EA and 2K Games license Nvidia PhysX technology
Electronic Arts and 2K Games have announced that they will both license Nvidia's PhysX technology across all of their worldwide studios.
This follows on from Nvidia and EA’s joint announcement earlier this month regarding the PC version of Mirror’s Edge, which is claimed to be the first game to truly exploit PhysX technology.
“PhysX is a great physics solution for the most popular platforms, and we're happy to make it available for EA’s development teams worldwide. Gameplay remains our number one goal, with character, vehicle and environmental interactivity a critical part of the gameplay experience for our titles, and we look forward to partnering with NVIDIA to reach this goal,” said Tim Wilson, Chief Technology Officer of EA’s Redwood Shores Studio.
Jacob Hawley, technology director for 2K said: “We are very impressed with the quality of the PhysX engine and we licensed it so our studios can use this solution early in development. Developing games with an interactive story and immersive gameplay remains our number one priority, and aligning with technology leaders like NVIDIA allows our teams to concentrate on making great games.”
This is a move that will undoubtedly hit AMD’s plans to accelerate Havok Physics on the GPU and it appears to make PhysX more than just a checkbox feature – with many studios potentially using the technology, it could now have a huge impact on the differences in gameplay experience between Nvidia and ATI graphics cards. We have contacted AMD for a comment but haven’t heard back from the company at the time of publication.
We’ll bring you more later.
What do you think of this announcement? Discuss in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyEDIT: complete sentences help sometimes
I know it's very early to talk about this, but if that's the case, CUDA and PhysicX will die... As I doubt a developer - given the choice - would pick just Nvidia, when DX11 allows physics calculations to be done on both (or should I say all!).
However, I do agree that between DirectX and OpenCL, we aren't going to see much support for CUDA in the future. ATI have made their bed, and Nvidia will need to support DX11 anyway. As nice as CUDA is, there will need to be hard decisions made on the use of precious transistors at some point in next few years. I just hope Nvidia see it before it's too late... Because when Larrabee hits, we'll probably end-up with ATI and Intel on one side and Nvidia fighting a losing war.
Just keeps it interesting though.
LOL, there is what 1 game that supports this? By the time Physics catches on (If it does at all) we won't be using these cards.
Mirrors Edge is out in Jan for PC, I assume he'll still be using that card then, and for the other EA/2k games that come out in 09...
Even as an Nvidia user, I'm really unhappy that adoption of PhysX in games seems to be ramping up. With AMD leaking billions every quarter they need all the advantages they can get, and I assume there will be hefty licensing fees if AMD ever does choose to use PhysX :(
What game sin 09? Not one is announced, it will take a long time before anymore then a select few games support this, by them any seriosu gamer would have moved on.
+1
I think AMD will license PhysX if they see the need for it, even if these two companies licensed PhysX tech, we can't assume that all their next games will use the tech, I won't be surprised if only games released in the next 1 or 2 years just begin to use this technology
Go buy garry's mod off steam and stop being a whiney little *beep*
Although Nvidia skirts around the question, I believe PhysX will be ported to either DX11 Compute or OpenCL. It needs to if Nvidia wants to continue controlling the game physics middleware market (why else would it have bought Ageia?) because with compute APIs coming thick and fast, a developer can create their own 'accelerated' physics engine using the Compute Shader in DX11.
I think it is wrong to think Cuda is not going anywhere. Take for example TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress. With Cuda it goes 300 times faster! This saves enormous amount of time. I use it to convert the AVCHD cam recorders to a more editable format for my videoeditor. Now all i need is the videoeditor to go the Cuda way and i'm happy like a bird because it saves me to buy a expensive quadcore.
CUDA isn't going anywhere as in it is not going to disappear. It's still going from strength to strength and developer adoption is increasing. Apologies for any confusion - I was merely answering the critics saying that CUDA would die because of OpenCL/DirectX 11 Compute. It won't.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if PhysX moved to DirectX 11 Compute because I am pretty certain that's where Havok will probably go once Larrabee has launched. At that point, PhysX would become an also-ran because one runs on every DX11 compliant hardware, the other only runs on GeForce. Publishers care about installed bases, so which would you choose as a publisher?
My comment was aimed at the 'quality' PhysX supported titles out there. Garry's mod and the source engine games are a prime example of how CPU (and/or GPU) based physics in moderation is the way forward. But thanks for the insult anyway.
But ATI has the edge of directx 10.1
which sadly due Im sure by nVidia bitching wont be truly used by many makers and will be over looked until DX11 comes out. So most makers will use DX10 and just bunny hop over 10.1 and go straight to 11. :(