The AGEIA Extreme Physics mod pack?

[Harmatia]

This pack is garbage. Barely playable framerates when, with something that ugly, I'd usually be above the FPS cap. Plus, all of the physics effects are utter garbage-- ugly splinters and ****. Not what someone used to Crysis expects to see. Whoever made these maps, frankly, sucks.

I do get a noticable FPS boost in some maps with physx enabled, but surely not worth $100 in one game.

I'm hoping future packs are much, much better.

[sekazi]

I get about 40FPS in both maps. I do not like either map as the layout is horrible. 90% of the environment is not destructible. You have to pretty much guess what you can actually hit. Hit a piece of glass or something that shatters into a million pieces my framerate drops to the single digits around 8FPS.

[D-Hunter]

I won't even try it then, I have no PhysX card and a Pentium 4 lol

Edit: Wait a sec, why don't the CTF maps show up in my map list?

[Conroy]

I wonder if this will be available for the PS3 as it has a PPE. I can't wait until the new hardware comes out from Nvidia next month, although I'm disappointed at the default speeds of the new Intel C2Q's. Not going to break 3.2GHz for a while...

[madafaka]

It has been proven already that Software Physx that use processor core or gpu core in sli/crossfire to be way more efficient than hardware physx such as Ageia.
Havoc, the most popular software physx is the most popular and wildly use than Ageia(SDK). More than 200 games use software compared to Ageia with less than 30 games supported.
Games such as HalfLife 2 use software physx. If you are familiar with halflife 2, you notice that it has more advanced physx than any games supported by Ageia right now (except cellfactor maybe).
Furthermore, you dont even experience lag in Software physx based game such as Halflife 2.

By the way, Sony PS3 uses PhysX SDK. Therefore, those Ageia maps should logically be compatible on PS3 in terms of physx

[madafaka]

I'm not sure if Ageia work online. suppose that you have the hardware while others don't.
I know that in HL2 and crysis in witch the physic is software, your imput to environment will be visible by others

[D-Hunter]

Oh well it won't play. I had to manually copy the files to the Program Files path and start it from the console, but it just kept loading forever and never started.

[sekazi]

I have not really experienced extremely long loading times on the map since I upgraded my PC. Anyways heres some shots of lighthouse. I DO NOT have a Physx Card. My framerate will drop in the 15 FPS range every once in awhile but mainly stays around 30 FPS after I have destroyed some stuff. Now if I try Tornado that is a whole nothing thing on FPS as if I break any glass my FPS drops to the single digits.

Here is the screenshots now showing the FPS in the current situation. I am playing the game at Max detail settings at 1440x900 with Vivid Post Processing and a 100 FOV.

Here is one of the walls in lighthouse

[shot]http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/1965/screenshot00008dq4.jpg[/shot] [shot]http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/3217/screenshot00009bz5.jpg[/shot] [shot]http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/828/screenshot00011ff0.jpg[/shot]

Here is another wall in lighthouse

[shot]http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/5701/screenshot00015vu8.jpg[/shot] [shot]http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/7819/screenshot00016sl4.jpg[/shot]

Here is some gravity gun shots in lighthouse

[shot]http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/8119/screenshot00020hv8.jpg[/shot] [shot]http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/1184/screenshot00021af3.jpg[/shot] [shot]http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/5698/screenshot00023fc4.jpg[/shot]

I do not have a super computer. I probably have much less power than some people here. Anyways my specs are the following.

ASUS P5K-E Intel P35 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 Conroe 2.33GHz Processor
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Memory
EVGA GeForce 8600GT SSC 256MB Video Card
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card
3 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives

The CPU is clocked at 3.01GHz with a 430MHz Bus so it is 1720MHz FSB. The RAM is overclocked to match the FSB so it is running at DDR2-860 and the latency is corrected in BIOS.

