AGEIA on physics performance on the next-gen systems (PS3/X360)

LookingFor

AGEIA, makers of the Novodex physics middleware and upcoming dedicated PhysX accelerator for PCs, has had a couple of presentations recently at GDCE in London and CEDEC in Japan, and has discussed the relative performance of the next-gen systems with their physics middleware. If you don't know, AGEIA has signed deals with both MS and Sony to include Novodex in the toolkit for X360 and PS3 respectively.

Here are some of the reports from those presentations:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3143371

360 Buckling Under PhysX
PS3 can handle it; 360 features, however, are limited.

...

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.

What will Xbox 360 miss out on? PhysX's fluid-based technology. How exactly that impacts Xbox 360's future is for all intents and purposes minimal, but it's strange to see a split between the two machines after such rabid debate over which one had the edge.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1855078,00.asp

Although the PhysX libraries accelerate a host of technologies, from physical object interactions to fluid-based particle effects like water and smoke, only the PlayStation 3 and a PhysX PC will have the horsepower to process all of the technology's features, Ageia executives said. The Xbox 360 will not be able to process the fluid-based technology, because of the limitations of its architecture.

And finally, a little more detail and direct quotes from this Japanese article from CEDEC (if anyone can provide a better translation, feel free..):

http://www.4gamer.net/news.php?url=/news/history/2005.08/20050830235053detail.html

Translation of the slide about X360 and PS3:

Scalabilities for Advanced Hardwares

Xbox 360
+ Just like dual-core PC, but uses 3 PPC cores with HT
+ Shared L2 cache
+ Probably shares the cores with other Xbox 360 libraries

PS3
+ PPC processor
+ Multiple "Synergistic Processing Elements" (SPE)
+ Greater simulation potential than PC or Xbox 360
+ All simulation classes are available

It goes on:

Mr. Lassanske defined the resource that can be used for physics calculation in a single-core PC as 10% to 15%, and pointed out that it's just for physics for enemy characters, vehicles, and items, at best.

However, in a dual-core PC, the first core can use 30% at the max for physics and the second one can use 100%, so physics calculation of hundreds of objects, tracking (judging whether an object requires physics calculation) of thousands of objects are possible, and particle/grass physics effects become available too. Fluid simulation like streaming water is possible with some limits.

Though Xbox 360 has 6 logical CPUs (threads), they don't push up the physics performance very much as it requires processing OS and DirectX.

Besides, he said, in PS3, physics calculation of thousands of objects, tracking of tens of thousands of objects, and limitless physics effects and fluid simulation are possible.

That article also characterises PS3 as being on a roughly equal footing with AGEIA's own dedicated physics processor (!) with Xbox 360 being somewhat better than a dual-core setup.

And finally, a brief word from a poster at Beyond3D who was at the London presentation, with a little more technical explanation:

Regarding having the fluid dynamics and cloth simulation be more suited to PS3, this was mainly due to cache issues according to the presenter. They're still looking at the X360 architecture to see exactly what they can get out of it, but right now they're concerned that they'd take up too much CPU to do these things through Novodex, since they'd like up likely one full core or more processing power. I believe that on PS3, they figure in 1 SPU to do the same, since it's massively iterated calculations on smaller datasets, which is perfectly suited to the SPU architecture.

Interesting to see such a marked difference so soon between the two systems. Physics is something Sony and IBM touted Cell as being great at, and I guess they weren't kidding.

On a side note, Kojima has hinted recently that MGS4 will experiment strongly with heavy simulation, so I think it'll be REALLY interesting to see what he can come up with on PS3

BloodBath

Interesting. I guess this is another blow for the sceptics who think cell is nothing but a gimmick. I can't wait to see some heavy simulation with massive physics use. We should be seeing some amazing ai too i hope. If anyone can do it it's Hideo Kojima.

TerrorFirmer

I wonder what Microsoft have to say about this...

satchmo

It's interesting that both Ageia and Havok have their software included in the PS3 SDK. Havok have the advantage with character animation and dynamics, but when it comes to basic rigid-body physics I wonder which will be more popular?

Ri_Nollaig

im really looking forward to seeing these physics cards working and wat kinda of improvement we can expect

but is this a sign that the 360 is already fallen behind... :eek:

Ciaran500

I'm not really supprised a company that has a big deal with Sony has come out to say the PS3 is better.

BLITZ_Molloy

Both those systems are going to be able to handle pretty sophisticated physics. I doubt the differeces will matter. I think most people won't be able to distinguish between good physics and excellent physics. It's not like graphics which are very easily quantifyable.

danniemcq

there might be slight differences in the physics but i doubt it would be in anyway a massive change to the gameplay. after all if you want really real physics go outside. Games are based on reality, they aren't real

TerrorFirmer

danniemcq wrote:

after all if you want really real physics go outside.

Nintendos new advertising campaign slogan

LookingFor

Ciaran500 wrote:

I'm not really supprised a company that has a big deal with Sony has come out to say the PS3 is better.

They've a deal with MS too, they're XNA partners and part of the X360 SDK.

danniemcq wrote:

there might be slight differences in the physics but i doubt it would be in anyway a massive change to the gameplay.

