- This topic has 17 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 18 years, 6 months ago by
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How far up the pecking order is PhysX? (on a scale of 1 to 10)
How far up the pecking order is Havok? (on a scale of 1 to 10)
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I think you mean Novadex…thats the physics engine from Ageia. A while back I’d have agreed with you it was either Havok Physics or it was it wasnt worth implementing, but its changing now and there’s a good few physics engines in the works that are vying for Havok’s crown…
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The physics sdk is called Novodex. It’s available as a free download for Win32 for developers to have a play around with. It still lacks some features (fluids comes to mind), but AGEIA has an ace up its sleeve in the PhysX chip that could blow its competitors out of the water much as 3DFX and nVidia once did with graphics accelerators. Needless to say, it’s bad news for Havok if Sony will be supplying Novodex with its dev-kits.
It’s mildy amusing they keep pushing the Cell processor in the press release. My understanding of the newest generation of hardware is that it will be a horrendous platform for physical calculations and other code which needs to be run in-order. I bet they’ll be having fun optimising the SDK to run well on Cell.
I also suspect Novodex is also in the 360 dev-kit since Epic (afaik) already integrated it into the Unreal3 engine.
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aye. Thats what I said wasn’t it? Sorry for any confusion :oops: I also heard that the 360 dev kit uses it, but can’t find the link…
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it’s bad news for Havok if Sony will be supplying Novodex with its dev-kits.
[/quote:5264eefeec]For the record Havok signed a similar agreement and will also be packaged with the SDK.
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I also suspect Novodex is also in the 360 dev-kit since Epic (afaik) already integrated it into the Unreal3 engine.[/quote:153809f25a]
Indeed it is…The AGEIA PhysX SDK is the leading next-generation solution for creating compelling in-game physics and has been widely adopted by various game engines, such as the Unreal Engine 3 by Epic Games.[/quote:153809f25a]
The platforms arent meant to be AS complicated to develop for as many are making them out to be. Anandtech ran a feature on the issue and consulted some developers who basically reiterated what has been assumed already – The first batch of games released for the systems will be mainly single thread games with only some minor multi-threading. The Cell will only be pushed after awhile as developers get to grips with the hardware, just like with any new released.One thing that interested me though…
We’re looking at a life cycle of 10 years with the PlayStation 3.[/quote:153809f25a]
…according to Sony President Ken Kutaragi.
Seems like developers will have plenty of time to get used to it. :DA knock on effect however is that with all these future proofing features such as HDTV and Blu-Ray support is that the price will be higher…
I’m aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can’t be offered at a price that’s targeted towards households. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to. But we’re aiming for consumers throughout the world. So we’re going to have to do our best (in containing the price. I’m not going to reveal its price today. I’m going to only say that it’ll be expensive.[/quote:153809f25a]
Hrm… :? -
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it’s bad news for Havok if Sony will be supplying Novodex with its dev-kits.
[/quote:c9087a0d7e]For the record Havok signed a similar agreement and will also be packaged with the SDK.[/quote:c9087a0d7e]
Yep – for the record Havok, Epic and Ageia have announced strategic partnerships with Sony Computer Entertainment.
Arigato Gozaimasu!
Steve -
One thing that interested me though…
We’re looking at a life cycle of 10 years with the PlayStation 3.[/quote:24630ba7cc]
…according to Sony President Ken Kutaragi.
Seems like developers will have plenty of time to get used to it. :D
[/quote:24630ba7cc]Er.
So, what’s changed. The PS1 already has had a lifecycle of 10 years, the Ps2 will have a lifecycle of 10 years and not surprising that the PS3 will have a similar lifecycle. The console cycle is not a 5 year cycle folks, it’s 10+. The PS1 sold more consoles in the second 5 years than it did in the first. These are the economics of the business.
Steve
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aye, just because the PS3 has a ten year lifecycle doesnt mean we wont see the PS4 for ten years…
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Apologies… me being an idiot and reading things wrong
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Well here it is, its supposed to retail for $250. Would you buy one?
Hardspell
Hope you can read Chinese… :D -
Probably not until its got a greater level of support from game developers…
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It’s mildy amusing they keep pushing the Cell processor in the press release. My understanding of the newest generation of hardware is that it will be a horrendous platform for physical calculations and other code which needs to be run in-order. I bet they’ll be having fun optimising the SDK to run well on Cell.[/quote:ce53cb13ac]
I’ve heard the opposite, actually – that it’s particularly good for phyiscs – and AGEIA have also heavily suggested the opposite. There was a report going around from the equivalent of the Japanese GDC, from the AGEIA presentation, that they basically were pegging PS3/Cell as being as good performance wise for AGEIA as a PhysX chip, if not better. Particularly for soft bodies/fluid. They were saying if you wanted PS3-style performance this year, you should get a PhysX chip ;)
It’ll be interesting to see how that pans out. I’d love to hear how Havok is doing on it. It wouldn’t be too surprising if it is a bit of a beast for physics though..it was apparently one of the key workloads Sony & IBM designed Cell for. And they seemed keen at E3 to push “simulation” as the big hallmark for PS3 games i.e. not enough to simply have pretty looking games any more, it has to behave realistically too, or there’s no point.
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Hrm, was reading through an article on ATi and at the end they briefly touched on the major vendors plans to include some Physics processing on their cards through drivers, they also mentioned Ageia, not in a good way though…
AEGIA might have a run for it’s money if ATI has anything to say about it. One AIB commented today that the idea of a dedicated scalar mathematics processor for game physics could already be replicated on ATI’s R520 series silicon, although drivers for such a project only exist in R+D departments (the vendor wouldn’t let us have them, we tried). The idea of offloading math to a GPU is not a new idea; many projects exist for Linux for this already. However, the indication we had was that ATI could actually do physics calculations on the card with the graphics processing simultaniously — the bandwidth is already there. AEGIA’s physics processor has already been delayed well into Q2 next year.[/quote:b19d30d30d]
Never heard that last bit… -
Id like an external pci express card with just control, alt and delete on it. \oh and somewhere handy to put my ‘phones in.
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Hrm, that was my opinion at first but remember it wasnt THAT long ago that we needed a 2D AND a 3D “add-in” card for our graphics, then it was the introduction of the true GPU that had people scratching their heads.
Hardware is just adapting as our needs i.e games advance and while I’m not particularly in favour of having ANOTHER add-in card for my PC the idea of a PPU is a good one in general imho.
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