PhysX SDK now Royalty Free

[cppcrusader]

Ageia has released a new EULA (http://ageia.vnewscenter.com/press.jsp?id=1163672411186) making the PhysX SDK royalty free for commercial and non-commercial development.


AGEIA™ Technologies, Inc., the pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for games, today announced that it has implemented a new End User License Agreement (EULA) that allows the PhysX™ SDK to be used and its runtime components distributed in all commercial and non-commercial PC projects – completely royalty free. The new EULA allows game developers of any size to harness the power of the physics in their titles with a simple, no-fee license.

I figured this was big enough news that it warranted front page submission. The previous EULA allowed for a no-fee license only if there was significant use of the PhysX hardware, this EULA removes that requirement. Great news for Indies and the Big Boys alike!

[51|RandoM]

Last throw of the dice, this.


They've finally realized they had the cart before the horse. Make the SDK free, make sure that lots of games are using it---THEN introduce hardware that makes all of those PhysX games run with better framerates.

[nickw]

This is very good news. Even though havok is much more widely used in the mainstream game scene, having a real production quality physics engine will be of great use to indie developers.

[Disgustipated]

Last throw of the dice, this.

That's what I was thinking too. These guys are dying to beat Havok and with NVidia's new Quantum Physics on their GeForce 8800's, AGEIA is probably shitting themselves. What would you rather pay, $250 for a physics card or $500 for a brand new graphics card WITH physics processing? No brainer.

[Thenetcase]

Considering that nVidia and ATI have both announced plans to incorporate hardware physics processors for HAVOC on their next cards, I'd say that AGEIA is screwed.

Any game that uses HAVOC will benefit from the new video cards and any game that adds the hardware support will benefit even more. :)

-TNC-

[Disgustipated]

Considering that nVidia and ATI have both announced plans to incorporate hardware physics processors for HAVOC on their next cards, I'd say that AGEIA is screwed.

Any game that uses HAVOC will benefit from the new video cards and any game that adds the hardware support will benefit even more. :)

-TNC-

NVidia's new GeForce already has physics processing via Havok.

[TrackZero]

They...were charging for the SDK in the first place? Yeesh. Talk about bad business sense.

[dieselduck]

NVidia's new GeForce already has physics processing via Havok.

really? in which game?

nvidia, ati and havok are all pretty successfully dishing out the FUD on this issue.. in reality nothing accelerates havok -- it's only 'havok fx' a seperate add-on component to the havok 4.0 dev kit with a supported title list that makes ageia's mediocre listing look like the de-facto standard.

The reality is that developers need to pay a seperate licesning fee to incorporate havok fx on top of the havok 4.0 license and that basically puts them in the same scenario they are in with ageia - putting in a lot of additional effort (and in havok's case, money) in to adding hardware physics and no developer wants to do that right now since it basically limits their prospective customer pool.

anyone who thinks that all you need to do is get an 8800 and all of a sudden all your havok titles will be hardware accelerated will be in for a pretty disappointing experience - probably about as much as those who were expecting GRAW to be some sort of phys-x showpiece.

[The Continental]

Even without the PhysX accelerator, the API is a really damn sound piece of software. Their marquee title, CellFactor ran great on my two year old PC with no PhysX card, insane physics and all.

I agree with the cart before the horse analogy, but even without the cart, the horse holds its own in this case.

[Thenetcase]

Even without the PhysX accelerator, the API is a really damn sound piece of software. Their marquee title, CellFactor ran great on my two year old PC with no PhysX card, insane physics and all.

I agree with the cart before the horse analogy, but even without the cart, the horse holds its own in this case.


LOL Couldn't have said it better.....
There is a local PC store where I live that was hyping the Physx thing BIG TIME... they set up their first Physx enabled machine running CellFactor and a non-Physx enabled machine running Cellfactor. These machines were running side by side. The idea was to make you want to buy the Physx card. Unfortunately it was difficult to see the difference. You could see it... but it wasn't really all that obvious at first glance. So they took it down after a few days.

Yep... physics is very important to the future of gaming. Goodness knows games that have incorporated it are a lot more fun just for the sheer curiosity factor (I LOVE hitting mobs with my knockback powers now in City of Heroes... just to see them fly). It's more immersive for sure.
But they are definitely going to have to make it practical and NOT $200.

-TNC-

[toranaga]

Considering that nVidia and ATI have both announced plans to incorporate hardware physics processors for HAVOC on their next cards, I'd say that AGEIA is screwed.

The slight detail that Havok comes with a hefty price tag and PhysX does not, could help a little. We're not talking pocket change here. Professional grade physics engine/sdk for free, the more the merrier :)

All the Havok pimping is getting on my nerves because small developers can never afford it, so all the support in the world from nvidia/ati/MS won't do them any good. Bring on a free physics package which those companies can support, then it can benefit all, and not just be some internal $-shovling between Havok and the mentioned companies.

[cppcrusader]

Even without the PhysX accelerator, the API is a really damn sound piece of software. Their marquee title, CellFactor ran great on my two year old PC with no PhysX card, insane physics and all.