[MTL]

i wonder how that company is doing with not many games using their tech. maybe AMD/ATI should buy AGEIA? then they could make some fancy video cards *shrug

[sekazi]

They should no be bought out but instead allow video card companies to add their CPU to the video. This way there is no other card required.

[Xendance]

I'm not sure if Ageia work online. suppose that you have the hardware while others don't.
I know that in HL2 and crysis in witch the physic is software, your imput to environment will be visible by others

Source physics are helluva laggy online and Crysis doesn't allow physics in online play (except on "DX 10 servers" for some ****ing weird reason).

Something like PhysX PPU should be integrated into motherboards rather than sold as seperate cards. It's a lot better at physics than our processors. A CPU really isn't a vector calculation machine. That's the reason we have dedicated GPU's too.

[Medu Salem]

Havok got finally bought by Intel, therefore it will be worthless in the next few years, cause I just think they bought it to get one competetor less on the market. Havok planned to expand their physics engine to physics integrated gpu's, and Intel wouldn't sell that much processors anymore, cause since then every gpu could do it better than a processor and mostly Havok would have decided to do it with nVidia or AMD's ATI instead of Intel's out-of-the-range-graphics-solutions. Now they can force to use either their processor architecture or their graphics solution, causing their hardware to be more powerful at a price I wouldn't accept.

Since Ageia's engine is for free, and its scalable to every computer configuration thats available, like single-processor, multi-processor and their hardware PhysX-card, I also would decide for them, instead of Havok.
That mappack where never thought to run fine on any other configuration than with that PhysX-card, but thats stated on their page, and within the ReadMe:

Playing without a PhysX card: This mod-pack is available for free and can be installed and played without a PhysX card in the system. However, the minimum system requirements anticipate a PhysX Processor being present and it is likely that non-PhysX Processor systems will experience severe performance degradation at times of high physics load (action in the game). This degradation will not be present at all moments, but should be clearly evident during standard play.

Even they wrote it, they don't force someone to pay an extra amount of money for the card. It's stated they do it for gaming enthusiasts, which don't mind about paying an extra of 90$, cause they mostly have a configuration worth about 2500-3000$ anyways.

For example, Cellfactor, anybody should tell me how to do a game like that with Havok... It's seemingly impossible to do. Its even stated right here, the cpu isn't that good at physics calculations, it may be faster than hardware enabled physics when there are only about 25 boxes around the level, mostly never colliding with each other, caused of their rarity. Okay well then software calculated physics would be faster, combining things like spended processor-time on handling the PhysX-card, amount of calculations needed to be done, eg. Thats the main reason why Source's integrated Havok is fast enough without any physics-hardware. If you instead would use an amount of 5.000 objects, like in Cellfactor, where it is needed for the key-gameplay, then HalfLife² with same features would look more like a diashow than anything else.

In my opinion I even don't like how Valve implemented Havok into the Source-engine anyways. Well everybody thought "Yeah, wow, nice features", but when I thought about kicking around boxes, I don't like it when they fly around 50m or something like that (okay thats a little bit exaggerated, but everyone who played it should know what I mean), cause the engine doesn't know something like inertia. Every game with Havok's engine felt like there's no difference with an object's mass (Well, I don't know how its like in BioShock, maybe there its better, but even I've got it, I didn't have time to play it). If you kicked around a small melone it feels the same like throwing around a container weighting about two tons. Hell, even Doom³'s physics-engine had inertia, so it felt more realstic, even "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay", which hit the stores right 6 months before HL² had it, why HalfLife² can't do it?
And even HalfLife² was nothing more than a physics-demo either and they just continue this line with episode 1 and 2, and maybe even in 3, even I think "Well, we ALL KNOW about your physics-engine now, can you do something else than that too?"
It's getting borring to solve weird riddles that would never happen in reallife, like putting bricks on a seesaw to advance, and coincidentally the needed amount of bricks is right next to it. Or like diving a barrel of 169l filled with O2 under water, which nobody, not the mightiest guy, would be possible be able to achieve anyways, caused of lift force. But well... If someone likes that kind of unrealistic physics-enabled-games, these people should avoid Ageia and not buy a physx-card :>