The truth is, most games don't use physics in a way that radically affects gameplay, although it seems to be en vogue to do that or try to do that now (especially post-Half Life 2). However, physics can have a massive aesthetic role to play, in making things just look better. Smoke that looks and behaves properly, grass that crumples underfoot, properly simulated explosions, clothes that bend and warp with a character's movement (or with next-gen systems, cloth that rips like that Sony demo), water that flows naturally etc. all the way through to physically-based animation and visualisation. It can bring a large benefit to the purely visual, so from that point of view you can consider it to be as important as anything else that makes graphics look good.

MobileInfantry wrote:

I wonder what Microsoft have to say about this...

Seemingly alot AGEIA's PR popped out with a statement yesterday to try and dampen down the debate surrounding what their techies were saying at these conferences. They clarified that fluid simulation is NOT being made unavailable in the X360 SDK - they discussed in these conferences how it would take a lot of resources on X360 vs PS3 (i.e. apparently another full core in addition to what the rest of the physics were taking up), and some reporters took this to mean it wouldn't be made available period, but this is not the case, devs will have the choice to use it if they want to eat the cost. They did not deny the rest i.e. re. PS3 vs X360 vs PC performance, but did clarify that any suggestions made in this regard were based on their expectations from architectural analysis rather than benchmark data. I think they're just trying to cover their asses from a nondisclosure point of view though..I also doubt they would say the things they were saying to potential clients at these conferences if it wasn't reflected in their experience with the hardware sofar.

KdjaCL

Msft have their own X game tool set, guess who their main competition is.


kdjac

LookingFor

KdjaC wrote:

Msft have their own X game tool set, guess who their main competition is.


kdjac

They don't have their own physics engine. DirectX has nothing regarding physics in it.

Here's the PR re. the AGEIA/MS deal:

http://www.ageia.com/pr_03092005.html

It was one of the first middleware deals MS announced for X360. They've deals with Havok too, as has Sony.

Also, a little more translation from the 4Gamer.net article - babelfish may be misleading me, but it seems to quote the AGEIA guy as saying that using a PhysX card in a PC will bring you to about the same level as Playstation3 as far as physics go - which is fairly high praise for PS3.

edit - got a better translation, and the guy says that you'll be able to get the same kind of performance as PS3 for physics by buying a PhysX chip for your PC later this year i.e. PS3 is all kinds of kickass for physics.

KdjaCL

LookingFor wrote:

They don't have their own physics engine. DirectX has nothing regarding physics in it.

Its not physics its an entire set of middle ware tools with a predefined interface, XDC they calling it irc. Didnt go down too well at the GDC last year only Epic took part in testing. But soon it will be the way games are made wiping out every other middleware comapny around.


kdjac

LookingFor

KdjaC wrote:

Its not physics its an entire set of middle ware tools with a predefined interface, XDC they calling it irc. Didnt go down too well at the GDC last year only Epic took part in testing. But soon it will be the way games are made wiping out every other middleware comapny around.

I think you're thinking of XNA. XNA is not middleware in itself. It's a protocol to allow different pieces of middleware to play nicely together, if middleware is bricks, XNA is mortar. Or that's the idea at least, there's been very little talk of it since it was first announced. It's only of use on Windows platforms, obviously. AGEIA is part of XNA.

ObeyGiant

LookingFor wrote:

They don't have their own physics engine. DirectX has nothing regarding physics in it.

Well, not yet... but they're definitely hiring

LookingFor

ObeyGiant wrote:

Well, not yet... but they're definitely hiring

That looks like a neat extension to DX based on the increasing generality of GPUs, but I think such usage will be secondary to the role of CPUs in physics for the foreseeable future. GPUs could be very good for physics, and there's already research work and work from Nvidia and ATi in that regard, but I think very few will want to sacrifice graphics power for physics..graphics are still numero uno I think. I could actually imagine stuff like AGEIA and Havok using "Direct Physics" commands to give their dev partners the choice of using the GPU if they wish though, and integrate it seamlessly and transparently with the engine on the CPU. In other words, I think this would be complementary rather than competitive with the likes of AGEIA and Havok, at least in the short or mid term (that said, watch MS turn around and buy Havok in the morning or something :P)

In fact, I think it'd HAVE to be complimentary to AGEIA and Havok, and require their support, since I doubt many developers would be wanting to directly handle two different and seperate engines, one for the CPU, one for the GPU.

stevenmu

That sounds likely, a good comparison would be DirectSound and EAX.

40coats

This has now been retracted.

LookingFor

40coats wrote:

This has now been retracted.

Haha, Billy Gates must have got on the blower to them

They dance around it pretty carefully. They don't actually take back what was said, they simply say it was in the context of publically available specs, and that the comparisons shouldn't have been made. But they were Saying they don't have performance data on these systems is also a big fat lie (unless they're referring to data from final hardware, which doesn't exist yet, at least not in PS3's case). The X360 version is out, the PS3 version is out in the next month or so. They must have data internally, and I doubt they'd have said the things they were saying at these presentations if that data was telling a different story, even if they were just basing their public comments on spec analysis.