I agree with the cart before the horse analogy, but even without the cart, the horse holds its own in this case.

The SDK definitely stands on it's own two feet without the acceleration. It was originally the Novodex Physics API and then Ageia bought them to use as their's.

I haven't seen anything yet to make me feel like Havok FX is worthwhile. From everything I've read on it thus far it will only be physics effects, so it won't affect gameplay at all. Basically just a lot of pretty and no substance.

Another area that will benefit greatly from this will be the serious games industry. The government doesn't like to spend money if it doesn't have to.

[Slack3r78]

They...were charging for the SDK in the first place? Yeesh. Talk about bad business sense.
3DFX did it... oh... wait...

[Disgustipated]

really? in which game?

nvidia, ati and havok are all pretty successfully dishing out the FUD on this issue.. in reality nothing accelerates havok -- it's only 'havok fx' a seperate add-on component to the havok 4.0 dev kit with a supported title list that makes ageia's mediocre listing look like the de-facto standard.

The reality is that developers need to pay a seperate licesning fee to incorporate havok fx on top of the havok 4.0 license and that basically puts them in the same scenario they are in with ageia - putting in a lot of additional effort (and in havok's case, money) in to adding hardware physics and no developer wants to do that right now since it basically limits their prospective customer pool.

anyone who thinks that all you need to do is get an 8800 and all of a sudden all your havok titles will be hardware accelerated will be in for a pretty disappointing experience - probably about as much as those who were expecting GRAW to be some sort of phys-x showpiece.

I never said it accelerated CURRENT titles. What I meant is that it will have physics support on the hardware for upcoming games. :rolleyes:

[Sazime]

Help us! Help us! Our company is sinking!!! Ahhhhhh!!!!

This makes me giggle. It's right there with the Phantom's keyboard.

[Citizen Philip]

Goddamit. Would they PLEASE make the urban-combat power armour game where you can run colliding through decrepit buildings, walls fixtures and pipes shattering the regular furniture or using your minigun to shoot out a building to make it collapse on your opponents.

Which is to say, a game that makes sense to need hardware physics.

[dieselduck]

I never said it accelerated CURRENT titles. What I meant is that it will have physics support on the hardware for upcoming games.

The last title list i saw for havok fx had 2 titles (hellgate london and alone in the dark) and 1 got dropped -- that leaves hellgate london. ageia has ut2007 - plus it's the standard physics middleware in UE3 (physx is in gears of war for example) as well as a few other game engines including bioware's new engine.

if ageia is successful at getting ut2007 to be a 'killer app' for them hardware-wise they will have greatly increased the value for all titles built on UE3 for them which puts them in a very competitive situation.

that said, ageia has pretty much screwed up everything thus far, so it remains to be seen whether or not they can pull off a hail mary and actually get a decent title out the door before their investors start loosing patience.

[Chaos Machine]

Goddamit. Would they PLEASE make the urban-combat power armour game where you can run colliding through decrepit buildings, walls fixtures and pipes shattering the regular furniture or using your minigun to shoot out a building to make it collapse on your opponents.

Which is to say, a game that makes sense to need hardware physics.

Ill take heavy gear 3 for $60 dollars Alex.

[MacD]

HG3!?! That would be very nice...gimme!

[abso]

The SDK definitely stands on it's own two feet without the acceleration. It was originally the Novodex Physics API and then Ageia bought them to use as their's.

I haven't seen anything yet to make me feel like Havok FX is worthwhile. From everything I've read on it thus far it will only be physics effects, so it won't affect gameplay at all. Basically just a lot of pretty and no substance.

Another area that will benefit greatly from this will be the serious games industry. The government doesn't like to spend money if it doesn't have to.

Very true. I was working on a hurricane visualization game for my university and as we needed a physics engine, were trying to talk to Ageia. However, their existing eula didn't incorporate academic/government entities. We ended up having to use ODE instead because we were worried about licensing fees. It's a shame this happened now as the project is just wrapping up. It would have been nice to see a whole community of houses get ripped apart in real time instead of watching just one.

Also, we need titles where physics is imperitive for the gameplay. Adding physics effects that have no substance (ie volumetric particle systems, fog, etc) while nice, do not change gameplay over their non-physics equivalents.

[OrangePulp]

Goddamit. Would they PLEASE make the urban-combat power armour game where you can run colliding through decrepit buildings, walls fixtures and pipes shattering the regular furniture or using your minigun to shoot out a building to make it collapse on your opponents.

Which is to say, a game that makes sense to need hardware physics.

Exactly. I always found it annoying that even ageia demonstrated their physics stuff using just graphics. I've always found the idea of physics in games awesome because of the kind of gameplay stuff you could do with them. Imagine a game where the physics were so advanced, you wouldn't need to program in a gun per se; just put all the materials together, and let the physics processing handle the rest (hammer hitting bullet, explosion propelling bullet, etc.). Obviously that kind of thing is a long way off, but I'd like to see games move in that kind of direction.

[jeffbax]

Well, I hope it gives havok some competition, I personally loathe havok which is responsible in a big way for the lousy state of Mac gaming.