.de has revealed some new details about Shadow Harvest title – GPU PhysX support for this game was announced in May 2008

According to their article, Shadow Harvest will have, as example, GPU accelerated cloth objects and supplementary physical smoke effects.

System requirements were also declared – Dual core CPU + Geforce 8800 GT/GTS class GPU without extra PhysX effects enabled, and least single GTX280 for those who wants to play with GPU PhysX goodies.

As additional features we can name DX10 support.

Source: PCgameshardware.de

Recently, PhysX SDK wrapper for Quest 3D engine was updated to version 1.0.6.

Release Notes

John Carmack, Id Software Technical Director,  always have no special sympathy for dedicated hardware Ageia PhysX.

He called it “bad idea” in 2007, and he didn’t change his mind since then:

“I hope Nvidia didn’t pay a whole lot of money for them” – ended John.

Thankfully,  all this negative talk is related to old, dedicated Ageia PPU idea. Carmack still didn’t reveal his opinion about GPU PhysX.

Edit: We can see, that author of this video is now trying to misinform people by renaming this video to “JC on hardware accelerated (GPU) PhysX” while Carmack was talking about Ageia PhysX PPU, without any clear word about current HW PhysX by Nvidia.  Don’t be confused.

Edit2: And I get blocked during discussion. It seems that I was right.

PCgameshardware.com revealed a new Mafia II hands-on article today, and it says

Mafia 2 is a pure cross platform title although the PC is said to be the lead platform. Due to the higher resolutions as well as additional GPU Physx particle effects, like dynamic, interactive smoke the PC version will also offer better graphics than the console variant.

Let’s wait for official announcement.

Source: PCgameshardware.com

Capcom has announced release date for Dark Void title – January 12 2010 in North America, and January 15 in Europe.
Dark Void is going to be one of most advanced GPU PhysX titles, featuring APEX Turbulence support.

Source: Capcom