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Forums > Home› Support› PC, Network, and Other Technical Issues› Windows and General: PC, Network, and Other Technical Issues

PhysX bad code

celkucelku Member Posts: 24 Arc User
in Windows and General: PC, Network, and Other Technical Issues
PhysX is bogging down the game engine unnecessarily. Please remove and replace PhysX code in base game engine that all computers are forced to use despite how crappy it is.

Comments

  • freezy321freezy321 Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    or better yet update PhysX version used in the engine to get way better performance from all particles in the game.

    @celku, I believe you can disable particles in the options, which would also disable PhysX, if you want the particles, then get a decent CPU, nvidia card or set the particles to something your PC can handle.
  • celkucelku Member Posts: 24 Arc User
    My CPU is fine, its currently clocked @4.4Ghz with quad threads and if I saw my cores reaching 100% utilization I'd see your point. The problem is the CPU hovers around 50% utilization and I'm getting bogged down in areas where I shouldn't be. In any non PhysX coded game like BF4 I can run @ max graphics settings and never dip below 100fps "with particles and debri flying everywhere". Yet in STO I'm dipping into 20fps without my CPU ever passing 50% utilization. There is so much better code out there at this point that using PhysX code just seems to be Nvidia's marketing strategy to vendor lock into having to have a Nvidia GPU which is ridiculous.

    I've noticed this in other PhysX games as well, so its definitely not exclusive to Cryptic titles. At this point PhysX just seems like bad code that any developer should look at replacing. I'm not the only one that has posted this issue with PhysX artificially bogging down fps, hopefully Cryptic will see enough of these posts from multiple people that they'll understand that its an issue.
  • gfreeman98gfreeman98 Member Posts: 1,200 Arc User
    You can disable PhysX if you want to, at the driver level (NVIDIA Control Panel), if you think it's so horrendous. Then your CPU will do all the work. Let us know if that improves your frame rate like you think it will.
    screenshot_2015-03-01-resize4.png
  • gfreeman98gfreeman98 Member Posts: 1,200 Arc User
    OP: Well? We're eager to hear your results.
    screenshot_2015-03-01-resize4.png
  • celkucelku Member Posts: 24 Arc User
    gfreeman98 wrote: »
    You can disable PhysX if you want to, at the driver level (NVIDIA Control Panel), if you think it's so horrendous. Then your CPU will do all the work. Let us know if that improves your frame rate like you think it will.

    You do realize that what you said makes absolutely no sense. Running inefficient, buggy code on your CPU by disabling your GPU calculating it STILL makes it inefficient, buggy code. There are plenty of ways to calculate physics WITHOUT injecting PhysX code into the base game engine. Unless you have some way of replacing the PhysXCore.dll that the game engine uses, which I'd be happy to hear if you do know, its not hard to find as its placed in the game's directory. Plenty of games do it without PhysX code and run BETTER on ALL MACHINES. Be my guest and do your own comparisons with games that use PhysX in the game engine and those that don't. You'll be quite astonished at how the games without PhysX seems to calculate physics a lot more efficiently.
  • gfreeman98gfreeman98 Member Posts: 1,200 Arc User
    PhysX is completely optional. If you're running an Nvidia GPU it will use it by default unless you turn it off. If you're not using Nvidia, then there's no PhysX for you. Since you seem to think PhysX is bad, either turn it off as I explained or rip out your Nvidia card and buy AMD.

    You made a broad statement that PhysX is "bad code", which I dispute. Now if you instead said that STO burns way too much GPU load under certain conditions, I would agree 100%. But that is due to the game engine, not because PhysX is bad.
    screenshot_2015-03-01-resize4.png
  • celkucelku Member Posts: 24 Arc User
    PhysX is not completely optional. Yes there are optional Nvidia only PhysX coded effects that a game can implement but that is NOT what I am talking about.

    Some games, such as STO, use PhysX code in the game engine itself THAT IS NOT OPTIONAL to calculate basic physics calculations such as collision between objects in the game, i.e. characters, ships, the ground. Your character doesn't suddenly fall through the game just because you run on an AMD GPU does it? These uses of PhysX code are not optional. You said you agree that the game engine is not optimized well, ever wonder why? Now if the only way to do this was with inefficient PhysX code, I'd totally understand your argument but that's not the case. Its high time they moved away from PhysX to do these things.
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