Have you ever asked yourself What is PhysX? What is calculated by PhysX? How does a CPU process physics? How does a PPU process physics? How does a GPU process physics? Why are GPU’s better than CPU’s for physics? Well then look no further than the PhysX FAQ over at the overclock.net forums.
From the PhysX FAQ:
The main reason I am writing this FAQ is because I think that people are a little confused about what PhysX is, what it can do, and why I think it works better on GPU’s than on CPU’s.
What is PhysX
PhysX was originally the product of Ageia, a company based in California, which was founded in 2002. PhysX was originally designed to be a hardware physics solution. Specifically, it was sold on a PCI or PCI-E 1x style card, called a Physics Processing Unit, or PPU. It was designed to offload the physics calculations from the main Central Processing Unit, allowing the CPU to focus on other things, resulting in a higher framerate in video games. Also, since the PPU was dedicated to handling physics calculations, physics based effects became more accurate and often had more physics based objects flying about. The Ageia PPU was a large parallel processor, similar to a Graphics Processing Unit, or GPU.
Check out the PhysX FAQ for a lot more of your PhysX questions to be answered.
Kotaku has posted a new video showing “How PhysX Makes Batman: Arkham Asylum Better”, the video is pretty much a new trailer for Arkham Asylum but shows off all the different PhysX Features that are implemented in the game. After watching this video you may want to play this on a PC with an Nvidia graphics card that supports PhysX.
From Kotaku:
Now that many of us have experienced Batman: Arkham Asylum on the console, let’s see if it was worth delaying the PC version to add support for NVIDIA’s PhysX technology.
The verdict? While it certainly doesn’t seem to effect the gameplay, little touches like the flowing of his cape, the swirling of debris, and the way those banners flutter when you toss a batarang through them should help make the experience just a bit more immersive. Is it worth a three week delay? I’ve a feeling that once PC gamers have the game in their hands the delay will be completely forgotten.
In case you missed it you may also want to check out Zogrim’s PhysX comparison video from PhysXinfo.com showing off the different PhysX features that are implemented in Batman Arkham Asylum. The comparison video from PhysXinfo.com shows what the game looks like with PhysX on and off.
th3Bl00dfu3l3d has posted a new video on YouTube showing off the PhysX levels in Unreal Tournament 3. If you are interested in trying out the PhysX mod for Unreal Tournament 3 you can download it and find more info here http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_ut3_physxmod.html.
The Extreme NVIDIA PhysX mod pack includes 3 maps and requires a full version of Unreal Tournament 3 with the following UT3 PATCH installed – It is not a stand-alone title. Make sure to enable “Hardware Physics” under Video Settings in the UT3 settings. Driver release v177.39 or later is required for GPU PhysX hardware acceleration.
Zogrim over at PhysXinfo.com has posted a new PhysX comparison video for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 showing off the different features that PhysX brings to the game.
We’ve uploaded PhysX comparison video for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfigter 2. Developed by GRIN for PC, this game came out in 2007, featuring Ageia PhysX support, and was augmented with GPU physics processing later via PhysX driver update. Still looks decent.
PhysXinfo.com also has a page dedciated to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 with more information and PhysX comparison screenshots http://physxinfo.com/data/vreview_graw2.html
Be sure to check out the other PhysX comparison videos from other recent PhysX enabled games
I am pleased to announce that GamePhys will soon have a dedicated test and benchmarking system for the site. This was a project I have been meaning to do since I started the site back in 2009 but never got around to it. The first phase of this project really got started this past BlackRead More
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Zombiethatatehimself creator of the Awesome Apex PhysX Impact Damage Demonstration and Apex PhysX Impact Damage Demonstration With Stucco/plaster, and the Apex PhysX Voronoi Fracture and Destruction Demonstration has made another cool Apex PhysX demonstration with the Unreal Development Kit. This time a similar to the Voronoi Fracture and destruction demonstration but with some cool plasterRead More
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This is old now but I never got around to posting about it back during CES 2012. During the CES 2012 Intel press conference, they showed a lot of information about the upcoming Ivy Bridge Ultrabook processor including a DX11 graphics demo showing off different games that the DX11 capable Ivy Bridge processor will beRead More
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