Whatever happened to ATi getting Physx support??

As u all know, the guys at NGO got it right to get Physx to work on ATi cards. Then nVidia got magically involved, with nV stating that ATi will be getting Physx support?

6 months down the road and nothing? WTF?

Does anyone know if this will ever happen?

 

I remember reading that ATI were going to suppor Havok instead. It may be they are doing both but I know they have plans to run the Havok engine on their cards.

 

ATI does not want to support PhysX.
Likely because PhysX is owned by nVidia and it is closed, not open standard.
I think it's a smart move and PhysX will not survive long enough anyway.
We will have other universal physic standards working on all new GPUs not just nVidia or ATI in a year or so. It will be done through GPGPU possibilities of next gen DirectX11 Computer Shaders/OpenCL cards. Just like we have universal DirectX9/10/OpenGL standards now for graphics.
You may have heard of 3Dfx Glide which was 3Dfx proprietary API and even despite huge popularity of 3Dfx cards back in the day was replaced with universal DirectX/OpenGL.
Also with increasing power and machine count of massively parallel multicore CPUs, developers may start to use its power finally too

As for Mirror's Edge being "PhysX enhanced"(why else would you ask a question about PhysX now? ), I think there will be ways to enable the additional effects on ATI cards to be rendered with the help of CPU. This is how PhysX works anyway. It's just that with Mirror's Edge the game will detect nVidia card and say "let's enable ADDITIONAL effects", but it can be rendered with CPU too.

 

U have some good point there. I know dx11 will try and standardize physics on the GPU.

 

DX11 won't "standardize physics on the gpu"....that's not the intent of Dx11. For that to happen, DX11 would have to include a physics API, which is doesn't and won't by release time. DX11 is more to improve on areas that DX10 has failed in. MS seems to be abandoning DX10 because after 2 years it still doesn't have nearly the support that DX9 had after 1 year. DX11 is enabling some GPGPU features...but sadly, PhysX isn't going to be one of them. MS did say that DX10.1 cards will be DX11 compatible =D

 

Patience is a virtue

 

only with certain features compatible. new features like shader model 5.0 - not compatible.
dx11 will have gpgpu support and developers should adopt it for physics calculations eventually and thus that physics acceleration will work on all dx11 cards

 

we don't need DX to "support gpgpu".....the card manufacturers are doing that just fine. Unless MS is going to magically create their own physics API (which we all know would be a catastrophe) there's really no need for DX to support GPGPU anyway. With PhysX...it will work on all of nVidia's DX11 cards anyway, as well as all of their DX10 cards. ATI is working on running Havok on Stream, so no need for DX11 to support GPGPU for that either....and if ATI can make Havok run on Stream, I'm sure Intel can get Havok running on Larrabee rather easily seeing as how Larrabee is x86 based.

 

ATI's got bigger problems. Getting crossfire to scale properly, overheating cards, crappy drivers, releasing hotfixes for evry new game that comes out.
LMAO. PhysX support?? Don't hold ya breath.

 

I'd rather physics in DX because it would be a standard across all cards instead of creating a greater division between the two major card manufacturers and developers. If physics was inside DX then it wouldn't matter if you have ATI or Nvidia.

 

exactly.
we don't need one hundred different physics standards, developers not being sure where to invest and player having only half of their games with advanced physics enabled.

 

ATI had nothing to do with getting PhysX to run on Radeon cards. There was someone at NGO working on that with assistance from nVidia. ATI refused to support PhysX on Radeon development.

Forget about DX10 already? I'd hate to see people complaining because MS screwed up a Physics API like they did DX10. Using Havok for Physics would make the most sense seeing as how nVidia doesn't own the rights to it. MS developing a new Physics API would cause more problems than using an already existing one. Also, using Havok you don't have to worry about any manufacturer having any major advantages over the other. Everyone knows (whether they'll admit it or not) that if MS were to use PhysX for physics, nVidia would find some way to make changes to it to give their GPU's a massive advantage.

 

We are not talking about "Microsoft developing a ne physics API".
We are talking about GPGPU possibilities in DX11. That is, using GPU power to do General Purpose(hence the name GPGPU)calculations and, in this case, physics calculation in games. But someone needs to write a new physics engine to take advantage of GPGPU functionality in DX11. Or maybe port already existing one. For example let's say Havok.
Then all new DX11 cards could run Havok with advanced physics effects THROUGH DX11 GPGPU capabilities.
DX11 does not have physics API, it has GPGPU capabilities.

 

Buy an Ageia PhysX card maybe? Then ATI people will get both Havok on GPU and PhysX on PPU.

Ah,. butt henagain someday games will support both PhysX and Havok, as they supported both DX and OpenGL in the past.

 

DX11 including GPGPU support, when ATI and nVidia are already supporting their own GPGPU efforts would be nothing but a disaster. MS would have to include methods used by every GPU maker (i.e. ATI, nVidia, Intel, S3), unless they're simply linking to the manufacturer's drivers for GPGPU support...which would be the best method and very possible given that they're making alterations to the driver model for W7. Honestly, I'd love to see Havok run on GPU.

 

There are no new physics api in DX11. No new physics engine. Do you understand this?
There are only GPGPU capabilities which can be used to calculate physics if developers want so and adopt physics engine to it.
Do you get it?

 

I make 1 comment about wanting to see Havok run on GPU and you seem to think my entire post was about adding physics to DX11. Unless MS has signed some agreement with ATI and nVidia for GPGPU capabilities, they can only be included in DX11 by linking directly to the driver. Which is the same thing DX already does. Wow, add a couple more extensions to DX...not really a big issue, nor one to really get excited about. Teaching DX to pass physics calculations, that is something to get excited about. MS is also working on teaching W7 to offload some of the OS code processing to GPUs....don't see you get all excited about that. What people reading and posting in this thread seem to be getting all excited about, is completely unnecessary. There is no need at all for DX to support GPGPU features if MS would get their heads out of their butts and write the DX11 code properly instead of using the same old method of writing bloated software.

 

DX11 will, among other features, introduce Compute Shaders. ATI have already announced that they will add support for both DX11/Compute Shaders AND OpenCL in their StreamSDK (ATI's own GPGPU SDK).

DX11 in itself doesn't have any physics API, and if MS had added one they'd be sued to hell and back by nVidia and other companies that own a physics engine.

What it DOES mean is that an existing or new physics engine can be updated to support the Compute Shaders in DX11 and thus enable hardware accelerated physics on ALL cards that support DX11. It's also totally possible that a physics engine will take the OpenCL route. This is the best solution for us consumers. nV-PhysX is proprietary and will most likely fade out into nothing since nVidia can't push it into becoming an industry standard when only ~25% of possible consumers can experience it. Why would developers spend a huge amount of money and effort in supporting something a small minority of systems can use?

 

Ok, to clear up a few things I've read....will HD4xxx owners have to buy new cards for DX11 or is ATI going to be using their StreamSDK to add full DX11 compatibility??? My wife would get mad if I told her I had to buy a new graphics card when DX11 comes out.

 

Sounds like NVIDIA as well.....