PhysX Physics Engine

[SkateZilla]

ArmAIII is not DCS. neither is Crysis3, BF3, MoHWF, Batman or anyother game that uses PhysX, FrostBite or HavoC.

 

PhysX is Free for windows Like c0ff said, to sell nVidia Cards.

 

 

 

PhysX Currently Offers:

PhysX is designed specifically for hardware acceleration by powerful processors with hundreds of processing cores. Because of this design choice, NVIDIA GeForce GPUs provide a dramatic increase in physics processing power, and take gaming to a new level delivering rich, immersive physical gaming environments with features such as:

 

 

1. Explosions that create dust and collateral debris
   
2. Characters with complex, jointed geometries, for more like-like motion and interaction
   
3. Spectacular new weapons with incredible effects
   
4. Cloth that drapes and tears naturally
   
5. Dense smoke & fog that billow around objects in motion
   

 

 

 

All of those can be done with:

Bone Animation Support (which DCS has).

Interactive Particle Emitters and Splash Damage Effects (which DCS has).

Collision Boxes and Shells (which DCS has).

 

There is no need to use PhysX for anything, it's simply a ShortCut API and a Gimmick.

 

 

There's a reason you dont see any Flight games in the games list:

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/physx/pc-games

 

Because any company that can program their own Flight, Collision and Weapons Model, doesnt need a Shortcut API.

Edited March 6, 2013 by SkateZilla

[Cedaway]

The nearest target we are moving to is decoupling of graphics and simulation into separate threads.

This is quite possible with the current codebase, without a major rewrite.

 

That's an important, relevant and good new. Thank you c0ff and ED. :thumbup:

It's this kind of thing DCS World needs. Good continuation :)

[SkateZilla]

The nearest target we are moving to is decoupling of graphics and simulation into separate threads.

This is quite possible with the current codebase, without a major rewrite.

 

That would prolly do wonders, as it seems when CPU gets clogged down, the FPS start to drop.

 

Moving the GFX engine to another core might alleviate that problem .

[Witchking]

I agree DCS has a pretty good physics system in place. Or else we wouldn't have the amazing FM that we already have. But I think the other aspects/graphical fidelity, special FX and so on are lacking. And rightfully so, the focus is on the simulation aspect. The prospect of using third party systems allows you to alleviate the burden of doing everything from scratch in-house. But hey, having no experience with coding at all, I don't know if it will be any less effort using these existing APIs....but it might help. Perhaps even open the devs to some new perspectives on how to code/model these other aspects of DCS efficiently. Sometimes its great to break everything down and re-analyze your own work and compare it to other game engines to figure out how to improve it to the next level.

 

Either way, I think the multi-threading is a great approach. That should definitely help a lot. One step at a time and maybe after that, the devs can push further in the graphical "effects" department.

[Krupi]

 

It does look good...

[SkateZilla]

 

It does look good...

 

Those are all Particle Effects being showcased... which can be done without PhysX.

 

 

Aegia wanted PhysX to be more for Physics and not Effects.

 

The first few games offered realistic bullet effects and stuff.

 

now it's all visual... oooh.. smoke that reacts when you walk through it, or curtains that react when you walk through them..

 

there's nothing special about those, simple bone linking and collision detection programming can do the same thing.

 

PhysX is nothing more than a API to insert pre-generated effects into you engine.

 

none of the effects I've seen in their library even match anything we need for DCS.

[Krupi]

I would say smoke that reacted to an aircraft flying throught it and seeing the resulting vortex would be nice ;) but that's about it from a visual side of things.

[danilop]

There are fundamental differences between your average FPS game which basically needs eye candy and fast paced action to sell and hard-core simulator like DCSW where you spend majority of the time developing accurate mathematical models of the real world objects and complex military systems. Hey, they even have several PhDs on board! Don't forget that they deal with real military on the regular basis ;)

 

Average DCSW customer is laughing at the arcade "simulations" (although they can be fun from time to time :)) - just look at the long, hot debates on this forum regarding radar and missiles performance for example! So the quality of the mathematical models is the top priority.

 

Graphics is in the second plan. However, ED very early realised importance of the eye candy for sales and DCS is the best looking hard core flying simulator ever.

 

IMHO, they have perfect balance here - more than enough eye candy for believable environment (yes there is obvious room for improvement) and non-arguably the best math models around!

 

There is simply not enough budget / market / sales to warrant top eye candy and detailed graphics effects programming. They've concentrated their available resources toward math modelling, and I think rightfully so!

Edited March 7, 2013 by danilop

[Witchking]

I must say though..you are right..I would take advanced FM for all FC3 aircraft....especially more realistic dynamic landing/take off for all aircraft than special fx. For sure you are right with that. ;)

 

But I must say...a bit excited about EDGE. When lock on came out...it was so ahead of its time in graphics for a jet sim. I wonder how EDGE will look when it finally hits public.

[Manuel]

Is there any time frame given for EDGE?

[sobek]

Is there any time frame given for EDGE?

 

No.

[Witchking]

Sobek...check this out:

 

http://www.geomerics.com/

 

a game lighting technology. Would be pretty cool if these dynamic lights could be properly implemented in DCS.

[sobek]

My impression is that the devs usually consider 3rd party solutions not tailored to fit the needs of a niche product such as DCS and as such they prefer to do it themselves.

