Why Don't We See PhysX-like Features In Today's Games?

[@cameronbrown9266]

The Arkham games had awesome phys x! Smoke, snow, objects on the ground would move when you ran past them! Made the game so much cooler!

[@marsMayflower]

Yup, I can't think of a game since that did it better.

[@lukky6648]

You could bottleneck your performance by using too many freeze blasts because those little particles would never dissapeared unless you left the area

[@eruannster]

Yeah, the snow and smoke were actually, genuinely really cool in those games. Batman whisks his cape around and the smoke wooshes around on the ground. It added a lot of ambience.

[@wile123456]

And it was always a gimmick because they made the game for consoles where it wasn't active (even though PS3's Nvidia GPU had support for physx) so they don't play any part in gameplay.

[@eruannster]

@@wile123456 By that same definition of not affecting gameplay, neither does raytracing. It just makes the game look prettier, but it doesn't make it different to play in any way.

[@Jaap-Relou]

This is one of the features that still feels very much “next gen” but already is gone from most features list for developers. Its a shame

[@42crazyguy]

Physx in Mirrors edge was minor but still neat. I loved shooting holes in tarps in and seeing them wave differently in the wind. Was so cool.

[@aterikasedi]

Mafia 2's physx particle effects was great

[@47KRoman]

Yep, loved it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fZrKlZqCgcuBoJosi=uKn3-j7YUrcuF1YQ

[@Lucromis]

I LOVED physx’s promise and some implementation. Open source physics more common on games like havoc again would be welcome. We’ve gone backwards on destruction and interactive toilets.

[@protocetid]

It’s absurd that these features just didn’t become standard, specially when you consider nearly every game uses the same two engines. We just need Epic implement them in UE5 and we’ll be half way there.

[@poposterous236]

Me seeing a tank go through a building in the Crysis promos in 2006: videogames in the future are going to be amazing Videogames in 2024: You said microtransactions, right? That's what you wanted? Ways to give us money after you bought our product, that was your wish. Correct.

[@KarltheBarl]

I demand flushable toilets in all games as an advertised feature on the front cover

[@xXYannuschXx]

@@poposterous236 THIS so much. Even the Crysis games went back on interactivity so much with the second and third title. Crysis 1 still feels next gen somehow, nearly 2 friggin decades later...

[@coryv5679]

Borderlands with PhysX was pretty cool. I liked being able to make pools of goo and see their physics on the things the goo would land on. Seeing pools of whatever I was shooting out of my gun was pretty cool.

[@gotenks157]

😏

[@fcukugimmeausername]

Are we talking about games?

[@wile123456]

Physx water physics was terrible and always ugly. Chunk of jelly it can simulate, but not fluids. the bullet debri stuff is what actually adds something meaningful, but that shit can be done with simple particles even in source engine games etc

[@Tailslol]

The last time I saw a physX demo was Luigi mansion 3.

[@Superdazzu2]

i remember playing borderlands 2 and being mind blown by debris and liquids orbiting around gravity grenades, or bits of enemies and dirt/rocks filling the screen, cloths being moved by gunshots or ability impacts because of the wind, same with borderlands the pre sequel

[@wile123456]

There were no liquids in borderlands 2. Physx can't simulate it, only simulate jelly chunks

[@DonkeyDongs9000]

​@@wile123456If you go to caustic caverns theres a leaky pipe with water right at the start.

[@mrfilcritic]

GTA 4 had some awesome physics utilizing euphoria tech. I put so many hours into that game just messing around with the physics. Would love a DF retro on that game someday.

[@i3l4ckskillzz79]

This needs to be pinned

[@Broformist]

Yep, GTA V having much simplified physics is the reason why it runs better than IV. It wasn't due to any miracles of optimization like reviewers claimed.

[@gavinderulo12]

​@@Broformistwhat? They made huge engine improvements. Gta 4 and red dead 1 were a mess. Gta 5 cleaned that up, which allowed them to be much more flexible with updates for gta online. Red dead 2 has the best physics out of all the rockstar games.

[@TheLucidChiba]

​@@gavinderulo12RD2 is their best yes, but 4 still had better physics and detail than 5 though.

[@bloomerb4162]

The driving was so much more fun in 4 bc of the physics.

