NVIDIA PhysX Engine Now is Open-Source

WareTernal

2018-12-03 20:01

Kaarme:

Does this mean AMD could simply hardware accelerate PhysX on Radeon GPUs through their own driver changes

I think it just means that devs can use SDK in their applications without worrying about Nvidia's licensing agreement, including the SDK license fee of $10,000 per Physics Application per platform. Devs were also required to advertise Physx and Nvidia with their products and do some other things to comply.

#5613180

Andrew LB

2018-12-03 21:35

ManofGod:

My opinion is that they are releasing it because they can no longer milk customers with it.

It's called "paying off your investment". You guys act like hardware accellerated physX just magically appeared at nVidia one day free of charge. They paid for it, invested in it, and improved it. all that costs $$$. Money that needs to be made up as well as a profit. Its obvious you're not a business owner. Because if you were, you'd be long out of business.

#5613189

ObscureangelPT

2018-12-03 22:09

I don't get why people only care about GPU PhysX. AMD won't be able to run PhysX even if open sourced because of the lack of x87 instructions. But what is shocking to me, it's that in this website, people only see PhysX as the GPU accelerated Physics software. Can it be that nobody is aware that PhysX it is used in hundreds of games nowdays for regular ragdoll physics, wind, water and cloth physics by just using the CPU for it? Pretty much a ton of games have PhysX3.dlls on their games but it is only used for CPU physics. The fact that it is finally open source will enable developers to learn how GPU physics were done and port it over to a decent technology like OpenCL or DirectCompute, but also to refine even better the multi-threading of the CPU physX. It's a big victory to the developers team. Cheers

#5613193

ManofGod

2018-12-03 22:19

Andrew LB:

It's called "paying off your investment". You guys act like hardware accellerated physX just magically appeared at nVidia one day free of charge. They paid for it, invested in it, and improved it. all that costs $$$. Money that needs to be made up as well as a profit. Its obvious you're not a business owner. Because if you were, you'd be long out of business.

Oh? So that is why they blocked AMD cards from being used in the same computer with an Nvidia card when using PhysX? Sounds like total bunk to me.

#5613195

AMDfan

2018-12-03 22:22

Now no one uses it any longer they make it open source, good one NVIDIA. Now we can finaly make the shift To DX12 and Vulkan.... thanks for nothing

#5613216

Kaerar

2018-12-03 23:03

Andrew LB:

It's called "paying off your investment". You guys act like hardware accellerated physX just magically appeared at nVidia one day free of charge. They paid for it, invested in it, and improved it. all that costs $$$. Money that needs to be made up as well as a profit. Its obvious you're not a business owner. Because if you were, you'd be long out of business.

BS apologist nonsense is still BS apologist nonsense. Fact, Nvidia did buy PhysX when they acquired Ageia. Most of the legwork had been done. They changed it from open to closed source and basically rendered any chance of PhysX being widely used as dead in the water when they did that. They had the option at the time to take over the market but they had the mentality to do it at the cost of their competitors before they had the market share to do so. Hence PhysX is now just a novelty like something black and 10" in a certain type of store...

#5613220

-Tj-

2018-12-03 23:09

So Physx 4.0. what about that other stuff like flex, flow, turf and what not.. is that still another layer on top of it all? Edit: nvm I googled and saw it's still a separate thing. https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-visualfx-overview https://developer.nvidia.com/physx-sdk

#5613244

alanm

2018-12-03 23:54

Lets hope they open source their Gsync tech as well.

#5613248

icedman

2018-12-04 00:07

alanm:

Lets hope they open source their Gsync tech as well.

Or you know they could just support the already open source and free standard that is freesync sure it may not be as good but it doesnt matter its the free standard i cant stand Nvidia sometimes but i love their cards.

#5613250

-Tj-

2018-12-04 00:13

alanm:

Lets hope they open source their Gsync tech as well.

I rather have freesync possible on nvidia card. Already got a FS2.0 144HZ monitor

#5613251

Redemption80

2018-12-04 00:14

Me too, i know it's worse on paper but the choice monitor wise is much larger. I see that even some Samsung TV's have support.

#5613258

Noisiv

2018-12-04 00:31

icedman:

Or you know they could just support the already open source and free standard that is freesync sure it may not be as good but it doesnt matter its the free standard i cant stand Nvidia sometimes but i love their cards.

You mean Adaptive sync which is a VESA DisplayPort standard. Freesync is AMD's implementation of said standard. But yeah... it's overdue.

-Tj-:

So Physx 4.0. what about that other stuff like flex, flow, turf and what not.. is that still another layer on top of it all?

Nvidia added cross platform support for Flex long ago. But can't use it in KF2 because it's UE3. Needs UE4

#5613263

Fox2232

2018-12-04 00:48

Just to add little fire for those naive few. Thinking about building DirectCompute/OpenCL alternative paths, so one could switch like in original Ageia's implementation between CPU and GPU... There was time for it. That time has passed around 5 years ago. Because most of people willing and able to do it gave up by then. When you want something you can't have, you are going to give up on it one day as long as it is not essential. And PhysX made itself less than essential, in many games it made itself an nuisance even for nVidia's GPU owners.

#5613265

sverek

2018-12-04 00:58

Is it PhysX even worth considering nowadays, aren't there better options around?

#5613272

Redemption80

2018-12-04 01:05

sverek:

Is it PhysX even worth considering nowadays, aren't there better options around?

I will admit t being abit out of the loop these days but I don't think so. There may be some good inhouse options, but for the majority of devs who don't have the money to develop their own engine i don't think there are alot of good options.

#5613309

sykozis

2018-12-04 05:11

sverek:

Is it PhysX even worth considering nowadays, aren't there better options around?

There are other viable options.... but whether or not they're "better" is a matter of opinion. Bullet Physics can supposedly do everything PhysX can do. Bullet was developed for OpenCL, so it's able to be run on CPU or GPU. Bullet was used in 3DMark and 3DMark11....as well as a few games. Havok can supposedly run on CPU and GPU, but it's owned by Microsoft now....so probably buggier than PhysX.

ObscureangelPT:

AMD won't be able to run PhysX even if open sourced because of the lack of x87 instructions.

The Ageia source was written for x87 instructions. NVidia supposedly updated the code for SSE instructions a few years ago to improve CPU PhysX performance. Ageia used x87 instructions specifically because it gimped CPU PhysX performance and justified the existence of their PhysX accelerator cards. At the time PhysX was originally developed, the x87 instruction set had already been deprecated by both Intel and AMD. Had Intel not allowed their x87 instruction set patent to expire, things may have turned out very differently for PhysX.....

#5613311