That would be neat, but as has been said, Skyrim will rely on Havok - sadly, obviously without clothing physics. I'd really like to see what Skyrim's physics are capable off, though. The trailer didn't show anything worth noting. =/

1) That video was absurd - the "No PhysX" option really was "none", when we all know that most games can do a lot (not all) of that without a physics engine at all. The "no PhysX" option wasn't even trying to present a similar scene, when I know for a fact that some of those effects could be done with static animations.

Note - I'm not saying that everything in the video could have been done without a physics engine, only that they specifically dumbed down the non-PhysX scenes where you COULD have implemented a very similar feature with different methods, for contrast. It was a totally marketing spud.

2) PhysX really only works "well" with an nVidia card - but then, that's why they bought the technology... It's a major marketing gimmick. No nVidia card? Expect to lag like nuts because it's hammering your CPU - or, get irritated because the game unnecessarily looks like poo when the game engine turns off all of the effects to salvage the frame rate. Most people will blame their graphics card for this - which I have no doubt would make nvidia smile.

I would like to see that demo run again, only with the Non-PhysX scene rendered with Havok - oh, and have the demo machine running an AMD/ATI board.

3) Havok is "cross platform" in the sense that it works equally well across either ATI or nVidia cards, and is a decent enough physics platform for an RPG like Skyrim. Frankly, Bethesda hasn't (so far) used all of Havok's features - because I know that it can do correct cloth simulation, water simulation, etc. So, even sticking with Havok, they could implement about 90+% of the effects you saw in that clip in Skyrim.

4) While it may not be as heavily optimized as PhysX, you can implement Havok on the xbox 360 and PS3 - which means that everyone gets to see the same effect.

http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=havok-cloth

Not necessarily. Havok couldn't do cloth when Oblivion was released, but it can now. In fact, check out the rest of the demos on the Havok site - I think you might be surprised at what it can do.

I remember playing Batman: Arkham Asylum with a Geforce 8800GT and the PhysX was awesome. Then I bought Radeon 5770 and the PhysX lagged like hell, even though the card is twice as fast. That's the thing I hate most about playing with PC. The competition between hardware companies is just ridiculous. =(

1. I don't know what video you are referring to, but there have been games come out where people can verify the difference between physX and non physX already, also there are many videos what show effects that really do require advanced physics, like in a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBYB596jNOw where they show glass windows being trashed by a spray of gun fire. You can see this isn't a static animation as the shattered glass is still having physics applied to it from things like explosions.

2. Well they didn't buy it for charity, they are a large corperation, they are going to do it for profit, tho beforehand the technology hardly was taking off because people didn't want to buy dedicated physics cards. Have you asked yourself why Intel brought Havok by any chance?

3. This is not really what "cross platform" means, Havok has NOTHING to do with the graphics cards. Even then, PhysX still will work off of the CPU too, it's just not as suited to it as Havok is since Havok is solely designed for that. In the long run, Bullet would be a better option, since it's open source and can support that novel OpenCL hardware acceleration.

4. Not really, no. Sure it'll be the same physics engine, but you won't see the same effects, you will see somewhat the same physics. However again, all those systems can also handle PhysX... so that's really not an advantage of Havok.

Anybody that thinks you will really be losing out just for having an ATI card is mistaken on that front, you won't, it will just mean that things you use Havok for on nVidia cards would be shifted over to PhysX instead. I believe the latest version of the Gamesbro engine (Oblivion, Fallout 3 and NV used previous versions to this I believe) is already capable of this.

actually Oblivion could do cloth physics, in a way. if you do the quest for Meridia I think you will find a necromancer tapestry that will react whenever you run into it. why this wasn't implemented much we will never know

there is a havok cloth sim

You want to ask a question like that when there were numerous other physics issues in the game, like why do corpses fall at half the speed of anything else, or why does my paintbrush float in the air (tho that was just an issue with it not being tagged to havok)... or maybe the lovely... how did I impale that man's chest into the door? Anyway, Cloth processing back in 2006 was tramendously expensive on the CPU, that's likely the reason. The power a CPU has now in 2011, is about... 12 times more processing power, that's why cloth is starting to become more available to Havok now, but processing it in a game is still going to push the CPU*, hardware acceleration off-loads that load, else where, in this case the CUDA architechture on an nVidia graphics card.

* it's one thing to have a demo of cloth, it's entirely another thing to have interactive cloth on every NPC in the middle of a city with 20 different/unique NPCs and processing a game. As processing power continues to increase, the overall % of processing power required from the CPU for it will drop... but again, a simple specific demo is entirely different to using it, inside of a game. Meanwhile, Hardware accelation is already capable of handling this and more, while still support all the fancy graphics and adds a lot less load to the CPU, meaning you are also less like to suffer lag issues from the CPU being overloaded.

Slightly tangential to the topic, but it always annoys me when people "call nvidia out" on only them supporting physx, them being first with 3D, so on as anti-competitive.