[@EricRidesDirt]

Borderlands 2 was a fantastic example of why PhysX was amazing. Peak gaming was seeing particles and debris flying everywhere and witnessing the aftermath of a big battle.

[@alephnole7009]

Also recommend looking into Cryostasis if you haven't seen that one

[@turgor127]

Killing Floor 2 was brutal.

[@Igoreshkin]

For me it was Batman AA

[@EricRidesDirt]

@@alephnole7009 I remeber seeing footage of Cryostasis but I never played iut.

[@snake2106]

Framerate takes major hit with Physx high even on high end hardware after playing for an hour or so

[@CriPPleR_HD]

Batman Arkham Asylum Phys-X was amazing. I remember having 2 GPU’s and thinking it was so worth it. The smoke, the money flying everywhere, etc. so good!

[@Nicholas_Steel]

Are you sure you're not thinking of Arkham City? I think Arkham Asylum only had it for like, hail or rain in one area of the game lol and you had to install a patch from Nvidia to enable it. I don't think the Arkham Asylum patch from Nvidia is compatible with the GOTY release. Edit: Turns out I'm wrong.

[@MetalJody1990]

Arkham City has dollar bills flying everywhere in a bank vault when you play as Cat Woman

[@bricaaron3978]

Yes, he is clearly thinking of Arkham City. The only PhysX-like effect I can think of in Asylum is the fog that is displaced when Batman walks through it or uses his cape. But I thought that was just part of the engine, since there were no PhysX settings in the game (GOTY).

[@riston7264]

@@Nicholas_SteelPhysX definitely still works with the GOTY edition. Source: myself

[@CriPPleR_HD]

@@bricaaron3978 EXACTLY 👍🏽

[@mimimimeow]

I believe many major studios do have such physics simulation code written for GPGPU, they are just not being utilized in many games, partly due to design choices and/or issues with other design elements. For example Ubisoft had a presentation showing them running physics like 25x faster on PS4 GPU than PS3 SPUs. Doesn't mean it's suitable for all projects.

[@2MichalChojnowski2]

Sad thing about physics today is, 15 years old titles being PhysX showcases look impressive. Another sad thing in general, it all started with AGEIA cards bringing hopes for physics-driven games, mechanically-wise, but it all end up mostly as eye candy like prettier versions of explosions and fps killer for non-Nvidia cards. With limited capabilities of consoles it looks like ray tracing took physics' place. I'd like physics more - it was not only nice to look at, but also fun to play with.

[@bricaaron3978]

The Great Consolization of 2008.

[@kainlamond]

Well just like ray tracing's it can't ever be fully implemented till everyone is on the same page and similar performance. It'll just be a tacked on fps killer

[@burningsheep4473]

@@kainlamondIt's just a matter of weird prioritization I think. And inreasingly diminishing returns. All those games that used to give me trouble run great now. In fact, Far Cry 2 was never that demanding in spite of all of that physics simulation. Ran great on almost max settings on both a GT240M and GT820M. But nowadays random games that often don't look like much, require far superior hardware to run properly at all.....

[@bricaaron3978]

@@burningsheep4473 *"But nowadays random games that often don't look like much, require far superior hardware to run properly at all..."* Yes, that's because they are toss-ports. Many people believe that consoles now have the same HW as PCs, but that's false. Consoles have a unified memory architecture. On top of that, they have very weak CPUs and very little memory, both of which are static, of course (A _mid-range_ gaming PC has 16GB RAM + 8GB VRAM = 24GB, whereas a Series X has 13.5GB available to games). I think most people would be amazed if they knew how much faster games would run if they were designed and coded for PC.

[@burningsheep4473]

​@@bricaaron3978Well, that's one thing we have definitely seen with quite a few ports of big games last year. What I don't get however is how random Indie games and such often have very high hardware requirements almost irregardless of the visuals. With smaller developers it's probably more a lack of ressources, manpower, expertise.

[@sashen6678]

I'm playing Arkham Knight with GPU PhysX enabled and noticed that the effects are buggy if I didn't cap it to 60fps(no issues running it uncapped with PhysX disabled)... It seemed to be a common issue with other hw accellerated titles also(Mafia II classic and Mirrors Edge had the same problem in my experience)...

[@cyphaborg6598]

tbh that game was released in a terrible state. I highly doubt they fixed everything.

