Havok to bring hardware physics to your...graphics card?

[Varsity]

Better late than never...Weeks after graphics company ATI Technologies claimed that its graphics processing units (GPUs) were suitable for physics and even had some advantages when compared to dedicated physics processing units, Havok, a developer of physics and animation engines, unveiled its Havok FX – a physics engine capable of running physics effects calculations on hardware that supports Shader Model 3.0. The technology from Havok addresses the same needs – effects physics – that is targeted by AGEIA, a developer of PPUs.

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By performing simulation, collision detection and rendering directly on the GPU, Havok FX avoids the transfer of large amounts of data between the CPU and GPU, enabling a level of performance never seen before in physics simulation.Source (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20051028224421.html)

The tech is meant for aesthetic physics that don't affect gameplay, so this perhaps isn't as crazy as it sounds. I'd happily lose bump mapped eyebrows for better physics: the question is, would you lot?

[Deathbane27]

Sure, I'd take better flora physics over eyebrows anyday.

Bump mapping and whatnot just makes things look fake to me anyways.

[PIPBoy3000]

This is likely a far more reasonable approach than asking users to buy an add-on card for their computer. The catch is that you're asking a GPU to run code that it's not really designed for, though modern GPU's are pretty flexible things.

My hope is that over time, GPU's become good at running both the standard graphics stuff, in addition to some specialized physics code. There will likely be trade-offs. The GPU will likely be slower processing polygons and shaders. More memory on the card will be taken up by other things. Still, I think it makes sense, at least until physics hardware comes standard on all motherboards (an unlikely event short-term).

[Zanzibar]

This could be really interesting. If they can indeed allow hair and clothing to be COMPLETELY run by the GPU, then that would really take away a lot of the issues that have bedeviled programmers from the dawn of time.

Maybe they should include boobie-physics from the DOA team.

[Qoz]

As you point out this is only for the aesthetic physics.
Everything demanding real-time calculations need to be done by the CPU or a dedicated HW card. Everything related to the player need to be calculated in the same clock as everything else (AI, rendering, sound, precise collision detection).

The most common physics are small objects (boxes/barrels) to shoot at. These require realtime CPU if you for example need a specific sound to play the moment you hit it or if the object need to stop bullets or if the player is able to jump upon it.

Aesthetic physics are limited in games right now, but perhaps we will see more of it if the performance drop is less severe. Call of Duty 2 for example has alot of scripted situations where precise detection is not needed (houses collapsing, tanks crashing). This tech would be perfect for advanced weather effects and debris in the streets.
Cool technology!

[AvA]

I would.

Just take the time I spent in HL2 toying around with the pyhsics engine and divide it for the rest of the games I played in the last year: most of the games would have looked quite long...

[Steve_Erhardt]

M'eh. Give me believable physics, and that's good enough for me. They don't have to be exactingly precise for stuff like shooters as far as I'm concerned.

Flight sims, on the other hand... the more realistic there, the better, far as I'm concerned (though let me qualify that I also want a flight sim game to scale fairly well so it can be almost arcadish... easier to get my friends to play that way and then slowly dial it up from there... Pacific Fighters is pretty good in this regard).

[Citizen Philip]

If I get my X1800XT and.. eventually a master card for some Xfire action, it would be really cool if I could switch one to do physics, or partially do physics.

Original graphics cards were rare, my only concern is the price.

[TheKeck]

The catch is that you're asking a GPU to run code that it's not really designed for, though modern GPU's are pretty flexible things.

I don't think this is a problem. GPUs are good at doing certain kinds of calculations really fast. The idea is that you feed data into it that it understands and interpret the results in a way that accomplishes what you want it to. I saw a presentation on something like this a year or two ago.

[DeadPixel]

Thats the problem with today's games. Many titles look great, but they don't feel right. Animations are clunky and you can tell in most cases are done without even motion capture, simply an animator programming steps for each character segment. Too many companies concentrate on the sharpness of their textures for the eye candy which seems to be the selling point these days.

