We weren't too kind in our initial review of the
Ageia PhysX
physics accelerator in May of last year. At almost $300, it was
expensive, and from what we could tell, it didn't do much of anything.
One of the first supporting games was
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter,
and the additional physics interactions displayed were definitely
underwhelming. Not to mention, adding the PhysX card didn't improve
performance much. We closed out our negative review by saying that the
card had potential, and, "We could be singing a different tune in six
months. By then, perhaps there will be dozens of titles on the shelves,
and maybe they'll deliver really impressive new physics interactions
with the PhysX card. We'll be happy to revisit this card at a later
date."
Unfortunately, it has taken much longer than six months for PhysX
support in AAA titles. In fact, the next really big game to deliver the
kind of enhancements we were expecting from the card is Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2,
just released. The game ships with a special "Ageia Island" mission
that's heavily accelerated by the PhysX card and does a much better job
of showing off what hardware-accelerated physics in games can be.
PhysX cards from BFG and ASUS are now around $150, roughly half
of what they cost upon launch. This makes them more attractive
prospects. We stand by our initial review, but we wanted to take
another look at the card with a new AAA title that offers a much better
experience.
The Ageia Island Mission
From the main menu, there is a special "Ageia Island" mission that
drops you into a game world with only the game's main character,
Captain Mitchell, rather than a whole squad of people. It features a
few simple objectives: blow up some gas tanks, blow up some more gas
tanks, then blow up some more
gas tanks, and take out an attack helicopter. So what does this one
PhysX-accelerated mission feature? Well, Ageia Island is apparently the
land of exploding barrels and wooden structures. It's meant to showcase
several enhancements to the physics of the normal campaign in GRAW2.
Trees, brush, and other foliage are interactive and
physics-enabled. Directional and varying wind affects how the trees
blow and moves the shrubbery, the player's movement pushes large
shrubs, and you can even shoot trees down. In the standard game, there
are some static animations for trees, but nothing like the dynamic
behavior shown here. Leaves and general debris blow about dynamically
in the wind. There's some falling debris and leaves in the main game,
but it doesn't blow around as the wind kicks up as it does on Ageia
Island.
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The wooden planks of fences and buildings are modeled to break
as you'd expect, so you can shoot out bits of wooden fences to open
holes in your cover, or even create new paths to attack the enemies.
We've seen this in other games, but not quite on this scale, and you
don't really see it in the main game—all you get there is a bunch of
wood splinter particles flying out from where you shoot wooden objects.
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More Effects, and Performance
Each gas tank you're tasked with blowing up is conveniently located
right next to a wooden building, wooden pieces fly in an impressive
shower of chunks. They all collide with the environment and enemies.
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Cloth canopies are powered by Ageia's cloth physics modeling as
well, but it doesn't play much of a major role in this demo. It blows
in the wind and sort of tears when you shoot it. It should be noted
that all these effects are persistent—splinters of wood litter the
battlefield after you toss around a few grenades. Together with the
wind dynamically moving trees around and blowing leaves and debris, it
creates a pretty convincing atmosphere.
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All this wanton destruction must come at a fairly hefty price,
right? Not exactly. In fact, we found the opposite was true, but there
are some caveats. We ran the game on the following hardware:
| Component | Make/Model |
|
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Quad QX6800 @ 2.93GHz |
|
| Motherboard and chipset | Intel D975 XBX (Intel 975X) |
|
| Memory | 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 (5-5-5-12) |
|
| Hard drive | Seagate 7200.9 160GB SATA Drive |
|
| Optical Drive | ATAPI DVD-ROM Drive |
|
| Graphics | PNY GeForce 8800 GTX |
|
| Physics | ASUS PhysX card |
|
| Audio | Sound Blaster Audigy 2 |
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| Operating system | Windows XP SP2 |
The game resolution was set to a healthy 1920x1200, with 4x anisotropic filtering
enabled, but no antialiasing. The idea was to run the game with very
high, great-looking settings, but not to bog it down so much on the
graphics side that we'd have a hard time telling if the game ran
smoothly or not with the PhysX card. Though this isn't a benchmarking
article, we wanted a good impression of how smoothly the game runs with
the tech in place.
Throughout Ageia Island, our frame rate hovered in the 45 to 50 frames-per-second mark (as measured by FRAPS,
and dipped down to 30fps or so when a big explosion sent tons of wood
flying. That kind of sudden drop in performance is typical in games
when a big event makes lots of dynamic objects fly. In the standard
single-player campaign, by comparison, our frame rate was more like 20
to 25fps with the same graphics settings. It would seem like the
PhysX-accelerated level is running twice as fast, and it is, but that's
not the whole story.
There's certainly more going on under the hood in the
single-player campaign. The levels are larger, you command a team of
three AI-controlled characters, and there are more enemies and more
objects lying about (though they're not nearly as interactive). Without
a direct apples-to-apples comparison, or even a version of the Ageia
Island level with the same exact layout and gameplay but with none of
the enhanced physics effects, it's hard to make a firm claim of
improved performance with hardware physics acceleration enabled.
Final Thoughts – Still Only Shows Promise
Our initial impression of the PhysX card was that it showed a lot of
potential, but that it wasn't worth a purchase—especially at nearly
$300—when that potential was unrealized. Today, over a year later, our
general impression isn't a lot different.
The good news is that the card costs half of what it used to, and this Ageia Island level in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
really does a good job of delivering a dynamic physics experience a
true step above what you see in other games, and in a real top-tier
game, no less.
So why aren't we totally changing our tune about PhysX cards? First, there are the games like Crysis and Half-Life 2: Episode 2
to consider. Gamers have all seen videos of the truly impressive
physics in those games, which rival (or come very close to) the physics
on Ageia Island without hardware acceleration. Those games are
leveraging multicore CPUs.
Read our original review of Ageia's PhysX accelerator.
Second, the new DX10 graphics cards are a big step forward in
providing hardware that can accelerate persistent in-game physics, and
while we haven't seen hot upcoming games with GPU physics acceleration,
it seems clear from our conversations with developers that it's only a
matter of time. Finally, and perhaps most damning, is that the true
potential of the PhysX card is only realized in GRAW2 in a
single purpose-built level that's over and done with in about 20
minutes. It's not quite what we envision when we think of true
hardware-accelerated physics in a major PC game. If the effects on
display in Ageia Island were seen throughout the campaign for those
with PhysX cards, that would be another story.
The PhysX card saga is far from over. The biggest boost to its
popularity may come from the support built into Unreal Engine 3, which
will most likely be utilized first in Unreal Tournament III.
Games shipping next year and beyond that use the engine may run faster
or contain more realistic physical interactions thanks to the engine's
support of the technology. But that's hardly a reason to run out and
buy a PhysX card now, is it?
Source : http://www.extremetech.com
posted by Gunny