[@chrisrichfield8906]

I've seen a lot of people say they cant even get the game to work at all with physx enabled.

[@bricaaron3978]

Alice: Madness Returns drops PhysX altogether if ran at 120 fps. At 60 fps it's fine. This seems like a coding problem that should have been fixed long, long ago.

[@NexGenTek]

Arkham Knight runs amazingly now the physx maxed out 90fps

[@adorablebob]

The vortex/black hole grenades were amazing in BL2 with the PhysX elements.

[@Glowbox3D]

The Finals is the first time in a long time (Bad Company 2) where destruction impressed me. It looks great, and it plays great, even on my 2070. We need more of this!

[@MontanaDaddy]

Half Life 2 is still one of the most immersive and replayable games due to its physics.

[@6ch6ris6]

that game will never age poorly. Masterpiece in every way

[@fcukugimmeausername]

@@6ch6ris6 Maybe so, but Half-Life 1 is much superior.

[@flamingscar5263]

​@@fcukugimmeausernameheavy disagree As someone who didn't exsit when HL1 came out and came into existence the same year HL2 did, going back and playing both games, HL2 is far superior, it's aged better I still technically haven't beaten HL1, got to the final boss fight and just couldn't figure out what to do? Idk if I brushed over some dialogue or something but I just couldn't figure it out, I also had barely any ammo left in like anything so that didn't help HL2 I've gone back and played many times, but I couldn't stomach another HL1 playthrough unless it's the fan remake Black Mesa

[@CeceliPS3]

@@flamingscar5263 I was alive when HL1 came out. Insane good game, but PvP caught me at a very young age and I spent my energy on CS 1.5/1.6. But when HL2 came out... That was insane. It was on a whole new level. Even though it doesn't erase HL1 achievements, it just casts a huge shadow on it. The immersion, the semi-open world map layouts, the sounds design... I own and still haven't played Black Mesa, but what I can't wait for is HL2 RTX.

[@bricaaron3978]

@@CeceliPS3 I built my first gaming PC in 2008 and Half-Life 2 was one of the demos that got me into gaming, along with the demos for: BioShock F.E.A.R. The Witcher Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Portal Crysis But of all of the high-quality and amazing games I've played and their developers, the Valve of yesteryear was the king of FPS game design. No one understood video games better than those guys, and no one put more care into every single aspect of a game than Valve did. They knew what was required, and would not settle for anything less than perfection.

[@nduncan112593]

Killing Floor 2 with gibs and fluids reminded me of physx in borderlands. It killed performance and was kinda cartoonish looking, but it is still impressive to me today.

[@LordCohliani]

It looks great still! Can't wait for KF3 and I really hope it has the same level - or better - of physics simulation.

[@HerZeL3iDza]

The Gibs look great but the blood look absolutely cartoony compared to the regular blood. And yeah the performance cost is INSANE.

[@vinny-g6s]

I thought it was pretty light for the amount of red you paint the levels, if you had a decent machine.

[@clutch7366]

@@LordCohliani No KF3 news in months! I wonder when they will release the next teaser! I hope they aren’t experiencing anything that could be causing delays… Let’s remain optimistic.

[@MetalJody1990]

In KF2, if I had to choose between the physx and an infinite corpse count, I'd go for the latter. By wave 10, it's insanely disgusting lol!

[@RuukuLada]

The Finals has a ton of networked and gameplay impacting physics objects, highly recommend.

[@xzraiderzx308]

Yep, Embark is full of former Dice devs and they’ve always been really good at player driven spectacle that makes games feel more immersive/ alive.

[@telefrag.]

The Finals is the first game in a long while that got me genuinely excited just to experience the interactivity of the surroundings.

[@bricaaron3978]

I just looked at the Steam Store Page, and it appears that there is nothing good about the game except the destruction.

[@jansongin2636]

Imagine if they implemented hardware phys-x support it would make the game look even better than it looks know

[@Yngvr]

Believable physics in games do so much to make me feel immersed, much more than higher fidelity visuals ever will. In fact, higher fidelity visuals without the physics being on par with it starts creating an uncanny valley for my immersion. So I would really love to see a push for more advanced physics sooner rather than later.

[@ScientificZoom]

Cape of the Batman Arkham Knight is just amazing, especially shoulder plates

[@47KRoman]

Nice to see PhysX topic, looking forward for the upcoming video. I don't understand why it's so forgotten when it was quite remarkable but didn't reach its protentional.

