PC Games Hardware has done a really nice and in-depth technical interview about the upcoming Metro Last Light. PC Games Hardware spoke to Oles Shishkovtsov, CTO at 4A Games to talk about the different technology that will be implemented into the game and most interesting and exciting to us the GPU PhysX support! When asked if we can expect some PhysX improvements from Metro: 2033 Oles replies with “Yes, you can expect a lot of improvements, especially in destruction and debris.” You can read the entire interview here.
PC Games Hardware: You keep the support for GPU PhysX in Metro Last Light. If so can we expect some improvements or enhancements compared to Metro 2033 (e.g. soft bodies, debris, and destructible environments)? What graphics card do you recommend for maxed details in Full HD with Antialiasing? An upcoming Nvidia Kepler-based Geforce for example?
Oles Shishkovtsov: Yes, you can expect a lot of improvements, especially in destruction and debris. The upcoming Geforce cards will be fully supported.
PC Games Hardware: When benchmarking Metro 2033 we found out that the engine utilized more than four cores of multicore CPUs if we were using the advanced PhysX effects on CPU, so you are utilizing Nvidias PhysX SDK 3.x? Will all the advanced PhysX effects only be available in PC version?
Oles Shishkovtsov: That’s the common misconception that PhysX 2.X cannot be multithreaded. Actually it is internally designed to be multithreaded! The only thing – it takes some programmer time to enable that multi-threading (actually task generation), mostly to integrate with engine task-model and ensure proper load-balancing. So, 2033 used PhysX 2.8.3, and Last Light uses similar, a slightly modified version at the time of writing. And yes, advanced PhysX effects will be available only on PC.
machinima has uploaded a sweet Metro Last Light Exclusive 12-Minute Playthrough video that shows off some amazing use of PhysX. This past week we reported on a Metro: Last Light developer interview that NVIDIA conducted where it was confirmed that like Metro: 2033, Metro: Last night will make use of PhysX. In the interview the developer said that a “huge amount of particle effects will be used” along with cloth, and fog. You can watch the rest of the interview here. This new gameplay video shows this in action and it looks really impressive.
Below are some YouTube linked to a certain time in the video where you can see the new PhysX effects.
GeForce.com’s Andy Burnes got to speak and do a nice interview with one of the developers of Metro: Last Light. The interview talks about some of the features in Last Light and most importantlyy to us discusses the physics that will be implemented into the game. Just like Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light will make use of PhysX for cloth and particle effects. Starting at 6:16 in the video interview, the developer talks about the PhysX effects and mentioned that a “huge amount of particle effects will be used” along with cloth, and fog. You can watch the rest of the interview here and check out the E3 Gameplay Trailer and demo videos below. They also have a pretty nice website for Metro 2033: Last Light up here.
The ‘Ranger Pack’ DLC for Metro 2033 is now available and downloads automatically with Steam. Along with this new DLC there is also now an official benchmarking tool with an option to enable/disable PhysX. This benchmarking tool is very well done, you can select all the different DirectX settings DX9/DX10/DX11, different screen resolutions and pretty much all the options you can find in the game along with a check box to enable or disable advanced PhysX. We made a video below of the benchmark running though a single time to see what it looks like. As Metro 2033 is one of the most graphics intensive games that takes advantage of DX11 this Benchmarking could become standard for benchmarking games and future DX11 video cards.
Metro 2033 PhysX Benchmark 1920×1200:
For some reason this tool is well hidden within the steam directory. To find the benchmark you will have to find it in your Metro 2033 steam install: Steam\steamapps\common\metro 2033
When you launch the benchmarking tool you have a very nice GUI to change settings and launch the benchmark:
Upon completion of the benchmark you get a very nice HTML screen show up in your browser giving you the statistics from the benchmark run:
Ever since we saw the Glowball PhysX demo and the Floating Castle Physics Demo running on Tegra 3 powered tablets we have been pretty excited about physics on Tegra powered devices. Back in November NVIDIA announced the released of their new Quad-Core mobile Tegra 3 chip that uses “four CPU cores and its new GeForceRead More
I know that Batman Arkham City has been out for awhile now and this is old news but as I have been extremely busy with work and finishing up school I never got a chance to post these. These are some cool Batman Arkham City PhysX comparison on/off videos from both EVGA and YouTube userRead More
Krishna Kumar – YouTube user krishx007 who runs gfxguru.net has made a pretty cool physics/PhysX demo level with Unity 3D called Physics Wonderland. The level is basically a huge playground with PhysX objects that you can destroy and play around with to show off the different PhysX features in Unity 3D. Check it out belowRead More
The Game Developers Conference 2012 is going to have a session that really interests us. The “Physics for Games Programmers” session/tutorial is going to cover the “tools and techniques developers should know when implementing physics in their games.” According to the information on the GDC 2012 site, the session will take place on Tuesday, MarchRead More
With all of the excitement about rumored hardware being used in the next-generation consoles, some very disappointing news has come today. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony has no plans to unveil the Sony Playstation 4 at this years E3 and is going to stick with the 10-year life cycle plan. If thisRead More
Here are some cool physics videos that have been uploaded to YouTube over the past week. Cryengine 3 Tornado Physics by club4ghz UDK – Destructible objects and Physics! by Shotbix07 Ice Engine Destruction Test by LordOfTheBytes
I came across a few cool Havok physics videos on YouTube. YouTube user kosteckip has made a pretty cool Castle Siege type demo using PhysX and Havok physics with physics based water, cloth, and destruction. Meanwhile, the official Havok Physics YouTube channel has uploaded a series of Havok Simulation videos and one interesting video showsRead More
Maximum PC has a nice article up about the top game engines being used to create today’s games. Along with the engines they also pointed out the top Middleware being used and PhysX and Havok were listed as the top physics Middleware. Check out the entire article here. From Gamers, Start Your Engines! 6 TopRead More
Phymec is making some cool physics tools for Bullet Physics and Blender to enable some awsome fracture and destruction effects. Two awesome videos showing this off have been uploaded to YouTube. The first shows off the creation of the fracture objects in Blender and the newer video is an awesome collection of fracture objects beingRead More
An interesting rumor has surfaced this past week that Microsoft is developing two next-gen Xbox 720 consoles. According to the rumor on TECHSPOT, Microsoft “is said to be developing an entry-level system as well as a true next-generation hardcore gaming console.” What is important to us for the future of physics is the reports thatRead More
I posted about this awesome level several months ago – Some Cool NVIDIA APEX Physics Tests Done with the UDK now mfsksa, who is the creator of this level, has given me the UDK files required to play the Apex PhysX test level he made. I made a cool video showing it off some moreRead More
Ever since we posted the Battlefield 3 Physics and Destruction Videos with the BF3 destruction video showing the Antenna in Caspian Border coming down we have been wondering how to do this or when it would be allowed through a patch. Today we have learned through an awesome YouTube Video that the main Antenna canRead More
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