And Crysis is well a hell out of discussion with their minima system specs and what you should have for maxima they even don't know themselfes. (The minima aren't even stated on the game's packaging and also not in the booklet which refers to the packaging :> It's just nowhere, I just know them from their official statement.) And their engine isn't that good-looking too, too much polygons and shader-effects making the game looking like you're playing with plastic-dolls or something like that. Even its on dx10 and I saw many screenshots that are pushed to the maxima, I still think Gears of War and UT3 are looking way better compared to the system specs. And as noticed from the Crysis community, there are mostly no differences between dx10 and dx9 on maximum anyways, if you tweaked it right, but with the difference that it runs on dx9 much better than on dx10, which leads to the fact, they did something wrong with that game :x

And that maps are fully PhysX-enabled for online-play, just to state it Even UT3 is on dx9 and Crysis does it only on dx10. But if you talk about "Who can play that maps online anyways?" ... I think about "Yep, if we could fill an all in all 5on5 server with that maps, I would be gladly.", but when I think about Crysis, I think its pretty equaled to it

[Harmatia]

Man, I loved Cellfactor. If that had become a full game with good online play my physx card would be completely worthwhile.

[hasol]

It has been proven already that Software Physx that use processor core or gpu core in sli/crossfire to be way more efficient than hardware physx such as Ageia.
Havoc, the most popular software physx is the most popular and wildly use than Ageia(SDK). More than 200 games use software compared to Ageia with less than 30 games supported.
Games such as HalfLife 2 use software physx. If you are familiar with halflife 2, you notice that it has more advanced physx than any games supported by Ageia right now (except cellfactor maybe).
Furthermore, you dont even experience lag in Software physx based game such as Halflife 2.

Interesting...
Could I use one of the cores in my CPU to run the physics with Havoc? and the other core + graphics card to run the game itself? You can see my specs in my signature.

Would that improve my FPS?

[TheEngine]

Interesting...
Could I use one of the cores in my CPU to run the physics with Havoc? and the other core + graphics card to run the game itself? You can see my specs in my signature.

Would that improve my FPS?

I had this same idea. In windows control panel the Ageia physx software component has NO configuration options unless you are using their hardware card. I tried to bog down the interactive demos that are the only thing to mess with in Control Panel. It never dropped fps at all even after firing about 1000 bouncing balls in a cloth sim environment.
I have at times set affinity of ut3 in task manager to only two cores. It runs just as fast at max graphics (1920*1200) as on 4 cores. I had hoped the physx jive could be assigned specific processors, but no.

This is intentional on Ageia's part, no doubt. I had similar skepticism after seeing how well HL2:Ep2 ran during the final Strider Battle, with thousands of physics objects in simulation in a huge outdoor environment with Hunters, NPCmorons, The Awsome MuscleCar, Gravity Gun Fighting... So much **** going on, software Phys.

My first UT3 install, the ragdolls and other physics looked terrible, quivering and shuddering and penetrating often completely inside the level geometry..

I just did a fresh install on my seldom used XP64 OS. After updating the xp64 drivers for my 8800 gtx's, (tho i use dual monitors, so no SLI) and installing the patch before I even played UT3, it seems that a great deal of my lag and packetloss issues have been solved...and the ragdoll motion looks.. well, good, now. No wild / bouncy / flinging / erratic shudders. The game seems to work smoother overall. I'm not sure if it's just cleaner since it was patched "virgin" as opposed to originally where I tweaked the hell out of ini's and made maps and messed with the editor and crashed alot plus had the UT3demo still installed.... But xp64 is also addressing all 4 gigs of RAM in my system, so maybe UT is just flexing now that it has the room it wanted.

either way, i'm happier. Been wondering if i'd ever find another use for xp64 after being turned off by bad quicktime implementation.... (I loooooove quicktime it's the 'deemer of movie players! )