[@dorminbased]

I think impressive physics are more important to video games than RT lighting/shadows/reflections, in fact they give huge amount of gameplay mechanics you can implement. That's why Source engine still holds up so well, they put everything into physics and it even spawned masterpiece that is GMOD. Zelda BOTW and TOTK feel amazing to play since everything behaves like you expect it to behave, the same way it worked back in GTA IV, HL2/GMOD, Max Payne 2/3, Hitman 2016, Fear, to some extent Dying Light, Red Faction Guerilla, Crysis, Just Cause 2/3, Red Dead Redemption 1/2, Boneworks... Good physics make the game feel more immersive and in case of sandbox games it can make for hours upon hours of experimentation and fun.

[@fossilfern]

I remember having a demo disc back 2005/6 with PhysX and there was a tech demo game ( which they turned into an actual game eventually) and trying to run the liquid physx on my AMD FX57 and was really impressed despite it tanking performance.

[@Slodsworth]

Bad company 2 had amazing destruction same as red faction guerrilla

[@FrattaTV]

Alice: Madness Returns has an INSANE amount of Physx

[@WrathDrago]

Ya it's pretty awesome. To bad the game was ment to only be played at 30fps. Any higher and you get timing related problems with weapons and traversal.

[@DalazG]

I think its the consumer demand for locked frames that has stopped most developers. A few dropped frames here and there is often considered "unplayable" by modern users so it isn't worth the effort.

[@AninoNiKugi]

Upscaling tech would have saved Physx just like how it does with 4K and Ray tracing 😆

[@MASJYT]

It is precisely due to 4K and raytracing demands that these resources aren't freed for any meaningful physics based interactions.

[@MetalJody1990]

I loved the PhysX in Borderlands 2, Killing Floor 2, Batman Arkham City, Mirror's Edge, Ghostbusters, and Mafia 2. Also Dirt 2. It had water physics for the mud puddles, which looked great in replays. After the ray tracing hype dies down (maybe by the 11th gen, PhysX needs to come back in full swing. It's just a matter of time. Also, even later down the road, we're gonna have games that have ray tracing, PhysX, and VR together, running at 120 fps. I hope I'm alive by then to see it

[@princepeachfuzz]

John radiates the vine boom sound with his facial expressions 😭😭😭

[@CaesarIII]

Red Faction

[@theuncanspan]

Touché

[@SurrealLeaf]

One thing about all physics stuff is that you cant use it on stuff that might be noticeable. I keep bringing this up but when I played Mad Max, the doors have physics and sometimes you have to blow them up so they "fly off". However its not perfect and lot of times the door falls in a way that blocks progress for few minutes until the door despawns. Even on stuff like HL2 it doesnt take but one glitch in "physics engine" for the puzzle parts to fly in the air and soft lock your progress, needing reload.

[@homersimpson8955]

Writing a stable physics is a very tricky task. Pretty much every physics simulation tends to instability due to precision error inside it's collision engine or due to time frame gap between simulation steps and sometimes due to approximation that all simulated bodies are incompressible riggid bodies, when in reality they not. So lot of tricks applied to make physics stable, it works like 99.999% of times. But yes, sometimes door can stuck. :)

[@AninoNiKugi]

I'd take a game that reacts to my actions realistically than a game that looks realistic.

[@jbway86]

1:28 why John Linneman looking like he caught a bad whiff?

[@Mcnooblet]

Its the old person looking at the young person while they are talking look. Idk why that is happening.

[@ThePlainswalker13]

Memories! My friend and I spent hours in Crackdown sniping car tires on the highway just to watch the cars instantly fling off into space.

[@StudioTatsu]

I wouldn't mind Alex testing out some of my vehicle destruction prototype games. PhysX is fun when used right. Unfortunately, I don't think DF explores indie devs as much.

[@tehauraiarcher3767]

Batman, Alice madness returns, Borderlands 2.... So much memories!

[@bricaaron3978]

Ollie pinched me smalls!

[@satnav1980]

I wish we could get back to physics in games, as well as more believable AI. I remember the AI in Half-Life 2 and FEAR being quite awesome.

