Nvidia’s done with PhysX, it seems.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/33099518

TLDR: NVIDIA removed support for PhysX with the 50 series GPUs, resulting in worse performance with PhysX games than previous GPU generations

  • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
    60·
    3 days ago

    this is an incomplete list. as per the wiki article:

    PhysX in Video Games

    PhysX technology is used by game engines such as Unreal Engine (version 3 onwards), Unity, Gamebryo, Vision (version 6 onwards), Instinct Engine, Panda3D, Diesel, Torque, HeroEngine, and BigWorld.

    As one of the handful of major physics engines, it is used in many games, such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Warframe, Killing Floor 2, Fallout 4, Batman: Arkham Knight, Planetside 2, and Borderlands 2. Most of these games use the CPU to process the physics simulations.

    Video games with optional support for hardware-accelerated PhysX often include additional effects such as tearable cloth, dynamic smoke, or simulated particle debris.

    PhysX in Other Software

    Other software with PhysX support includes:

    • Active Worlds (AW), a 3D virtual reality platform with its client running on Windows
    • Amazon Lumberyard, a 3D game development engine developed by Amazon
    • Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya, and Autodesk Softimage, computer animation suites
    • DarkBASIC Professional (with DarkPHYSICS upgrade), a programming language targeted at game development
    • DX Studio, an integrated development environment for creating interactive 3D graphics
    • ForgeLight, a game engine developed by the former Sony Online Entertainment
    • Futuremark’s 3DMark06 and Vantage benchmarking tools
    • Microsoft Robotics Studio, an environment for robot control and simulation
    • Nvidia’s SuperSonic Sled and Raging Rapids Ride, technology demos
    • OGRE (via the NxOgre wrapper), an open source rendering engine
    • The Physics Abstraction Layer, a physical simulation API abstraction system (it provides COLLADA and Scythe Physics Editor support for PhysX)
    • Rayfire, a plug-in for Autodesk 3ds Max that allows fracturing and other physics simulations
    • The Physics Engine Evaluation Lab, a tool designed to evaluate, compare, and benchmark physics engines
    • Unreal Engine game development software by Epic Games. Unreal Engine 4.26 and onwards has officially deprecated PhysX.
    • Unity by Unity ApS. Unity’s Data-Oriented Technology Stack does not use PhysX.
    • AnyOldName3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      That’s misleading in the other direction, though, as PhysX is really two things, a regular boring CPU-side physics library (just like Havok, Jolt and Bullet), and the GPU-accelerated physics library which only does a few things, but does them faster. Most things that use PhysX just use the CPU-side part and won’t notice or care if the GPU changes. A few things use the GPU-accelerated part, but the overwhelming majority of those use it for optional extra features that only work on Nvidia cards, and instead of running the same effects on the CPU if there’s no Nvidia card available, they just skip them, so it’s not the end of the world to leave them disabled on the 5000-series.

    • kitnaht@lemmy.worldEnglish
      193·
      3 days ago

      Yeah, and a great post too - because some of your points here just point out that everyone ELSE have deprecated PhysX as well. Unity and Unreal both dropped it long ago. It’s basically a moot point for 99.9% of people playing games.

      Instead of using a PPU on the GPU, most people have focused on GPGPU physics calculations instead. The idea behind PhysX was a difficult one to launch in the first place. Given that most chip real-estate is going to these VPUs, I’m not surprised at all that they ditched the PPU for a more generalized version.

      • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
        14·
        3 days ago

        well, sorta. some engines like unreal have indeed dropped physx (in fact that’s the only one that’s in there as having dropped it), but there are some heavy hitters in there. unity did not drop it as far as i know, but they have a separate version without it that’s not made for games.

        i also happen to know that ARMA 3, which is not on the list, is a heavy physx user. so i don’t know how accurate any of our lists actually are.

        my takeaway from this list is that if nvidia follows suit with their AX series and other pro cards, they are going to lose significant market share with the CAD and CFD crowd, because those guys have 40 year old codebases and they are not going to be happy that they have to rewrite a subsystem.

      • 9point6@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        3 days ago

        PhysX has just been a CUDA application for a long time, there’s not been a dedicated PPU on any card in a very long time