GamePhys

Havok Vision Engine Physics Demoed on Android Tablet with ARM Mali GPU

Mark — Sun, 13 May 2012 21:23:46 +0000

Now this is pretty cool, ARM has posted a video to YouTube from GDC 2012 showing the Havok Physics Vision Engine running on an ARM Mali GPU based Android tablet with the new Havok mobile tech demo and some cool Havok physics integration. In the video Peter Wos, a Software Engineer for Havok goes over how the Vison Engine can easily port over to the ARM platform and then shows off a nice demo with Physics running on an ARM Mali GPU based Android tablet. We have been seeing some cool stuff from NVIDIA with PhysX running on the Tegra platform, now it is good to see that Havok Physics will also be an option for mobile platforms. Just imagine if you needed to have a Tegra based tablet or phone to take have all the physics features in a game like we are unfortunately seeing today with PC gaming.

Check out the video below and the official Havok Mobile website for more info on Havok Physics.

Source [Havok.com]

Free-to-play Mech Combat Game Hawken will have GPU PhysX

Mark — Sun, 13 May 2012 18:09:59 +0000

Hawken is Adhesive Games’ upcoming free-to-play multiplayer mech combat game built with Epic Games’ Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and Unreal Engine 3. I first saw this game back when it was first announced and was very impressed with the visuals. Now I am even more excited and interested in this game with the recent news that it will support GPU PhysX. At the recent NVIDIA Gaming Festival, Shanghai Keynote Jen-Hsun Huang showed off Hawken and confirmed it would support GPU PhysX with particle and destruction effects.

Jen-Hsun also showed off the upcoming mech combat game Hawken for the first time with GPU PhysX. As squads of mechs unleashed their weapons on each other, thick clouds of smoke and particles erupted, leaving a trail of persistent destruction and debris in the game world. It was the perfect complement to Hawken’s fast-paced combat and gritty environment.

Jason Hughes, the lead producer for Hawken then tweeted to confirm that Hawken will implement GPU PhysX.

If you have not seen Hawken in action yet then check out the videos i embedded below. There are also beta signups on the official Hawken website.

Official Hawken Desert Gameplay (PAX 2011) and Landmark Challenge!

Official Hawken Gameplay (work in progress)

Source [Geforce.com]

Passion Leads Army DX11 Benchmark Uses GPU PhysX

Mark — Sat, 12 May 2012 20:00:38 +0000

PLA – Passion Leads Army is a Chinese Unreal Engine 3 game being developed by Giant Interactive for the Chinese military. There is a really cool DX11 benchmark included with the game that was announced by Jen-Hsun Huang at the recent NVIDIA Gaming Festival in Shanghai. The demo shows off some pretty cool cloth, particle, and destruction PhysX effects. This demo and its PhysX features remind a lot of the Mars GPU PhysX Benchmark which is another Chinese based game.

According to MMO Culture “PLA is now the first Nvidia 3D Vision Ready game developed in the world’s biggest country, and it is sporting DX11 compatibility as well. The game is set in 1937, with the city of Shanghai as the backdrop during a war. There will be 2 versions of the game, 1 especially for the military to use for training, while the other is the commercial client.”

Check out the video below

PLA (CN) – Official benchmark video

Source [MMO CULTURE]
Source [Geeks3d]

Havok Destruction Simulation Video (Again)

Mark — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:46:39 +0000

I posted this video a few months ago and then a few days later it went to private on YouTube for some reason, i sent a message to the HavokSimulation YouTube account with no response. Now this video of the tank destroying several buildings has been uploaded to YouTube again and hopefully this time it will stay so people can see just how awesome Havok destruction and physics is and see a glimpse into what the future of games will look like. Just imagine when a game like BF3 has real physics and destruction like you see in this video and not some scripted crap!

This video is similar to the Havok Destruction: Farmhouse Demo that we posted about a few years ago which shows a farmhouse that is completely destructible being destroyed by a tank. This new video shows off several buildings that are completely destructible and are destroyed with a tank. As the tank fires the buildings breaks apart into countless physics objects and begins to crumble based upon physics. Like the farmhouse demo, the tank can also destroy the building just by driving into it with force. The video also briefly shows off object deformation by having the tank run over metal barrels. Check out the video below.