[@SWOTHDRA]

Especially Fear , but also the original outcast from 1999 amazing AI for that time, gaming has totally regressed. Must be due to the influx of women as leaders, they dont wanna push technology they all want fortnite type games with colors and social gaming none sense

[@joa1401]

@@SWOTHDRAyes, let’s blame the womenfolk. i’ve never forgiven them for all collectively agreeing not to date me, the frigid harlots

[@paullucci]

Very hopeful this branch of gaming, the systems driven stuff, can see the revival it deserves. I think the dynamism of overlapping systems is what people are really looking for from an open world experience.

[@glitchvid]

Plenty of games have cloth physics currently, even fully integrated, but that was largely made possible with SIMD extensions on the CPU. Similarly, particle collisions and physics are done on the GPU using compute shaders these days, any limitations are artistic not technical. A good demonstration of the latter is the Battlefront II level Naboo, where the wind picks up leaves and creates clusters of leaves and debris in dust devils; something you'd see PhysX be touted for done with little expense other than particle artist effort now.

[@Xathian]

I am still enamoured by PhysX in Borderlands 2. With that set to the highest option and you going ham with grenades, rockets and elemental effects it looks amazing as sludge and rock particles are flying all over

[@cauereis2064]

i wish they would still use it, because it was amazing in the games that had it. Mafia 2, borderlands 2, Alice madness returns, AC Black Flag... they are all different experiences with that turn off.

[@cmoneytheman]

I play old game sometimes and phy is still great that tech never looked outdated its still games since ps4 era that used it

[@OwtDaftUK]

I hope we get more games like Hydrophobia with the realistic water physics.

[@thumbwarriordx]

I can count on one hand the number of scenes where PhysX made a serious splash. I can't remember them all but at the top is the Scarecrow level of Arkham City and rounding out the bottom are the PhysX demo levels of Unreal Tournament 3 (and my first impression of PhysX)

[@Irixion]

Batman Arkham PhysX was peak. Aside from the crappy drivers crashing Arkham Knight, those memories

[@charlesmetal8224]

Physx is cool, but it's locked to Nvidia hardware only. Some of the more basic features can run on CPU but that's about it. If the physx feature set was open sourced and platform agnostic, it would be far more useful. There are alternatives like chaos in UE5 but they are still be worked on.

[@alumlovescake]

Because all of Nvida old gimmicks caused so much stutter and crashing it was unusable even today games just cant run using gameworks or physx better alternates were found but are only used in games that need it A shame though My autstic brain likes stupid things like that

[@federicocatelli8785]

The crashes🤦

[@ConfusionDistortion]

Should be mentioned, Nvidia broke Physx support for older games on the RTX line with drivers from 2021 on up. This means effects will glitch out, not work, or games will crash if you try to enable it on older titles, like Fallout 4, the Batman games, etc.

[@A_Chocolate_Cookie]

I have a rtx4070 and physx seems to work fine in the games I've tried, supersonic sled techdemo, mirrors edge, ac4, and batman arkham knight (benchmark, haven't played the actual game yet) all work for me with latest drivers. Also tried mafia 2 (benchmark) and it worked there too. Got a few others to try, and would try some of the previous games mentioned more thoroughly at some point. But so far it seems to be working.

[@Cheynanigans__]

Unreal Tournament 3 had some physx levels released as DLC that are pretty awesome.

[@theuncanspan]

Im glad so many people are mentioning Red Faction Guerilla and Battlefield Bad Company for they are the benchmark for destruction physics and unfortunately gaming took a different route ever since.

[@toastbrot97]

PhysX is literally the default physics engine in Unity. So almost every 3D unity game within the last 10+ years was running on PhysX. It's software based tho and doesn't run on the gpu, but it still spits out the same results. So if anyone wants to implement more physics tech demo stuff into their games they totally can. Also there is very little reason to have physics run on the GPU these days. The physics algorithms are very efficient now and CPUs are more than fast enough for most video game physics requirements. Also with graphics requirements and costs of GPUs going through the roof recently, i don't know how much sens it would make to offload even more in the rendering pipeline onto the graphics card.

[@bricaaron3978]

My understanding is that the strength of PhysX was not in accelerating physics _per se,_ but in enabling simple physics for a large number of objects simultaneously. I have never seen PhysX used for a game's physics --- for physics that affect gameplay --- I have only ever seen it used for _special effects._

[@naii_]

@@bricaaron3978"I have never seen PhysX used for a game's physics" lol the big two 3D engines are PhysX ONLY for everything physics.

