Thursday, March 7th 2013
NVIDIA Announces PhysX and APEX Support for Sony PlayStation 4
NVIDIA today announced support for Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation4 with the popular NVIDIA PhysX and NVIDIA APEX software development kits (SDKs). Game designers use PhysX and APEX technologies for collision detection and simulation of rigid bodies, clothing, fluids, particle systems and more across a wide range of platforms, including desktop PCs, game consoles, and mobile and handheld devices.
NVIDIA PhysX technology is the world's most pervasive physics solution for designing real-time, real-world effects into interactive entertainment titles. The PhysX development environment gives developers unprecedented control over the look of their final in-game interactivity.
Taking PhysX technology content creation to the next level, NVIDIA APEX technology lets artists create intricate physics-enabled environments. They can expand the quantity and visual quality of destructible objects; make smoke and other particle-based fluids integral to game play; and create life-like clothing that interacts with the character's body to achieve more realism in their games.
"Great physics technology is essential for delivering a better gaming experience and multiplatform support is critical for developers," said Mike Skolones, product manager for PhysX at NVIDIA. "With PhysX and APEX support for PlayStation4, customers can look forward to better games."
NVIDIA PhysX and APEX technologies are designed to run on a variety of CPU architectures and can be accelerated by any CUDA architecture-enabled NVIDIA GPU, GeForce 8-series or higher.
NVIDIA PhysX technology is the world's most pervasive physics solution for designing real-time, real-world effects into interactive entertainment titles. The PhysX development environment gives developers unprecedented control over the look of their final in-game interactivity.
Taking PhysX technology content creation to the next level, NVIDIA APEX technology lets artists create intricate physics-enabled environments. They can expand the quantity and visual quality of destructible objects; make smoke and other particle-based fluids integral to game play; and create life-like clothing that interacts with the character's body to achieve more realism in their games.
"Great physics technology is essential for delivering a better gaming experience and multiplatform support is critical for developers," said Mike Skolones, product manager for PhysX at NVIDIA. "With PhysX and APEX support for PlayStation4, customers can look forward to better games."
NVIDIA PhysX and APEX technologies are designed to run on a variety of CPU architectures and can be accelerated by any CUDA architecture-enabled NVIDIA GPU, GeForce 8-series or higher.
102 Comments on NVIDIA Announces PhysX and APEX Support for Sony PlayStation 4
EDIT: Did I tell you I just bought a MSI GTX680 PE? It's out for Delivery. :toast:
The Unreal engine features prominently in PS4 PR...and Unreal features what physics engine ?...and Nvidia have been listed as a PS4 partner for some time- if they aren't providing hardware for the system, what else would their partnership be offering ?Well considering the topic at hand is PS4, then you'd probably need to include console games as well- and since Unreal has PhysX integrated, maybe those eleven titles (????????) need augmenting
The fact that PhysX is not a deciding factor for gamers buying a new card means their strategy is not working. The fact that physX is not that important for gamers means that developers will not go heavy on implementing PhysX unless they have an incentive payment from TWIMTBP.
I have issues myself, and am considering changing as well. It's not flamebait at all, it's just a users experience, and sentiment.
I haven't run Nv cards for any real length of time since the 7800GTX 256MB. I've had Nvidia cards since then, but have always preffered AMD cards. I am loath to switch, and just end up with other issues, but I am definitely not happy with the dual 7950's and dual 7970's that I run now, to the point that of those 4 VGAs, only one is getting used. I'd sell the others, but have some review work to finish with them, and then I'm changing as well. AMD's drivers suck in my config. You're more than welcome to come to my house and check it out, find out what I'm doing wrong, but I doubt you'll find much.
So you can add THAT to my "ANTI-NV" opinions posted earlier.Remember, he plays games near daily with the rest of the TS users, and uses an Nvidia card. To him, that is his perspective as an NVidia user. You may not like it, but that doesn't make it invalid. Whenever he sees something in-game that is cool, and thinks might be pHys-X, he's quick to ask me if I see similar(we paly together often). 8/10 times, I do. So Phys-X adds little to his experience so far.
If PHys-X is used behind the scenes, nobody cares. But the fact of the matter is that while it is used fairly often now, it doesn't really add much that a user can identify with, as that's 1000% due to it being CPU-based. When it doesn't add much to the user experience, of course it's usefulness will be questioned.
As far as gaming and physX goes(since they are closely/directly related), NVIDIA has made inconsistency and dirty tactics in the industry. I think it's great that they help devs optimize games to work with their hardware but they also do dirty tricks to make AMD look bad for no reason. If I am owning AMD hardware and the game runs like crap simply because of a bad business practice rather than hardware limitation then I would less likely buy into their products.
Just open up PhysX and put NVIDIA logo in it so it's pretty much repetitive marketing burned into everyone's brain whenever they start a game. Let it run on all hardware. Spend money to optimize on their CUDA cores. Devs will spend more time and resources coding for physX into their game. Watch people enjoy PhysX so much that they would rather buy NVIDIA cards instead of AMD because it just works better. That would make more sense as a long term strategy.
Do keep in mind, that the local BoyScout troop is run out of my house, and as such, those BoyScout ideals are a big part of my character that has me feel this way. I dealt with Mailman and his driver issues, on many occasions, and he really is justified in making that change, and stating it as such.Well, I mean, Mailman posted AMD had driver issues, which was scoffed at. For him, there were issues, and he uses his PC both for gaming, and for Photoshop. He wasn't referring to issues with games. you called it flamebait, but that was really what made him change...driver issues.
HW Physx3 has improved a little, but nothing major compared to physx2, it still crawls gpu with useless cycles (drawback calls) and lowers gpu usage instead of speeding it up..
I know i played a lot HW physx games and the more i played them the more i hatted this physics engine. Again optimization is bad.
Sw physx is ok, its just another physics engine, nothing special.
The fact is I simply stated it's no real surprise PhysX has been licensed again for the new consoles, which in turn resulted in all this fuss is suitable proof of that. ;)
My point being they have this technology that should be mainstream and they spent lots of time and resources to push and make it mainstream. Then they spent lots of time and resources restricting people from experiencing it. It's like an identity crisis.
Now if they allow physx to run on the PS4 GPU then they're hypocritical. If they force it to run on the CPU then it's like what you mentioned above. The difference in gaming experience will not be that noticeable if it's even noticed. The cost will get passed to the consumer one way or another with a half assed implementation of something that could/should work great on every title. AMD users will be pissed and NVIDIA users doesn't get to fully utilize PhysX iin all its glory because devs doesn't want to heavily code something that NVIDIA shut out half their potential customers.But you posted this after you read the news. Had you predicted this before the news came out then you would've had a great career as a prophet :)
GTX 680 ~ 3TFLOPS
HD 7970 Ghz ~ 4TFLOPS
GTX Titan ~ 4.5TFLOPS
So if PhysX was equally well optimized for both AMD and Nvidia GPUs then the AMD ones would run it better. The only nvidia card that has more compute power than the 7970 Ghz is the GTX Titan which is to expensive to compete in this.
You pretty much have to have a separate card for Physx to enable it on High in games like Arkham City... so I dunno.