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With the release of Batman Arkham Asylum we see yet another title where Nvidia have been working closely with the game developers to integrate advanced PhysX effects.
But all is not well, and to understand why, you need to understand a little bit about PhysX.
PhysX is a physics API originally built by Ageia. PhysX is similar to other physics engines like Havok but has some additional features which make it more powerful, it can use dedicated hardware such as PPUs, allowing bigger and better physics. The problem Ageia had was convincing people to buy a dedicated piece of hardware, no one wanted hardware they couldn't use, and no developer would spend time creating effects that no gamers could use, so they were stuck in a catch 22 situation.
Along comes Nvidia, they buy out Ageia and start developing PhysX so that it can use the GPU as a physics accelerator; this is a smart move because they design and sell GPUs and lots of gamers already have them. Now all that is left to do is to convince developers to use these additional features and they have the upper hand in the market. Currently you cannot run PhysX powered by AMD video cards; this isn't because Nvidia have locked them out but rather because AMD know that if PhysX gets universal support it puts Nvidia in the sole position of power which is bad in the long run.
So what new effects can hardware driven physics bring us? Technically it doesn't bring anything new to the table, most of the effects have been doable on the CPU for years, all does is allow them to be done in much greater quantity or greater detail. We've had simple ragdoll and cloth physics as far back as the original Hitman: Codename 47 released back in 2000, breakable rigid bodies were made popular by Half Life 2 back in 2004. Smoke and particle physics, ricochet effects have all been around for a long time as well.
The problem is that Nvidia have got involved with their "The way it's meant to be played" program and we're seeing a lot of these games with either advanced PhysX on or off, and when they're turned off we lose a lot of the classic physics effects or they're scaled down when they need not be.
Let me get something straight, effects like high resolution cloth and liquid physics simply cannot be done on the CPU, at least not in any great quantity; the CPU simply doesn't have the power to run those effects large scale. That's a good selling point for Nvidia and I have no problem with them showing us games with these new effects.
However they take it a step further, they show us effects such as particle effects from bullet ricochets and environmental effects, smoke from guns, steam effects, breakable objects and other simple physics simulations and make it look as if the CPU cannot produce these effects and this is simply not true.
A modern CPU is more than capable of producing these simpler physics effects and has been doing so for years; we need to let developers know that gimping the fallback effects when GPU powered PhysX cannot be used is not acceptable, if they want to add new fancy cloth and water then that's great for those who can use it, for everyone else we should get at least the level of physics we've come to expect from games now a days.
You can see some more video comparisons at www.gamephys.com
-Princess_Frosty
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