[Dabombpizza]

Flight sims, on the other hand... the more realistic there, the better, far as I'm concerned (though let me qualify that I also want a flight sim game to scale fairly well so it can be almost arcadish... easier to get my friends to play that way and then slowly dial it up from there... Pacific Fighters is pretty good in this regard).
They make flight sims?

I'll take physics any day, but I'm more excited about the PPU. I really wonder what it can do.

[AniAko]

Maybe they should include boobie-physics from the DOA team.

Yeah, one wonders what a real oversized boob bounces like when it belongs to a clad clothed ninja. They could designate a PPU per boob in SLI mode.

[MajSheppard]

Depends on the game, but in most cases yes. You bet I would love reality to trump shiny. Nothing would be better then FPS with real time bullet models following true physics. Can you imagine playing online and dropping someone because your bullet missed and bounced off a steel beem and ended up lodged in the speech center of the brain?

[Varsity]

M'eh. Give me believable physics, and that's good enough for me. They don't have to be exactingly precise for stuff like shooters as far as I'm concerned.
Hardware physics isn't any more accurate than software, just faster. It's about numbers/volume over accuracy.

[51|RandoM]

I'm tired of specialized hardware. Instead of high end graphics cards, physics processors, and all of the driver/app code necessary to work it, I'd rather have an SMP box that I can just add more cores to, and let the non-specialized cores do the work.

They're not as fast individually as specialized hardware, but they're significantly cheaper, so it works out in the end.

Lol, I guess I'll be happy when my apartment is a Wi-Max network of distributed Cell-processor equipped devices. If I want 8x AA in a game, I'll just have to make sure the toaster is plugged in too.

[KNOTE]

Thus spells the end of Aegia.

[doyama]

Although conceptually this is an interesting idea I am not a big fan of it. I can see several issue that would arise from this kind of situation

1) Hard core crazy people arguing that 'every inch of that chip should be dedicated in me getting 110 fps out of my game instead of 100 fps'.

2) Less middleware competition. I think competition in this area is a good thing and having a major graphics vendor 'lock' into one vendor would be bad in this regard.

3) Increased 'game dependent performance' disparity. If you think teh current Doom4 vs HL2 is bad enough, wait till it goes into overdrive. In this case consumers lose due increased confusion and an increasing fragmentation of the gaming market becuase developers will fall into various 'camps' depending on what they want to implement.

[Thenetcase]

While I'd take physics over bump mapping, I'd prefer both. I still think AEGIA is better. I don't want my video card bogged down with physics crap that can be done better by a dedicated card.

[doyama]

My real fear with this kind of trend is that we will end up like the music industry. Where how things 'look' is more important than how things are 'played'.

[RMan]

1) Hard core crazy people arguing that 'every inch of that chip should be dedicated in me getting 110 fps out of my game instead of 100 fps'.
Then they can turn off the aesthetic physics elements, or play a game geared to their tastes. Those people will bitch no matter what, but they'll still buy it.
2) Less middleware competition. I think competition in this area is a good thing and having a major graphics vendor 'lock' into one vendor would be bad in this regard.
I saw no indication that this would be the case, if you're suggesting that ATI and NVidia will adopt and only allow Havok to do this, then I don't think that's going to happen.
3) In this case consumers lose due increased confusion and an increasing fragmentation of the gaming market becuase developers will fall into various 'camps' depending on what they want to implement.
This is a bit confusing, your game speed would still be relative to your CPU and GPU power, I'm not sure how it'd be different than now. In contrast to a seperate physics PPU implimentation, this would be even easier to guess the speed since you have one hardware part to scale to, rather than two.

[RMan]

My real fear with this kind of trend is that we will end up like the music industry. Where how things 'look' is more important than how things are 'played'.
Hehe, have you not been paying attention? We're there, pal.

[Conner Dain]

This sounds like the type of concept that sounds silly at first, but is destined to be a major paradigm shift. Remember the dedicated, pass-through 3D video card? I thought that was an idea that would never gain support. If you think about it, the idea of a demarcation between relevant and trivial physics makes perfect sense. The majority of the graphical number-crunching SHOULD be done where the data pipeline bottlenecks don't apply. I think we might be seeing history here.

[aversion2k]

...Animations are clunky and you can tell in most cases are done without even motion capture, simply an animator programming steps for each character segment...

