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Discuss Pros & Cons of PhysX in STO

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited July 2010 in Star Trek Online General Discussion
So I started to wonder about this.

Obviously we don´t have anything approaching it, with ships exploding the same way over&over again and the sudden "bullet-time" during ground combat whenever you get hung up on some shrub.

Not a programmer, so not so sure if this could be even added to the current ("COH" :p ) engine. But it surely would improve the overall game play. Wouldn´t you think?

Having warp nacelles breaking of or saucers with punched through holes right before core breach?
Shrubbery that actually parts before you, or turret debris that doens´t fly of like it´s punted whenever I walk over it ...

Your thoughts?

Heck even wandering Devs can chime in. If they dare. :D
Post edited by Unknown User on

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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    So I'll duplicate my post in this thread...

    Though one of the reasons NOT to use PhysX, is that under Nvidia, PhysX has been deliberated handycapped for all non-Nvidia graphic card based systems...
    But both Ageia and Nvidia use PhysX to highlight the advantages of their hardware over the CPU for physics calculations. In Nvidia’s case, they are also using PhysX to differentiate with AMD’s GPUs. The sole purpose of PhysX is a competitive differentiator to make Nvidia’s hardware look good and sell more GPUs. Part of that is making sure that Nvidia GPUs looks a lot better than the CPU, since that is what they claim in their marketing. Using x87 definitely makes the GPU look better, since the CPU will perform worse than if the code were properly generated to use packed SSE instructions.
    Real World Technologies - PhysX87: Software Deficiency:
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    OOh, how evil. And dumb. Like all deliberate moves to make techs in the computer world proprietary (when you´re not Micro$oft).

    Thnx for the link.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Also PhysX wouldn't really help with the things you describe.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    coderanger wrote:
    Also PhysX wouldn't really help with the things you describe.

    Yup, just use Havok or Euphoria. I think TOR will use Euphoria..
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Actually Euphoria is not a physics engine.

    As for PhysX, Cryptic should look at adding more to what they already have.
    Massive quantities of debris from exploding ships, dynamic asteroids, dynamic gas/smoke/fire and so forth.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Alexraptor wrote: »
    Actually Euphoria is not a physics engine.

    As for PhysX, Cryptic should look at adding more to what they already have.
    Massive quantities of debris from exploding ships, dynamic asteroids, dynamic gas/smoke/fire and so forth.

    Nope, it's an animation engine, but it would help with current character animation. Using both Havok AND Euphoria would be a nice option.

    More debris.. yea.. but more ASTEROIDS? GOD NO!!
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Wait, why is there a PhysX folder in the STO file, if the game doesn't use it?
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    cavilier210 wrote: »
    Wait, why is there a PhysX folder in the STO file, if the game doesn't use it?

    Good question. Perhaps it might have something to do with STO being sponsored by nVidia?
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Ruivo wrote:
    Good question. Perhaps it might have something to do with STO being sponsored by nVidia?
    We get sponsored by nVidia?
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    The game does use PhysX, that much is obvious from the few physics(ground combat debris etc) that is in the game and the option to turn on GPU accelerated physics in the game.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    If you could blow a nacelle off a ship then what happens when the owner of that ship gets tossed a couple engie teams?
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    coderanger wrote:
    We get sponsored by nVidia?

    Didn't you? I swear i saw a "Best played on nVidia" or something like that somwhere..

    Anyway, i think someone once said that one of the issues with blowing off nacelles is that you wouldn't be able to get back to a starbase for repairs. Although this could be fixed by having a distress call system in place, and instead of using an NPC tow/repair ship, we could have other engineer players helping out and answering distress calls. Only outside battle though, so the enemy would have to be killed off first.


    Not to mention that i'm all for heavier damage penalties. Lose a ship, and its LOST.. you'll have to escape in escape pods and send in a distress call, and then using a free token for a new ship with standard gear.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    coderanger wrote:
    We get sponsored by nVidia?

    at the very least their logo appears at the bottom of your website's home page.

    anyway: i agree with a lot of other people's concerns about how it could impact gameplay and if the effect was only cosmetic, what would the point be? not that pretty looking things aren't important...
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    cmdrshran wrote: »
    at the very least their logo appears at the bottom of your website's home page.

    pwnt
    /10char
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    cmdrshran wrote: »
    at the very least their logo appears at the bottom of your website's home page.