Check out the official Havok Physics website for more information on havok physics, destruction, and their other products.

Havok Destruction Simulation:

Havok Destruction enables massive scale destruction for physical simulations including support for brittle fracture and structural deformation. With a complete solution for building destruction, level of detail can be entirely dynamic and adaptable. Havok Destruction drastically improves the visual fidelity of physical simulation and overall immersion while seamlessly interacting with destructible terrain and navigational AI. Havok Destruction’s custom in-modeler toolset gives total control over the simulation, significantly reducing the production time and cost of creating large numbers of believable objects.

Source [Havok]

Diablo III Uses Custom in-house Physics Engine

Mark — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:15:41 +0000

I was a huge Diablo II player back in the day and probably wasted a good year of my life playing it non-stop. Since I have been busy with the working world and various other things, I have not had the time to follow Diablo III and the beta as much as I would like. One thing that just got my attention was that Diablo III will be making extensive use of physics in the game. Diablo III will be using a custom in-house game engine that was originally going to use Havok Physics for the game physics but this was later dropped for a custom solution. According to the diablowiki “One of the features of the engine is that players are able to utilize the environment to help in their quest. For example, huge walls can be reduced to rubble to squash monsters.” the physics engine also features some really impressive cloth, ragdoll, and destruction physics that you can see in the video i embedded below. I can’t find any official mention of this but it appears that the Diablo III community refers to the physics as Moon Physics. There is also an entire page here from diablowiki.net.

The video below from YouTube user Pyloneer is 13 minutes long and shows off some great gameplay with all of the physics effects in the game, check it out.

Diablo III – 13 minutes of gameplay (Game Physics)

Borderlands 2 GPU PhysX Tech Demo

Mark — Sat, 05 May 2012 17:00:04 +0000

Sorry for the lack of updates here on GamePhys, I have been busy with work along with studying for my CCNA and VCP5, I also turned my dedicated PhysX test system into a temporary ESXi host for my vSphere lab. But don’t worry, I will have some Hybrid PhysX reviews/guides up soon! Today I wanted to post about the Borderlands 2 GPU PhysX/GTX 680 tech demo that was shown at one of the recent Nvidia GeForce GTX Meet-Up events in San Francisco on March 28. In this video from NVIDIA for the GTX 680 launch event, it was announced by Gearbox founder and CEO Randy Pitchford, that Borderlands 2 will make extensive use of GPU PhysX with everything from particle physics, water physics, cloth physics, destruction and more! The video shows each of these GPU PhysX effects in detail and it looks really impressive. Definitely going to keep an eye on Borderlands 2 and its PhysX. Check it out below. I also embedded 13 Minutes of Borderlands 2 Gameplay presented by Gearbox Software from PAX East 2012.

Borderlands 2 NVIDIA GTX 680 Tech Demo (CAM)

PAX 2012: 13 Minutes Borderlands 2 Gameplay presented by Gearbox Software

Kinect Real-Time Movement with PhysX

Mark — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 21:42:08 +0000

Now this is pretty cool and something I hope to see more of in the future. Rozengain has made a short demo using Ogre 3D with PhysX being controlled by the Xbox Kinect. Check it out below.

Old video showing Kinect, Ogre & PhysX. Real time movement & PhysX. I used this for my gotoAndSki(), FFK11 and FITC Toronto presentations.

Source [Rozengain's YouTube Channel]

EVE Online: PhysX & DirectX 11 Tessellation Effects Demonstrated

Mark — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:10:10 +0000

At this years EVE Online Fanfest, Tony Tamasi, NVIDIA’s Senior Vice President of Content & Technology showed off a very cool tech demo during the keynote showing DX11 Tessellation of the EVE Online ships and also upcoming PhysX integration into the game. Tony showed off space-based hardware-accelerated PhysX effects where hundreds of hardware-accelerated asteroids crashed into the Revenant’s shielded hull and themselves and then broke apart and fractured against the ship or each other. Very cool stuff. Check out the video below and read the rest of the GeForce article here.

From EVE Online: PhysX & DirectX 11 Tessellation Effects Demonstrated:

During this year’s keynote, Tony Tamasi, NVIDIA’s Senior Vice President of Content & Technology, took to the stage of one of Europe’s largest opera houses to reveal a special EVE Online tech demo. Developed by NVIDIA’s Iain Cantlay, in partnership with EVE Online creator CCP, the demo opened with a close-up of Sansha Nation’s recognizable Revenant Mothership.