[@bricaaron3978]

@@naii_ The problem is that there are apparently two different packages under the name of "PhysX". The one I'm talking about is the one that most people think of --- the smoke/liquid/clutter acceleration that runs only on NVIDIA hardware. What you are referring to is a separate general physics engine.

[@toastbrot97]

@@bricaaron3978 It's not a different package afaik. It's the same stuff just not hardware accelerate. Pretty much all of the physics you see in games these days are pretty much of fhe same, or greater quality as the ones you've seen in those old physX tech demo implementation. It was just more appearent back in the days because most other physics in games were kinda ass in comparison.

[@mimimimeow]

It does if you plan on massive amount of entities with simulated cloth and particles. Ubisoft does GPU physics at least, and that's partly because 8th gen consoles had lethargic CPUs.

[@JohnLogostini]

The shame about PhysX is it's still better then what's used in games today for example Chaos in Unreal Sucks it's crazy unstable and slow making it almost impossible to work with what took me 2 days to get working in chaos and ran at 15 to 20 fps I was abel to do in just 30 minutes in Apex running at 144 fps

[@ClemyNX]

Zelda too. Games that don't use much physics somewhat feel like they are half in the past.

[@Gluurak]

Seeing it today. I must say PhysX is used today a LOT in Music Videos // Movie // simulation stuff in Science stuff. Same with Raytracing,

[@coopplusone]

Ff7 rebirth also has some interesting physics going on.

[@ShoteR_Omega]

It's very strange though, the rocks feel like they're paper weigh lol

[@Adamantaimai]

like what? I’m playing the game right now but not sure what you referring too.

[@MASJYT]

What? Copy-pasted breakable boxes? Some placed debris here and there you can slightly push when you walk over it? This is as basic as it gets, nothing impressive about it.

[@Dezzyyx]

@@MASJYTyeah I just find it annoying, it doesn't look or act realistic at all and has no bearing on game play

[@MarioMorrone]

The wannabe gimmick of the rope from the last of us 2

[@MarcReisSyllogism]

I really love physics based/integrated games, the game experience effects that it gets are just one of a kind, I never understood why they stopped using/implementing physics or physX like APIs and adding those effects. BeamNG is also a good example of how much fun true physics can be in a game and how long that can carry fun wise. Or Dark Messiah with just that simple kick the enemy into the nemesis, or back in the days when you could physically deconstruct buildings... In general, Especially in VR it's a extremely important fact for immersion and fun, I could carry on for hours... Nice to see you at DF pointing on that!

[@ThomasWinders]

Still own an BFG Ageia card, sitting in my garage, reminding me of the good old days...

[@nolram]

Teardown's physics run entirely on the CPU.

[@mrbobgamingmemes9558]

Yeah, i lf i go too crazy it will crash

[@gymonx11]

Darkest of days also makes use of physx, even going as far as not running at all on amd hardware. Though it has been a while, I do remember it looking pretty good.

[@mariolooney70]

We definitely need more realistic physics in games , physics seem to have been overlooked in next gen games ..

[@Fusion05]

I wish more games used more physics throughout their games. I don't want games driven by physics like teardown, but games with realistic physics are so cool to me.

[@sacb0y]

Mirrors edge and the arkham games having physx made them so memorable for me.

[@skullspirit6472]

biggest problem of Physx is the framedrops mostly even nowadays computers can have large drops of fps in intensive moments js cuz of how it was implemented and "optimised" it would be a tottaly badass addition to games if it didnt eat up your fps like a potato chip bag

[@mrxcs]

I loved in Mirror's Edge, it added a layer of immersion. I wish it comes back with a standalone PCIE card, the way it was before Nvidia bought it.

[@doctorcoke5072]

Assassin's Creed Black Flag had PhysX smoke that made the gunfights more atmospheric (black powder weapons and all).

[@ignisGladius]

After seeing BL2 Phys X, i agree, it needs to make a comeback. If gamers demand it, developers will make it.

