Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

[freezeframe]

As Valve demonstrated with Half-Life 2, true-to-life physics can have a lasting impact on gameplay, and next-generation should prove that notion even more so. Ageia hopes to cash in on this trend with their PhysX line of physic-dedicated accelerator cards, of which BFG Technologies was recently announced as second add-on card partner.

What's interesting, however, is how this plays out between PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. At the European Game Developers Conference, Extreme Tech noted that the company confirmed plans to offer software-based rendering for single and dual-core PCs, PCs decked out with PhysX chips and software versions for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

That makes sense to offer development solutions on all platforms, but what's interesting is Ageia's report that Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features because of architecture limitations. PhysX offers technologies ranging from physical object interactions to fluid-based particle effects like water and smoke and reportedly only PS3 and PCs will be able to handle all the goods.

[luv_mist]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

SITE?? LINK?? SOURCE?? Can't toss stuff on here like this and not have something credible to back it up. Not like this PhysX thing is proven though. We'll see. Definitely waiting for one of those three....

[Flawless]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

The Cell architecture is very similar to the PhysX chip from AGEIA. I'll wait to see if Havok says the samethings, then we'll no if the Xbox 360 is limited in this area, or if this particular physics SDK just suits Cell more.

Somebody sent an email to AGEIA about this, and here's the response.

mailto:[email protected]
Hello Asand:



We appreciate your asking about this subject. From what we gather, being that it is 3am in Europe, is that this was a statement taken out of context from a presentation at GDC Europe.



The Xbox 360 currently processes our SDK, and therefore supports the simulation of fluids. We believe this statement was refering to a generic long term statement about types of architectures for handling certain types of fluids. I know of no detailed analysis regarding the advantages or disadvantages of the different architectures in physics processing. We will be getting in contact with the presenter in Europe to get further clarification tomorrow when everyone is up and about.



Does this clarify things for you?



Kim
From: Hasan Ahmad [[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 5:18 PM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: Clarification of Company Comments

...

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

Hooray for speculations.

[fishepa]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

I'm still getting an xbox 360.

[Jon22]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

Also, the Xbox 360 can't handle wasting 1 billion dollars, like Sony can.

[RockyTop1]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

Also, the Xbox 360 can't handle wasting 1 billion dollars, like Sony can.

I beg to differ. If anybody can handle wasting $1 billion dollars, I believe Mr. Gates can.

[fishepa]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

I beg to differ. If anybody can handle wasting $1 billion dollars, I believe Mr. Gates can.

Yep.

[luv_mist]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

So, the XBOX 360 can't handle my fluid physics? Maybe I'll cover it in a plastic bag to keep it waterproof. So many of these thoughts and ideas of systems not even out the gates is just mind boggling. I did hear that PS3 has the ability to give a scan to detect early cancer....

[freezeframe]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

This is definetly a big deal as we are talking about realistic collisions with the environment while maintaining frame rate; visual effects will be more convincing with a mixture of viscous fluids, gas fluids, and realistic motion (gravity and inertia); residual fluid particles will leave traces on the environment. This news definetly has me leaning towards waiting for the Ps3 I really believe Miscrosft is rushing things too quickly and somewhat sloppy.

[Jon22]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

I was more in saying that its not worth wasting a billion dollars and only getting what Sony has. But I guess where just going to have to wait and see, how Socom turns out on the Nex-Gen Playstation

[Flawless]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

Full detail response from AGEIA

Hasan,

Here is the information that I have gathered and edited together.



My cell phone is *removed*. Please don’t hesitate to call me for clarification or, if possible, more details.



Thanks, Andy



The summary of the information below is that AGEIA would like to go on record that we do not have data to support performance comparisons for the PS3 or Xbox360 that would impact any of our physics features. Specifically, statements that the Xbox360 cannot run fluid simulations are not correct. In addition, conclusions about relative performance should not have been stated or implied in our presentations.



Our recent presentations created confusion and debate. Please allow us to clarify the statements we made and correct inferences in things we did not say.



Tom Lassanske is one of the lead AGEIA technical people working with developers. The presentation that caused this issue was given at several conferences, including Microsoft GameFest. The presentation at GDC Europe was presented by one of the European staff, not Tom.



The summary of the section of the presentation is below.



