YouTube user’s Robersdee24 and hberntsen2 have both put together some very nice PhysX comparison video’s from the recently released Mafia II demo that features GPU Apex PhysX along with a benchmark that puts the PhysX to use. The videos show what the game looks like with PhysX on and PhysX off. As you can see there is a clear difference when PhysX is enabled. Aside from the extra debris that is generated from cars exploding or bullets tearing up wall’s the game also uses Apex PhysX cloth simulation as you can see in the video to give the players clothing more realistic movement. Check out the video’s below.
NVIDIA has updated the PhysX fluid Demo to 1.0.1.3. The demo is basically a demo to show off PhysX based water or the more technical term, Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). This is a great little program( less than 20MB) that can be used to quickly test out a new PhysX setup such as a dedicated PhysX card or a Hybrid ATI and NVIDIA PhysX setup. Using a simple toggle you can easily switch between Hardware(GPU) and Software(CPU) PhysX to not only to see if your dedicated PhysX card is working but to also see how a GPU helps improves PhysX performance. When I am installing a new PhysX setup I always install this program along with PhysX FluidMark to make sure everything is up and running properly.
You can download the demo here from the NVIDIA Power Pack page and in the event that it is not working PhysXinfo.com always has the latest PhysX Files. You can download it here.
From NVIDIA:
Fluids: Technology Demo
The primary purpose of the NVIDIA® PhysX™ technology Fluid Demo is to illustrate Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). The demo contains two different scenes, the Outdoor and the Logo Scene.
Outdoor Scene
This scene showcases SPH fluid flooding an outdoor area. As soon as the demo is started, a flood occurs and interacts with a stack of rigid bodies. Switch from dark water to clear water, to oil, or just show the real nature of fluids: spheres.
New Updates to 1.0.1.3:
Updates in this release:
1. Allocate only 64MB of VRAM heap instead of 128MB
2. Adjusted text output to not conflict with the PhysX Visual Indicator
3. Added option to toggle the display of all text (in screen space) on/off.
If you have never seen this demo before the below video from NVIDIA shows the demo in action.
YouTube user keiki646 has put together a really nice instructional video on how to setup an NVIDIA graphics card as a dedicated PhysX card when using an ATI card as the main renderer. He goes in-depth on how to install the needed drivers and PhysX patch needed to run a setup like this then shows you how to configure the card in Windows and make sure it is working with PhysX FluidMark. Check out the video below and be sure to check out his YouTube page here.
Mafia II is shaping up to be the new PhysX Showcase. To see the PhysX that has been implemented into the game in action be sure to check out the Official Mafia II Nvidia PhysX Trailer.
PC Games Hardware: Are there any differences between the Console and the PC Version of Mafia 2 as far as technical as well as visual aspects are concerned, for example GPU accelerated PhysX effects?
Denby Grace: You hit the nail on the head. The biggest difference is the GPU enabled physics effects. While on a system without GPU (consoles and ATI cards), the game will have a great PhysX simulation with particles and cloth, however, if you have the extra hardware we are able to push things to a whole new level which has not yet been seen in open world game before. Our destructible environments feature thousands of physical particles which in turn can be affected by individual explosion force fields to make them move. It’s all very impressive and it’s these kinds of improvements that high end PC gamers can expect.
Well it is been a while since I have posted and need to get back into the swing of things, so I think posting these awesome UDK Apex PhysX destruction videos would be a good start. The NVIDIA APEX Destruction Project – Destroy Aarhus by Allingby is very impressive, an entire level that is 100%Read More
Futuremark has released a new Tech Demo showing off the next 3DMark that is going to be released sometime this year. I am not exactly sure what is going on in the demo but it has some cool particle and smoke effects. According to the press release “The visible particles and clouds of smoke inRead More
Several months ago I announced that I would be building a dedicated PhysX test system for the site to test out Hybrid PhysX configurations and do benchmarking and reviews. This past weekend I finally got around to playing around to putting it together. I got it up and running with Windows 7 and the GT430Read More
I have been excited about Hawken for awhile, not just because it looks like a great game but it will also be making heavy use of GPU PhysX as confirmed by the developers. Geforce.com has done a nice video interview with Bill Wagner of Meteor Entertainment at the recent E3 expo about the GPU PhysXRead More
I have been watching the development of Planetside 2 closely, not just because i was a huge Planetside fan when it first came out over 9 years ago but because SOE Announced PlanetSide 2 with PhysX support. We have not heard much else about it since the game with PhysX support was first announced, butRead More
INVERSION is a PS3 and XBOX 360 only title but it has caught my attention after watching the new “Inversion Powered by Havok Phyiscs and Havok Destruction” video uploaded to the official Havok Physics YouTube channel. The game makes extensive use of Havok Physics and Destruction. From the looks of it the Havok physics andRead More
Recruits is a new top-down indie shooter where “the players take charge of the Army’s newest soldiers to fight the war against their deadly Enemies.” There is a new video log from the developers showing off some cool features we would be interested in, physics and destruction! Recruits is being made with the Unreal DevelopmentRead More
A Sneak Preview trailer for Arma 3 has been released by Bohemia Interactive ahead of this weeks E3 2012. We have been excited for Arma 3 since it was announced that Arma 3 Will Implement PhysX for in-game Physics. This new trailer briefly mentions that the vehicles use PhysX simulation for the handling. Hopefully PhysXRead More
Now this is pretty cool, ARM has posted a video to YouTube from GDC 2012 showing the Havok Physics Vision Engine running on an ARM Mali GPU based Android tablet with the new Havok mobile tech demo and some cool Havok physics integration. In the video Peter Wos, a Software Engineer for Havok goes overRead More
Hawken is Adhesive Games’ upcoming free-to-play multiplayer mech combat game built with Epic Games’ Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and Unreal Engine 3. I first saw this game back when it was first announced and was very impressed with the visuals. Now I am even more excited and interested in this game with the recent newsRead More
PLA – Passion Leads Army is a Chinese Unreal Engine 3 game being developed by Giant Interactive for the Chinese military. There is a really cool DX11 benchmark included with the game that was announced by Jen-Hsun Huang at the recent NVIDIA Gaming Festival in Shanghai. The demo shows off some pretty cool cloth, particle,Read More
I posted this video a few months ago and then a few days later it went to private on YouTube for some reason, i sent a message to the HavokSimulation YouTube account with no response. Now this video of the tank destroying several buildings has been uploaded to YouTube again and hopefully this time itRead More