[@Awsomegoober]

I remember Planetside 2 had Physx support super early on. It was real cool to see it at the time, but I almost perfectly remember feeling like it just created so much visual noise while trying to play the game (plus its notoriously poor performance lol). It looked amazing, and a giant open world sci-fi Battlefield game is a perfect place to showcase it, but it was kinda distracting. Maybe if they dialed it back a bit and use it for art direction or performance, like how people say good CGI in movies is really just CGI you don't notice.

[@atariplayer3686]

With all the 12-16 core CPUs that come out these days the game engine could allocate 4 cores of the CPU cores to do the hair, cloth, and character body physics to be done on the CPU side of things and the rest of the environmental destruction to be done on the AI/PhysX processing unit board.

[@LucidStrike]

The cloth, hair, water, and destruction physics CIG demonstrated in the Star Engine trailer were amazing.

[@willianjohnam]

The Metro series also had some top tier Physx features.

[@michaelw2263]

Borderlands 2 + PhysX + Singularity grenade was all I needed to be sold on to build a PC back when the game came out. Seriously awesome effects!

[@rainbowsweater]

Max Payne 2 had Havoc physics (I'm probably wrong) but the way the objects changed after every fight was just amazing

[@SpaceAvaliable]

Reinstalled AC4 Black Flag and was running into so many problems PhysX just yesterday. What a coincidence.

[@Boss_Fight_Index_muki]

Increases in general cpu speed pretty much spelled the end for physx cards, especially software based solutions like havok

[@niks660097]

Havok is for rigid body sim and physics for dynamic objects, that is not physx, CPU even now can't do that level of simulation, physx was about doing things like fluid simulation, smoke/fog simulation etc, its not completely gone, devs use GPU compute for it now e.g gpu particles or voxels like teardown.

[@aolson1111]

No, nvidia buying physx did. Nvidia didn't want AMD users to have physx at all, going as far as to disable physx driver support if it detected any AMD GPU, so people couldn't even buy a secondary nvidia GPU just to handle physics.

[@Roach22]

I wonder if games like The Finals will bring a renewed interest by developers to incorporate physics in upcoming games.

[@Drstrange3000]

While the game style isn't my thing, just seeing all the physics and destruction was a real "next gen" moment.

[@Roach22]

@@Drstrange3000 I agree, I couldn’t see anything in that game where I thought a PS4 or Xbox One could run that at a decent frame rate without dropping the resolution to 360p 😝

[@ezeqkkk]

it wAs indeed a clear "frame killer" feature

[@cyberpunk59]

Things such as physx and tessellation are what we need to make games look much better. Those are not so complicated to run and give a much better look and feel to a video game than let's say ray tracing. Can't believe games are still releasing today with the physics and detailed but flat as hell textured of a ps2 video game. Man, you are wearing a cape, why does it look like both parts of your cape are tied to your legs whenever you walk?? Oh at least we can see the grey reflections of the flattest cobblestone path I've ever seen in it, best game ever, 420/-1 rating

[@fathom-r]

Hi Digital Foundry! Do you think Nvidia Omniverse Physx, Blast and Flow technologies have scope for future games? It looks really cool with what Nvidia has been doing with Omniverse and independent models like Blast (Apex earlier) and Flow are now part of Physx API (low-level).

[@burningsheep4473]

The people who made the fan patches for Sacred 2 did simply cut most of that PhysX clutter. But I find it really fascinating to have so many stones and leaves in the environment. The way the latter will be blown around on the wind and congregate on the wayside or how some spells would interact with the stones, isn't something I have seen implemented anywhere else. But using the old PhysX-file really makes the performance significantly worse a lot of the time.

[@Crovon1]

I would rather have phys x than raytracing tbh

[@johnb4467]

I was thinking about this topic, literally, about a week ago. I really loved the usage of PhysX integrations (and their GameWorks) library into more games. GameWorks is still getting used at times (I believe Baldur's Gate 3 utilizes it, though I'm not sure in what aspects?) -- but those really cool PhysX effects in games like Borderlands 2 and the Arkham games...yeah -- you don't really see them anymore. :( I thought it was because developer were trying to shift away from GPU-specific features, but it does make sense if they're simply not being 'pushed' as hard anymore.

[@webbedshadow2601]

I started playing FF7 Remake and the first thing that interested me technologically was being able to kick around objects like traffic cones by running into them

[@Tailslol]

The last time I saw a physX demo was Luigi mansion 3.