Motion capture costs soooo much its not funny

[Mason]

Anyone who doesn't think that this is a great idea doesn't understand it.

[Fonz]

How bout developers just take advantage of multithreaded cpus with dual core and stop whinning. This whole physx chip issue should be non exhistant when dual core cpus come into play, but unfortunately its not.

[Skjef]

Have you looked at how much dual core processors cost these days? I have, and it isn't pretty. It's basically a toss-up between getting a dual-core processor, and getting a comparable single-core with a decent video card/above-par ram. I'm still on the fence about it, but hopefully there'll be some price drop by the time I need to upgrade (for Oblivion).

[reimomo]

Whoever thinks this "kills aegia" isn't reading the OP, the article, or the thread. This is about asthetic physcics, like rag doll death animations. Aegia is about simulating boulders destroying a castle brick by brick. Two very different things.

This is likely a far more reasonable approach than asking users to buy an add-on card for their computer.
But it doesn't do anything like what a hardware physics processor would do.

Hardware physics isn't any more accurate than software, just faster. It's about numbers/volume over accuracy.
Since a hardware physicus PU would be able to solve problems a helluva lot faster than a software program, a phsyics model designed to be used with hardware would be more accurate than one intended to run on the CPU. Its not about solvilng a problem as fast as you can, its about which problems you can solve in a specific amount of time.

[Rafer]

Animations are clunky and you can tell in most cases are done without even motion capture, simply an animator programming steps for each character segment.

Sometimes doing animation by hand looks better, movements can be exaggerated and given some flair, like a cartoon animation. ICO didn't use motion capture. The new thing now seems to be modelling the behaviour with tech like endorphin (http://www.naturalmotion.com/).

[Dabombpizza]

Have you looked at how much dual core processors cost these days? I have, and it isn't pretty. It's basically a toss-up between getting a dual-core processor, and getting a comparable single-core with a decent video card/above-par ram. I'm still on the fence about it, but hopefully there'll be some price drop by the time I need to upgrade (for Oblivion).

I'm no performance expert. But I would think that if you want a smoother system that runs better over all, go dual core. You can designate tasks to each core, like burning a DVD on one core and then playing a game or editing video on the other (of course you're limited by harddrive access, but if you have RAID...). But if you want pretties, go single. (Personally I would want the dual)

[Dabombpizza]

Yeah, one wonders what a real oversized boob bounces like when it belongs to a clad clothed ninja. They could designate a PPU per boob in SLI mode.
You are responsible for all the milk that came out of my nose.

[Skjef]

I'm no performance expert. But I would think that if you want a smoother system that runs better over all, go dual core. You can designate tasks to each core, like burning a DVD on one core and then playing a game or editing video on the other (of course you're limited by harddrive access, but if you have RAID...). But if you want pretties, go single. (Personally I would want the dual)
I agree that dual core definitely offers performance increases as compared to single-core, but the price is currently too high for me to stomach.

Looks like Oblivion will be the first major multi-core optimized PC game, which should boost dual-core adoption. Assuming the performance increase is worth it.

[The Iron Weasel]

I would like to point out that Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's animations were hand crafted...and if you ask me that game has the best animations ever.

[Steve_Erhardt]

They make flight sims?
Hardy har har.

Lemme know if you need a list of recent ones. ;)

[AniAko]

Lol, I guess I'll be happy when my apartment is a Wi-Max network of distributed Cell-processor equipped devices. If I want 8x AA in a game, I'll just have to make sure the toaster is plugged in too.
Yeah and if you want to clear up fog in a game you can just plug in the dehumidifier.



Yeah, one wonders what a real oversized boob bounces like when it belongs to a clad clothed ninja. They could designate a PPU per boob in SLI mode.
You are responsible for all the milk that came out of my nose.
It's a good thing I got it out then. Milk doesn't belong in your nose, you could drown.

[Demo_Boy]

No screenies?

[Spoon]

yes, you know, i don't much care for bump mapping, and texture filters that blurr things, I would much rather have fancy physics.

..luckily Half-life 2 has it it all...

havok, baby!