If nVidia hadn't bought PhysX, there would be no physx. It's not a failing of nVidia that they did, it's a failing of ATI that they didn't. In general terms, ATI can match nVidia, but when it comes to adopting new technologies ATI don't even try.

On the topic of the video, it really is a terrible video to show it off. That's like showing how good your shadows are by having a) Shadows, and B) No shadows. Well, gee, you really beat the competition that /we can't compare you to in this video/.

It's a pity, because the difference between physx-powered physics and non-physx-powered physics can be quite astounding.

Physx is a joke, it's a marketing tool for Nvidia to get a push toward their GPU's over ATI. The use of physx in games on the CPU can cripple a system taht isn't running an nvidia GPU, thus makign it very "un-optional."

I have a 5850 and I can't even use it in Batman:AA cause it is so terrible on the cpu.

I use an ATI card so no please don't use it Beth! I'm pretty sure they already said theyre using Havok though....

Sheesh, it's like we have stepped away from the Morrowind/Oblivion really devoted fan war into the ATI/nVidia really devoted fan war.

My points were 1) the video was practically misleading, 2) much of what PhysX is famous for can now be done with Havok, if perhaps a bit slower, and 3) Havok is cross platform - which means you don't have to irritate console and ATI/AMD users to make nVidia users happy.

I never said PhysX wasn't good, and I know as well as anybody else that nVidia bought the technology as a way to get a leg up on the competition. I can also tell when PhysX extensions are turned on in a game as well as anyone else, and they are nice. I actually own an nVidia card that can us PhysX and CUDA - so I certainly don't mind seeing it in a game. I've seen the rest of the sled demo, where they simulate a bridge breaking into a million particles, and it still flowed smoothly (well, on an incredibly high-end rig with dual/SLI Fermi rig, but still) It's an impressive technology.

IOW, in the unlikely event Skyrim is PhysX capable, I would certainly be seen making sure it was turned on, since I can run it.

However, it isn't really "necessary", and it generally ends up making cross-platform support tougher. To me, and I suspect Bethesda, the cross platform issue is a real problem, and while Havok may not be as fancy, or as fast, as PhysX, it gives you a more or less even playing field for physics modeling across a variety of platforms.

Lastly, RPG's are not (generally) as graphically demanding as FPS's. We aren't going to be launching RPG's or hundreds of bullets at buildings in Skyrim, we are going to be running around with swords and spells. Even without GPU acceleration, you can get many of the nice effects we want like water, cloth, etc. that seems to behave correctly. IOW, if we have clothes and flags that flap in the wind, water that splashes when we jump in it, and the ability to bounce bottles off of NPC's, I think most TES players will jump for joy.

Frankly, I'd rather see Bethesda spend the money they would spend on PhysX support going into other areas, like NPC AI and quest development.

GO HAVOK AND GO IRELAND

The CPU version is http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT070510142143. Because of this, PhysX is a truly awful middleware that so few developers as possible should use it. It's much better to use Havok which is much more efficient for the CPU as it takes advantage of multiple cores and more modern instructions, and it is what Skyrim will use, so yay ^_^


It would work perfectly well if PhysX was optimized for modern CPUs, but it's not. But if it was, then you wouldn't have to buy a new modern NVIDIA card instead, which is what NVIDIA wants

THIS!

While it's certainly a "dike move" by nVidia, it doesn't change the fact that a GPU is more suited to doing hundreds of different calculations at once, and especially with today's GPUs having rather more power than is necessary for most games, it makes sense. Even when comparing it to havok, or bullet, you get significantly better performance for many small objects.

It's not a dike move by nVidia, it's more simply that the threading differences between there CUDA architecture and an x86-64 chipset are different and need different scripting/programming. They are fixing it and it will probably catch up more on the CPU front as multi-threading is implemented correctly.



Again, as I have said, 1. WHAT video? I have linked to a video, it's accurate of what it can do.

2. Havok can't do it on the scale PhysX can, many of the things it's now catching up to are just demos, running them in a game can be too intensive, running cloth on every character in a single zone will be heavily CPU intensive, I am sure some level of cloth can be run, but to run every single character with high levels of it, I don't while PhysX can simulate that without issue.

3. Again PhysX is also "Cross-Platform", it can work on the PS3, X-Box 360 or Wii.

As for the "ATI/nVidia wars", no, that's the problem. People are derailing something we would like to see because of that, we'd like to see PhysX in Skyrim, it's that simple, we don't want to enforce it over ATI users and have never said we'd want to and this has been the biggest issue, why are people bringing up ATI in this at all? I didn't start that, nor did the OP. In fact I have even mentioned that ATI is going down the bullet line which should be hardware accelerated (tho I haven't looked up how well it is yes). But we have PhysX here now, the cost of implementation is only the developers to implement it since the SDKs for PhysX are free. As it goes, I highly doubt it'll be implemented in Skyrim, since that's still a "cost". RPGs aren't always graphics demanding, however this is a game series that is still First Person and it is still nice to have good physics and graphics, more so in an action/adventure RPG like Skyrim...