[@brkbtjunkie]

Arkham asylum and city were pretty cool with PhysX, Blag Flag was also very cool but horribly optimized with it enabled.

[@mttrashcan-bg1ro]

I liked Fallout 4's Weapon Debris, I would sit there for like 15 minutes sometimes, just shooting the ground and walls with infinite ammo turned on, and then you throw a grenade or shoot a fatman at the debris and watch it fly all over the place. Borderlands 2 had a lesser version of the effect, being 3 years earlier, but Borderlands 2 had really cool goo PhysX with the weapon elements. Then you have Killing Floor 2 which without Gibs is significantly less satisfying, the fluid is similar to Borderlands 2, but the blood looks kind of like jelly

[@urazoktay7940]

Amazing video, thank you Digital Foundry.

[@KarltheBarl]

Warframe had physx for a good while when support was dropped the creative director at the time Steve basically made his own version that ended up looking better than before

[@sneakingelephant]

Can’t wait for the deep dive video of physx that you have cooking 😊

[@N3gn4v]

No wondering when i am updating GPU drivers the Physx version says its the same version or newer, Been seeing this for a while.

[@OfficialiGamer]

The Just cause games were so much fun, still looking forward to Just Cause 5, as long is it doesn't get canceled

[@ultraokletsgo]

Johns face lmao

[@LeoDavidson]

If you do a PhysX video, please include Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. Not because the PhysX features are amazing (I have no idea if they are) but because they haven't worked in years and neither NVidia nor Ubisoft seem to care as they've left them that way, despite being advertised, headline features of the PC port when it came out, and being broken just a few years later.

[@richard-davies]

Shame it never worked properly on a single GPU when the game came out and still doesn't, tried it a while ago on my 4090 and it still tanks performance and causes very low GPU usage even at 4K which is insane considering how fast a 4090 is compared to GPUs at the time. Will admit though PhysX did run far better when I ran it in SLI around it's release time when I dedicated one GPU for PhysX and the other for the game. With all the power modern systems have it's a crime we don't have more games with really nice physics.

[@crestofhonor2349]

I tried it and it’s a performance killer. Not worth using even on modern hardware despite the cool stuff like smoke

[@LeoDavidson]

@@crestofhonor2349Last I tried it, the physx smoke didn't even work, on top of killing the framerate (which may be due to it being broken, not sure / can't really tell). You can only see what it was meant to look like in videos made back when the game just came out, before driver changes broke everything.

[@LegionIscariot]

Because graphics are being designed to be more static and less dynamic. There was a point where games focused alot on dynamic interactions with the environment. Physics. Destructibility. Nowadays its mostly giant textures. Games are being made to be looked at, not to be interacted with.

[@lasarousi]

I was just noticing that physx had been the same version for years

[@MarioMorrone]

The gimmick to sell gpu now is reflection in puddles, meanwhile nintendo makes a truly step up in physics and element interaction on a tablet

[@DouglasWatt]

Teardown is actually a CPU heavy game, but it is also a GPU heavy game. It will use your system, as much as you can throw at the game. It just doesn't max the CPU loads, but it is a multi-threaded game and has been known to easily cross 20 threads.

[@preimpresionimprentamedina4610]

Will happen the same with ray tracing?

[@richieb74]

I was thinking the same exact thing as rich that the old consoles drove the tech. They were way more powerful cpus for the day. Compared to today where everything runs on the gpu and they don’t do physics nearly as well. Remember all the awesome havok games in the ps3 gen

[@Razumen]

The big problem was that since developers couldn't guarantee that players could run PhysX, they couldn't implement it into the gameplay in any form, so it just became extraneous special effects that never affected anything in the game world. So, why use it when you could just use regular physics systems like Havok that have better performance on every system, integrate it into the gameplay, and be done with it and move on?

[@shremk9100]

Shoutout to Nvidia for locking PhysX hardware acceleration to their own GPUs 💯💯. It always does wonders to a technologys adoption when a large portion of PC gamers and every single console can't even use it 👍.

[@jittertn]

Physx has been open sourced for a few years now. I would say it's developer choice not to use it

[@offspringfan89]

If you researched before parroting "Nvidia bad", you would find out that PhysX has been open sourced years ago. The problem is that developers seldom use it.

[@cyphaborg6598]

BL2 implementation is crazy lol.