    The logo of "nvidia - the way it's meant to be played" ...

    http://www.startrekonline.com/themes/startrek/img/footer/nvidia.png

    ...has nothing to do with sponsoring. It's a program to support developers with knowledge and help in exchange for putting a logo in the game. More information here:
    The way it's meant to be played

    NVIDIA debuted a new campaign to motivate developers to optimize their titles for NVIDIA hardware at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2002. In exchange for prominently displaying the NVIDIA logo on the outside of the game packaging, NVIDIA offered free access to a state of the art test lab in Eastern Europe, that tested against 500 different PC configurations for compatibility. Developers also had extensive access to NVIDIA engineers, who helped produce code optimized for NVIDIA products.

    Source:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_Series#cite_note-2

    and

    http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_gdc2k2_02.html
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Thaxx wrote: »
    The logo of "nvidia - the way it's meant to be played" ...

    http://www.startrekonline.com/themes/startrek/img/footer/nvidia.png

    ...has nothing to do with sponsoring. It's a program to support developers with knowledge and help in exchange for putting a logo in the game. More information here:



    Source:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_Series#cite_note-2

    and

    http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_gdc2k2_02.html

    i guessed it wan't sponsorship: the devs know what they're talking about, that's why i didn't say thaey were sponsored by i just stated that the logo was there. i tried to make the point that the presence of the logo may have confused the person that was quoted first, sorry i wasn't clearer. I thought "at the very least" would convey that there was some kind of partnership even if sponsorship was not the reason.
    thank you for the info too, that's a pretty cool program they have
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    It's still sponsorship :p Although its service sponsorship and not financial :)
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Ruivo wrote:
    Not to mention that i'm all for heavier damage penalties. Lose a ship, and its LOST.. you'll have to escape in escape pods and send in a distress call, and then using a free token for a new ship with standard gear.

    absolutely not. the time we've all invested in obtaining the ships/loadouts we wanted isn't something to be thrown away, only to start over again as a BG/RA in a B'rel/Miranda? that would be unacceptable, and be sufficient cause for me to abandon STO.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Ruivo wrote:
    It's still sponsorship :p Although its service sponsorship and not financial :)

    i hate semantics and technicalities, i'm just going to call it a partnership of some description and leave it at that. Sorry to the OP for taking your thread off at a tangent.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Krenn wrote: »
    absolutely not. the time we've all invested in obtaining the ships/loadouts we wanted isn't something to be thrown away, only to start over again as a BG/RA in a B'rel/Miranda? that would be unacceptable, and be sufficient cause for me to abandon STO.

    No no, you would get another free token for whatever ship you were commanding. If you were flying an Akira as a VA, then you'd get a free T3 escort token. Just so that we don't get the feeling that we're magically "respawning". You'd have to have the trouble of limping back to the nearest starbase.

    You would still lose your gear, but maybe there could be a system in place so that you could salvage some of your gear from a yellow loot mark, just as with NPC ships. I'd also propose that in this case our ships could be made more resilient and harder to kill.
    cmdrshran wrote: »
    i hate semantics and technicalities, i'm just going to call it a partnership of some description and leave it at that. Sorry to the OP for taking your thread off at a tangent.

    Lol, agreed, i'm really an TRIBBLE :p
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Ruivo wrote:

    Anyway, i think someone once said that one of the issues with blowing off nacelles is that you wouldn't be able to get back to a starbase for repairs. Although this could be fixed by having a distress call system in place, and instead of using an NPC tow/repair ship, we could have other engineer players helping out and answering distress calls. Only outside battle though, so the enemy would have to be killed off first.
    .