Edited March 7, 2013 by sobek

[c0ff]

There's a technological limit on an amount of detail a game world can have. It's just a question of how much virtual km^2 you stretch it over.

And, no 3rd party technology exists which can serve the needs of a flight simulator, moreover a jet one.

[sobek]

Are you seriously trying to educate c0ff? :doh:

 

What are your credentials in the field?

[Witchking]

SAGE is a perfect demonstration of how HAVOK can be used for EDGE. Perhaps not to that degree... every power line destructable etc...but atleast the buildings and vehicles. Perhaps a nice layer of physics based destructability rather than the current one "plop" destruction effect.

[Nopileus]

And how exactly does a fluid simulation help us in a flightsim? Even for naval operations you wouldn't need something that complex.

 

You have to understand that you can't just bolt on stuff like this and expect it to solve everything.

Neither can you expect running flightmodels and the like on a GPU, its much more complicated than that

 

I'm suprised that this thread actually survived for this long, PhysX is simply not meant to be used for simulations, its an easy way to integrate physics into your game engine and create nice looking effects.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Nopileus

[Suchacz]

And how exactly does a fluid simulation help us in a flightsim?

Air is also a fluid :D

 

...but PhysX is a closed platform, limited only to nVidia HW. Its only income are few fancy graphics effects. I'm not sure if it can be used for advanced aerodynamics calculations.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Suchacz

[alexej21]

Air is also a fluid :D

 

Psssst, it is a secret.. :lol:

[DiCE81]

Air is also a fluid :D

I was going to say the same

 

And how exactly does a fluid simulation help us in a flightsim? Even for naval operations you wouldn't need something that complex.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_mechanics

liquids, gases and plasmas

[karambiatos]

Oh, I see, if Bullet were BulletX, it'd get your approval, the same as OdeX would.

OpenGLX would feel some love as well.

 

EDIT: PhysX is free to sell NVidia cards.

 

 

 

 

If I had a dime for every time I heard that...

 

UselesThingThatDoesn'tWorkX it seems like a good for EDGE, and ED should use because it has X in it

 

With EDGE, I think ED should stop supporting Black Sea Map, since they want to make separate thread for Physics Engine!

 

Its just a map, and at its base level its just a greyscale blob.

[winz]

Is it really a fluid simulator? Will increase in fluid speed result in decrease of presure? If I will make a wing-profile solid object and move it throught the fluid, will there by difference in pressure (lift)? What if I reach speed of sound? Will it produce turbulences? Will even these basic principles work?

 

Or, is it just an eye candy, that is using simple physical interaction between thousands of small points to create something that 'just' looks like fluid? Without actually simulating the physical properties of dynamic fluid. Which is great for regular games, where better looking water, or any other fluid is beneficial. But is kinda useless for a sim? :)

[komemiute]

I don't really care what program or code is used to simulate what. But it deeeply bugs me that hovering helicopters closeby pillars of smoke do not cause ANY reaction.

 

I keep logging hours in DCS and I could hardly be happier, but smoke behaviour is one of those things that would make quite a difference.

 

That said, no rush- do the best you can do, the navigational computer of the A10C is still keeping me on the manual!

 

:D

[112th_Rossi]

So many assumptions in this thread, where most don't have the first clue on how to make a 'hello world' message let alone a game engine. /shakes head.

[Pyroflash]

Air is also a fluid :D

 

...but PhysX is a closed platform, limited only to nVidia platform. Its only income are few fancy graphics effects. I'm not sure if it can be used for advanced aerodynamics calculations.

 

PhysX is a pretty configurable platform. Yes, some functions can be baked in 3d model editors for rigid body phsyics, but the platform as a whole is pretty adaptable. It also runs very well on the CPU, so everyone is able to take advantage of it, not just Nvidia users.

 

That being said, however, I do not think that the current platform would work very well. They already have a fully customizable physics engine in place, and there is no need to add something extra just for the sake of having it. It isn't like it is going to do a significantly better job in the long term, and in the short term, it will cause a large amount of integration issues.

 

Its just a map, and at its base level its just a greyscale blob.

 

Kind of. The Black Sea map is currently not designed to work with the new EDGE terrain engine. Therefore it cannot be used with the updated engine tools at the moment. We will, however, have to see where ED takes us.

 

Is it really a fluid simulator? Will increase in fluid speed result in decrease of presure? If I will make a wing-profile solid object and move it throught the fluid, will there by difference in pressure (lift)? What if I reach speed of sound? Will it produce turbulences? Will even these basic principles work?

 

Or, is it just an eye candy, that is using simple physical interaction between thousands of small points to create something that 'just' looks like fluid? Without actually simulating the physical properties of dynamic fluid. Which is great for regular games, where better looking water, or any other fluid is beneficial. But is kinda useless for a sim?

 

Pretty much. PhysX is a highly configurable platform, and is capable of pretty much whatever physics principles you throw at it. That being said, like any other REAL TIME physics simulation, corners will have to be cut in accuracy for the sake of decent performance. It'll be the same, whatever platform you choose to incorporate. Though as I've said in the above paragraph, I don't really think that TFCSE would benefit all that much from using PhysX (if at all), and worse, it could actually create some MAJOR setbacks.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Pyroflash