Switching back to the Sansha Revenant, Tony showed another addition: space-based hardware-accelerated PhysX effects. Powered by the CUDA Cores present on all NVIDIA graphics cards released in the last five years, PhysX provides accurate, realistic interactions between objects. Already used in the Captain’s Quarters for avatar cloth and hair movement, Tony’s demo showed hundreds of hardware-accelerated asteroids crashing into the Revenant’s shielded hull and themselves.

To date, ships have merely bounced off EVE Online’s asteroids without actually colliding, but with PhysX, new, more realistic gameplay mechanics become possible, aping famous scenes from science fiction TV shows and movies. As the demo progressed, the PhysX-powered asteroids struck the ship’s shield, bouncing away realistically, pieces and particles breaking free using NVIDIA’s dynamic Fracture technology, only to hit further asteroids before bouncing again, once more with chunks breaking away on separate trajectories. Adding to the excitement, CCP’s Halldor revealed that the new additions look “incredible” in 3D Vision thanks to the geometric detail created by tessellation, which allows our stereoscopic 3D technology to better layer the asteroids and other scene elements.

This video demonstrates DirectX 11 Tessellation and PhysX fragmentation technologies from Nvidia using art assets from EVE Online. The technology preview was produced as a collaboration between CCP Games and Nvidia and was premiered during the EVE Online Fanfest 2012.

Source [Geforce.com]

GDC 2012: PhysX SDK and Apex Technology Videos

Mark — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 20:44:01 +0000

GameTrailers.com has a couple of awesome videos from GDC 2012 where Nvidia walks through their latest PhysX technologies with a look at fur rendering PhysX Turbulence, PhysX destruction, and PhysX cloth. The most interesting new feature we have not seen before is the new PhysX rigid body solver. As described in the video, the new solver does PhysX fracturing and destruction in real time without pre calculation and having the individual PhysX objects setup beforehand like we have seen being done with the UDK PhysX tutorials to create destructible objects. Check out the videos below.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, NVIDIA – GDC 2012: Tech Demo Walkthrough Part 1 (Cam) HD, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Get More: GameTrailers.com, NVIDIA – GDC 2012: Tech Demo Walkthrough Part 2 (Cam), PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Source [GameTrailers]

GamePhys is Building a Dedicated PhysX test System

Mark — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 03:17:29 +0000

I am pleased to announce that GamePhys will soon have a dedicated test and benchmarking system for the site. This was a project I have been meaning to do since I started the site back in 2009 but never got around to it. The first phase of this project really got started this past Black Friday when I picked up several good deals on hardware and decided it would be a good time to move ahead with the project. I have now finished purchasing all of the hardware and plan to put it all together sometime this week.

I plan to start by doing basic guides and tutorials on how to setup dedicated PhysX cards and Hyrbid PhysX systems using the HD6950 with dedicated NVIDIA PhysX cards. As you can see, some of the hardware especially the motherboard is not exactly top of the line but will be perfect for doing basic Hyrbid PhysX setup tutorials and testing. I eventually plan to replace the motherboard and purchase another HD6950 for CrossFire setups with a dedicated PhysX card and then eventually do some real performance benchmarking with everything from different hardware configurations to overclocking! I also hope that the rumors are true that the upcoming NVIDIA Kepler/GK104 Will Have Dedicated PhysX Hardware so I can use this new system to test it out!

Below are the current specs of the systems inculding the two dedicated PhysX cards I will be using, the XFX GF GT430 and the MSI GeForce GTS 250.

BIOSTAR A870U3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
1 x AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor
Cooler Master RR-910-HTX3-G1 130-Watt 92mm Hyper TX3 CPU Cooler
1 x XFX Double D HD-695X-ZDFC Radeon HD 6950 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Video Card
1 x OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-60G 2.5″ 60GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
1 x G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
1 x Antec NEO ECO 620C 620W Power Supply
MYOPENPC DOMA Pro PCI Black Transparent Acrylic Open Computer Case

XFX GF GT430 700M 1 GB DDR3 PCI-E Video Card
MSI GeForce GTS 250 Video Card 512MB

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