    I seem to recall an episode of Enterprise where the ship essentially lost a nacelle, and was still able to travel at warp, only it was stuck at about warp 1.9 or so. I think it was the 50 First Dates episode, where Archer had that subspace parasite in his head that was preventing him from forming new memories.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    rpell wrote:
    I seem to recall an episode of Enterprise where the ship essentially lost a nacelle, and was still able to travel at warp, only it was stuck at about warp 1.9 or so. I think it was the 50 First Dates episode, where Archer had that subspace parasite in his head that was preventing him from forming new memories.

    Yeah, that's right, i remember now. Furthermore, Prometheus saucer section is warp-capable with just one nacelle. Its a good idea as well, to travel through sector space at minimum speed :p
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    All you need to travel at warp is something to generate the warp field (bubble) and something to polarize it to move forward, one nacelle can generate a warp field and polarize it, it's just not as efficient/strong as the current 2 nacelle design. It's always been sorta of a random thing in the series if a nacelle taken out could cripple a ship, seems to vary from series to series or even season to season and sometimes explained away that it overloaded key power conduits through out said ship.

    PhysX would be nice to see in game, picture if you can, an asteroid field in motion, something to give people reason to stay out of it, because of how treacherous it is to navigate.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    PhysX should be avoided. Why? Because you'd be alienating your AMD GPU base.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    PhysX has its pros and cons, but can still be off loaded to either the CPU or GPU, AMD's havok on the other hand can't and thus all of it loads on your CPU hence BFBC2 only really shines on good systems.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    coderanger wrote:
    We get sponsored by nVidia?

    Well, it seems like nvidia fix at least some of your bug reports while ATI ignore them completely. That's like sponsorship, kinda?
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Miiru wrote:
    Well, it seems like nvidia fix at least some of your bug reports while ATI ignore them completely. That's like sponsorship, kinda?

    AMD tends to do that now and again with games that sport that "Plays best on nVidia." logo. That's why I'm no longer using AMD hardware in any of my computers. That attitude is just downright stupid.
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    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Ruivo wrote:
    No no, you would get another free token for whatever ship you were commanding. If you were flying an Akira as a VA, then you'd get a free T3 escort token. Just so that we don't get the feeling that we're magically "respawning". You'd have to have the trouble of limping back to the nearest starbase.

    You would still lose your gear, but maybe there could be a system in place so that you could salvage some of your gear from a yellow loot mark, just as with NPC ships. I'd also propose that in this case our ships could be made more resilient and harder to kill.

    Still not something I'd like to see implemented
  • Options
    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    ivarST wrote:
    So I started to wonder about this.

    Obviously we don´t have anything approaching it, with ships exploding the same way over&over again and the sudden "bullet-time" during ground combat whenever you get hung up on some shrub.

    Not a programmer, so not so sure if this could be even added to the current ("COH" :p ) engine. But it surely would improve the overall game play. Wouldn´t you think?

    Having warp nacelles breaking of or saucers with punched through holes right before core breach?
    Shrubbery that actually parts before you, or turret debris that doens´t fly of like it´s punted whenever I walk over it ...

    Your thoughts?

    Heck even wandering Devs can chime in. If they dare. :D

    AMD writes PhysX in a way that (surprise surprise), it runs horribly if you don't have an AMD card. They deliberately mucked up the software version of PhysX because modern CPUs could easily do those calculations nearly as fast as a GPU, and we can't have people get a satisfying PhysX experience if they're running a competitor's GPU, can we?

    Seriously. If you want decent physics, do it in DirectX 11, not PhysX.
  • Options
    Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited July 2010
    Ruivo wrote:
    No no, you would get another free token for whatever ship you were commanding. If you were flying an Akira as a VA, then you'd get a free T3 escort token. Just so that we don't get the feeling that we're magically "respawning". You'd have to have the trouble of limping back to the nearest starbase.

    You would still lose your gear, but maybe there could be a system in place so that you could salvage some of your gear from a yellow loot mark, just as with NPC ships. I'd also propose that in this case our ships could be made more resilient and harder to kill.



    Lol, agreed, i'm really an TRIBBLE :p

    would I also get tokens for weapons, purple, sghilds, purple, engines/consoles blue/green?:rolleyes:
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