NVIDIA makes Physx Open Source

Outstanding :)


hopefully that means this will open some doors into running hardware accelerated Physx on discreet AMD & Intel/AMD APU's. Just when I had run out of faith in nVidia
 
Looks like it's just the CPU PhysX code, but that is still good. The CPU code was basically completely sidelined by NVIDIA, now it can be optimized by others.
 
Rizen said:
Looks like it's just the CPU PhysX code, but that is still good. The CPU code was basically completely sidelined by NVIDIA, now it can be optimized by others.
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Well PhysX 3.3 runs fine on the CPU anyways. I've been playing Project Cars with it for years. Can't use it to play the Batman games though as that is a completely different beast. I guess someone can optimize it like you said.
 
But but but..NVIDIA is so evil! :D Good to see them do this, maybe GameWorks will follow in a few years.
 
PRIME1 said:
Here are the companies that contributed to GLnext but did not feel the need to pat themselves on the back on every forum.

http://i.imgur.com/0WMviuq.jpg
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AMD develops a lower level API with features developers actually want, then advances two mainstream APIs and the industry with the results. To paraphrase this and other posts: "Closed source that doesn't deserve a pat on the back."

PRIME1 said:
https://developer.nvidia.com/content/latest-physx-source-code-now-available-free-github

:cool:

This should make Physx adoption near universal.
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API held hostage for 7 years as a product feature selling point and then only half released as open source after the industry developed alternatives. "Pat pat pat"

I'd be far more enthused if all of physX were released, and gameworks were un-blackboxed in Vulkan.
 
^ what DrakonSan said.

Just so dumb that people are happy about this after so many years of PhysX being held back by greed. I may own AMD and enjoy their cards, but one of the only reasons I've considered going Green is for PhysX. Unfortunately, the adoption rate for developers is so low that it makes no sense to go Green just to play a few games with PhysX turned on, especially when the PhysX effects really don't make or break the game. I still dream of playing Mirror's Edge in 3D on a 4K projector though...
 
Was gonna make a post, but DrakonSan indeed said it right.

Also the #1 deluded fanboy must have not seen that almost everything in mantle is used on vulkan, there were posts and threads in different forums showing code comparisons to show how much of it was taken.
 
cageymaru said:
Well PhysX 3.3 runs fine on the CPU anyways. I've been playing Project Cars with it for years. Can't use it to play the Batman games though as that is a completely different beast. I guess someone can optimize it like you said.
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Well from what I understand, the CPU version of PhysX for a long time was very poorly multithreaded (maybe even one core only) and it used x87 instruction set rather than something modern like SSE, so they were leaving A TON of performance on the table for obvious reasons.

http://techreport.com/news/19216/physx-hobbled-on-the-cpu-by-x87-code
 
Rizen said:
Well from what I understand, the CPU version of PhysX for a long time was very poorly multithreaded (maybe even one core only) and it used x87 instruction set rather than something modern like SSE, so they were leaving A TON of performance on the table for obvious reasons.

http://techreport.com/news/19216/physx-hobbled-on-the-cpu-by-x87-code
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That is true, the older versions of PhysX had horrible CPU optimization. NV was trying to sell NV GPU's.

Since Physx was put into Gamerworks and updated, NV actually made good strides to make ver 3.3 run a lot better.

Still doesn't match the GPU acceleration and I am disappointed NV didn't release that coding as well. I get why the GPU accelerated code wasn't released but I am still disappointed.
 
Just to be clear this isn't open source in the Mozilla/Linux/BSD way. There is no open license, developers can't fork the project, nvidia has not commited to accepting patches, etc...
Still nice though.
 
Cr4ckm0nk3y said:
That is true, the older versions of PhysX had horrible CPU optimization. NV was trying to sell NV GPU's.

Since Physx was put into Gamerworks and updated, NV actually made good strides to make ver 3.3 run a lot better.

Still doesn't match the GPU acceleration and I am disappointed NV didn't release that coding as well. I get why the GPU accelerated code wasn't released but I am still disappointed.
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This 1000x! The PhysX 3.3 CPU version that I've been using is really well multithreaded and runs perfectly fine on my CPU. It has ZERO of the GPU Acceleration effects though. That's why I'm not impressed in the least.
 
The title sounded great until they said they only opened it up for cpu acceleration...

I hope physx dies in a god damn fire. I don't think these sorts of general purpose physx calculations should be tied to specific gpu for acceleration, they should be based on the actual game engine used.


Unity
frostbite
cryengine
Unreal 4
etc

Those ENGINES need to have their own tools that let ANY capable gpu accelerate physx. Frostbite probably does they probably just dont call attention to it since it's not a differentiating feature.
 
tybert7 said:
The title sounded great until they said they only opened it up for cpu acceleration...

I hope physx dies in a god damn fire. I don't think these sorts of general purpose physx calculations should be tied to specific gpu for acceleration, they should be based on the actual game engine used. .
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Can't blame NV solely for the lack of GPU physics or PhysX being locked. There is a long crappy history when it comes to GPU accelerated physics and both sides played a part.

tybert7 said:
Those ENGINES need to have their own tools that let ANY capable gpu accelerate physx. Frostbite probably does they probably just dont call attention to it since it's not a differentiating feature.
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Blame the devs of those engines.

Dev's most likely find it easier to just code their engines to run off the CPU as opposed to spending extra labor hours to make the engine compatible with different GPU's or dealing with either of the big two GPU manufacturers.
 
Well considering Physx was slowly dieing, It makes sense to open it up. Good to see Nvidia finally being nice.

Now will they allow users to use Nvidia cards as Physx cards with AMD hardware? I highly doubt it.
 
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Pysx 3.4 is now called Flex. The new iteration of Nvidia physics processing.

Flex is not open source. Im really curious to see how much performance improvement can be made on the 3.3 cpu phyx now that its open source though.
 
PRIME1 said:
Over 500 games support physx. It's probably the most popular and broadly used physics software package available. I know you hate nvidia, for whatever reason, but Physx is doing very well.

http://physxinfo.com/
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"Broadly used" aka a few extra smoke effects. And I only see 46 games on that list...
PhysX is dying because it feels like a gimmick and it's barely ever implemented in a meaningful way. Compared to something like Euphoria where the entire game is built around physics.

It won't be taken seriously until it gets more broad adaptation and that means including AMD.

// Here's the full list (included CPU only titles)
http://physxinfo.com/index.php?p=gam&f=all
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
"Broadly used" aka a few extra smoke effects. And I only see 46 games on that list...
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The SDK is for the software version that is in over 500 games as I stated. Given the number of games supported and the platforms supported it's pretty much the industry standard.
 
How many of those games are GPU PhysX versus CPU PhysX?

Also, name major PhysX games besides Borderlands, Metro, Batman or Assassin's Creed. I can't really think of any.
 
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