Did anyone buy Ageia PhysX card?
Archives Forums/General Discussion/Did anyone buy Ageia PhysX card?
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| http://www.ageia.com/where_to_buy/index.html http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7739183&st=ageia&type=product&id=1140392802450 Thanks in advance |
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| Nope. I don't think there is much to justify having one - yet. |
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| Ageia gave me one. I am looking forward to using it with UT3. |
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| well, the nice chap who is developing Agis Phsyx for B3d (see Userlibs) and Max has the card working with it I believe... That alone almost seems like worth it. IPete2. |
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| I really can't see physics cards making it mainstream. It's not like when 3D cards first came out, and the effect wwas obvious, most games that use this card actually show a slow down in frame rate, and the gameplay isn't improved at all. So I can't see the worth in them myself. |
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| Physics cards are on the way out before they ever really came in. With Nvidia's new shader technology, you can do physics on the GPU. With the new processors getting more and more cores, you're pretty much going to have to do some physics on the CPU or be wasting the CPU you have available. Developers aren't going to restrict themselves to people with physics cards in that climate, and without it, gamers aren't going to start buying them. Hell if Ageia read this thread, they'll probably pack up shop tomorrow. Even Puki doesn't want one, and he'll buy dead animals on ebay. |
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| most games that use this card actually show a slow down in frame rate, and the gameplay isn't improved at all If that's true, it's not because the card performs poorly compared to the CPU, it's because features previously impossibly slow on the CPU like water, cloth, and soft bodies become used, which means the GPU it under a much greater load receiving all the dynamic vertex data. Physics cards are on the way out before they ever really came in. With Nvidia's new shader technology, you can do physics on the GPU. With the new processors getting more and more cores, you're pretty much going to have to do some physics on the CPU or be wasting the CPU you have available. That's true. Physics just isn't something that you need a 3rd type of hardware to use - a GPU or CPU is perfect for the job. But I have to admit the Ageia PhysX SDK is one of the best free physics libraries for indie game developers (and it's extremely fast even without a PhysX card). |
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| I also think physics cards are a waste of time, but I take your word for that, C++ boy, and I am interested. "But I have to admit the Ageia PhysX SDK is one of the best free physics libraries for indie game developers (and it's extremely fast even without a PhysX card). |
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| Well, I'm been using Ageia PhysX in my current game engine, and it's fairly easy to use, easy to install, very very fast, well documented, and supports many features you'd only dream of in open-source physics engines. I've only used a fraction of all of it's features so far, but as far as I can tell my only complaint is that the character controller was somewhat confusing to get working right. It's basically a $50,000 physics engine that was released for free a while ago. All you have to do to get it is register at Ageia (free, no obligations), and you're licensed to use it in anything you want (commercial or personal). The only limitation is that it's Windows only currently, and you have to include a 30 MB driver with your game which includes every version ever released of the SDK DLLs. It will work if you include just one version with your game (about 3MB), but I think the license doesn't allow you to separate the DLLs like that, so your choices are to either include all 30 MB in your installer, or make the user download it themselves from Ageia. |
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| I dislike this Engine. You have to install it, even if you don't have a physics card. The uninstaller isn't working correctly so your system is slowed down constantly by a bloated driver that only a few games use. Before wasting my time coding for it, i'd rather go down the multicore / multigpu road. This makes more sense to me than supporting 1% of the user base with physics cards. |
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| GPU or CPU is perfect for the job Sure, you can probably do everything soon with GPU - and then we are again in the situation where EVERYTHING is done by GPU (like previously by CPU)... and slow because GPU has too much to do. Multi-processor (GPU+CPU+PPU, or GPU+CPU*X) approach is better in theory at least. Multi-core CPUs are great thing but we are far from making the best use of them, because it's really difficult to make properly threading game engine. |
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| Unless there isn't a game you really really want (like the dungeon master memory expansion effect) these boards simply won't sell enough as there will be too much advancement on the multicore front too. Both CPU and GPU vendors will turn more and more into general useable parallel multicore XPU architectures. Threading can cause little hickups too but you can make pretty good usage of it if you cut your engine already into meaningful pieces. Physics here, AI there, ... or you build your engine on .NET and make even more subdivisions. Hmm whilst writing this: o What about threading in BlitzMax? o What about a new Worklog entry? |
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| the card is way too expensive. 25-50 dollars and i will buy one. |
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| Do people really care to spend on hardware just to see slightly increased numbers of particles/small objects being bounced around the scenery? This is what PhysX cards seem to have been doing up until now. There's no killer app to make anyone want to spend money on their hardware. There's no game that requires a PhysX card to run (to my knowledge)... which is because there's absolutely no game that couldn't just make use of the CPU (or GPU, of course) to handle physics in the absence of PhysX hardware. Nice idea, but about 5 years too late. |
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| The uninstaller isn't working correctly so your system is slowed down constantly by a bloated driver that only a few games use. Sorry, that's just not true. These "drivers" are simply DLLs used by game applications, as far as I know there are no background processes running, so they do not slow your computer down. There might be drivers active when using an Ageia PhysX card, but I'm sure any overhead is minimal. Before wasting my time coding for it, i'd rather go down the multicore / multigpu road. Most people don't know that the Ageia PhysX SDK not only supports their own hardware acceleration, but it can take advantage of multi-core processors. Yes, this means that even an unthreaded language like Blitz3D can take advantage of multicore processors if you could wrap PhysX for Blitz3D. There's really no reason not to choose Ageia PhysX SDK unless you don't want the 30MB "drivers" or if you want cross-platform. So using Ageia PhysX SDK means your game is automatically compatible with: Single core users, Multi core users, and PhysX card users. Do people really care to spend on hardware just to see slightly increased numbers of particles/small objects being bounced around the scenery? This is what PhysX cards seem to have been doing up until now. PhysX cards simply accelerate the physics capability of a computer. Nobody minds extra processing power, it's just that hardware dedicated to physics only seems kind of wasteful. |
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| @John J and you're licensed to use it in anything you want (commercial or personal) I was under the impression that you couldnt actualy realese anything without further permisstion?Thats not to say the permission isnt just going to be on-the-nod, but that they do reserve the right to refuse to let you publish it. And that they didnt publish criteria for what would be aceptable or not. So were as your "Debbie does Dallas" sim might logicly be refused permission, you Eco evolution Sim also might. |
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| I really can't see physics cards making it mainstream. They said the same about 3DFX graphics accelerators at the time. Sure, you can probably do everything soon with GPU - and then we are again in the situation where EVERYTHING is done by GPU (like previously by CPU)... and slow because GPU has too much to do. What he said. Sure. As CPUs and GPUs get faster they can do more things - and providing that gameplay doesn't evolve, then sure. It's not like games NEED flashier graphics or a decent AI. Poor Dynamics Simulations are much more important. No need to improve on that. I mean just design a game like DOOM3 and people will think all of your dynamics glitches were done intentionally to make the game more scary. So using Ageia PhysX SDK means your game is automatically compatible with: Single core users, Multi core users, and PhysX card users. Well. Imagine that. Nobody minds extra processing power, it's just that hardware dedicated to physics only seems kind of wasteful. Where as more polygons in Lara Crofts chest area is a worth while cause! We don't need to see them bounce around realistically as well! I mean it would be impossible to focus on the "game" as it were. |
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| Uhm, hopefully a card like this will fit into a build like this: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=71862 |
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