The middle section of the 58-slide presentation is all about how platforms with different processor configurations can map to physics simulation, ranging from single core PC to platforms with more processors. A developer requires at minimum “game-play” physics, but must anticipate that different hardware will have different levels of capability for more advanced simulation. Physics has a different characteristic for level of detail in that the game must handle a wide range of capabilities directly. There is no intrinsic knob that can be turned to reduce the level of detail such as screen resolution in graphics.



The presentation uses implied assumptions on the relative power of the platforms from single core, dual core, console and PC-with-PhysX platforms, based on publicly-available information. The only platforms for which there is actual comparison data at AGEIA are the single core PC, dual core PC and PhysX platforms. There is no current data on the PS3 or Xbox360 on relative performance. The implied difference in performance was from assumptions about the number of compute elements and memory architectures, and how well these might fit to various simulation algorithms as enabled by typical game developers. The difficulty in predicting performance across platforms is that physics is inside a game loop where many other game-related processing is taking place. Again, we don’t have a simple metric like fill-rate that is greatly dependent on the capabilities of the graphics chip and less dependent on what is going on in the game.



The statement has been made that there is a problem with fluid simulations on the Xbox360. There is no data to support this statement nor was this meant to be implied. The Xbox360 obviously has a great deal of compute power and the PowerPC processor is a very capable processor for physics simulation. Our SDK already runs on the Xbox360 and that SDK includes fluid simulation. This is the same SDK that operates on the single core PC and dual core PC. Again, we have not experienced any problems operating any type of simulation on any platform.



The goal of a cross platform SDK is to expose the same features so we enable developers to target that same level of physics features, although, as I stated earlier, the physics effect might have to be scaled across different platforms. Our sources of game titles for our PhysX product are the console and PC title developers that need the highest performance out of their chosen platform. We will do our utmost to get the highest performance from any platform or a competitor will do it instead.



The last point is to correct a factual error in the last paragraph of the ExtremeTech article. The physics computations of the boulder demonstration were running in software in the first case (typically between 4-6 fps on high-end PC processors), consuming almost all of the CPU cycles; and on the PhysX processor in the second case (typically between 40-50 fps), consuming around 20% of one processor (mostly for graphics, with some small overhead for PhysX synchronization). In the past we have hesitated to quote these numbers because of the difficulties in interpreting their meaning. In the case with the PhysX processor on our boulder demonstration, the CPU is doing very little work and thus has idle cycles that could be used for other purposes (making the game more fun), so the differences in frame rate are not meaningful. A more meaningful comparison is one where the software-only demonstration gives the physics a fraction (10%) of the CPU time, as is typical in all games, compared with a PhysX processor example where the same game is running and the PhysX processor offloads the physics calculations. The same comparison can be made between a software-only demonstration on a dual core PC with the appropriate loading and a PhysX plus dual core system. In both comparisons, you would see a much greater difference in capability.

[TJdaSportsGuy]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

As Valve demonstrated with Half-Life 2, true-to-life physics can have a lasting impact on gameplay, and next-generation should prove that notion even more so. Ageia hopes to cash in on this trend with their PhysX line of physic-dedicated accelerator cards, of which BFG Technologies was recently announced as second add-on card partner.

What's interesting, however, is how this plays out between PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. At the European Game Developers Conference, Extreme Tech noted that the company confirmed plans to offer software-based rendering for single and dual-core PCs, PCs decked out with PhysX chips and software versions for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

That makes sense to offer development solutions on all platforms, but what's interesting is Ageia's report that Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features because of architecture limitations. PhysX offers technologies ranging from physical object interactions to fluid-based particle effects like water and smoke and reportedly only PS3 and PCs will be able to handle all the goods.

This was originally published here:

http://forums.operationsports.com/vB...eply&p=1847944

freezeframe, posting copyrighted content from other sites is prohibited here on OS. Feel free to post the link to the story, but you are not allowed to post the entire story.

[LIGHTNING]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

This is marketing hype from Sony. The PS3 CELL is an in-order processor and will be very limited for physics,AI, and game control. Physics are not going to be any better next generation.

[LIGHTNING]

Re: Xbox 360 can't handle all of the PhysX's features Ps3 Can

The article has been debunked. http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23199