Mirror's Edge PhysX Side-by-Side Video
by Derek Wilson on December 8, 2008 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Dell
A little while back, NVIDIA brought us the news that Mirror's Edge for the PC would feature PhysX support and include some neat effects physics. Effects physics, as you may recall, is the physical simulation of things that don't impact gameplay but simply enhance the visual impact of a game. This can range from particle systems to persistent debris enhanced destructibility or more accurate simulation of fluids, smoke or other volumetric effects. The impact is in immersiveness but it doesn't bring game changing aspects of hardware accelerated physics to the table quite yet.
And we haven't seen anything, until Mirror's Edge, that looked promising in terms of adding anything really compelling to a game. The previous video we posted showed some nice potential, but we still haven't gotten the opportunity to play with it ourselves and really feel the difference. We requested a side-by-side video hoping to get a better handle on what, exactly, is improved in Mirror's Edge. NVIDIA delivered.
Here's the original video of Mirror's Edge we posted.
Here is the side by side video showing better what DICE has added to Mirror's Edge for the PC with PhysX. Please note that the makers of the video (not us) slowed down the game during some effects to better show them off. The slow downs are not performance related issues. Also, the video is best viewed in full screen mode (the button in the bottom right corner).
The effects in there can be simulated on either a CPU or an NVIDIA GPU. The advantage to the GPU is performance and NVIDIA indicates that even an Intel Core i7 processor will have a tough time without GPU support. So these effects aren't anything we've never seen before, but it certainly looks like there is just a lot more of it in Mirror's Edge (and not in that really bad too many particles/too much debris sort of way). The glass breaking itself honestly looks the same (or close enough) to us, but the persistent particles are where it's at. Having a little debris stick around and be affected by the character is a nice touch. The cloth, plastic and tarp effects are what look like the real icing on the cake in the game though. The complete absence of the cloth objects when physics is disabled makes an already sparse looking world look pretty empty by comparison.
We still want to really get our hands on the game to see if it feels worth it, but from this video, we can at least say that there is more positive visual impact in Mirror's Edge than any major title that has used PhysX to date. NVIDIA is really trying to get developers to build something compelling out of PhysX, and Mirror's Edge has potential. We are anxious to see if the follow through is there.
Extending this story is the fact that today NVIDIA is announcing that EA and 2K games have both licensed PhysX and will be working with NVIDIA to include the technology in future titles they publish. All EA and 2K development studios will now have license to develop with PhysX for all platforms. This means Mirror's Edge may not be the only EA title going forward to get the PhysX treatment, and 2K will bring PhysX to the table with Borderlands (which is being developed by Gearbox).
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shin0bi272 - Sunday, December 14, 2008 - link
no you're missing the point. The point of the video was to show you the visual differences between physx and non-physx enabled gameplay at the same frame rate. If you went into the console and enabled the flags on the vid without physx then the framerate would be horrible. Dont believe me? try it yourself. Go download the nvidia physx pack and run the fluid demo with hardware physx on then turn the hardware physx off and run the demo again... see if you get the same framerate.DerekWilson - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
As I mentioned in the post and in the comments before now, the physical effects enabled by PhysX can and will run on any hardware. With AMD or NVIDIA hardware the effects will be possible. The only difference will be performance.They could have put a side by side video of the effects running on AMD and NVIDIA hardware with the AMD hardware running slowly (as they claim the case would be), but people won't play the game like that -- if it doesn't perform well, they'll turn off the physics.
It makes sense to compare what it looks like with and without because if you can't get the performance to run it then even though it is possible in software and will run in software, people may not have enough CPU power or other graphics power to pick up the slack and provide playable framerates.
We would really love to test performance, but we'll have to wait until the game launches to really see what it can do. It might be that on high end systems it won't really matter what you use, but then again it might not ...
SiliconDoc - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
I have to agree with you. They took the items out on the left, so we can't really tell how "great" this "new" Physix(sp? who cares) stuff is.I'm sure they have their excuse : " If we left it in, we'd have to disable Physix and write "normal" code for the shredding sheets and - blah blah blah.
Yep- appears to be total scammage at this point, and they did it to themselves - what scheisters. I guess the companies are now hiring former politicians and lobbyists for their PR and demonstration videos. They probably have "group sessions" where they get some teenagers in a room and show them "no physix" and "full physix" - then ask the kids if they want the banners and plastic tarps in their game - and they all scream " Yes!"
Then the eggheaded liars ( the l33t marketeers ) turn to their masters and shriek "this is how we'll do it !" - that 'ell be $100 $gazill$ for our cognitive excellence.
Gosh, I can't live without banners and tarps ripping and tearing...can you ? *"We'll only write them in under Physix enabled*
( No problem, really, we just need some huge fanboys spamming all over the net that they have Physix "GPU supported". I guess those people are all busy being red fans right now. )
I haven't even installed their bigbang driver - it all works great already (260 - driver CD that came with the card) so I'm not going to start screwing around.
I'm definitely underimpressed and also see they have a scam video going - so that makes it even WORSE.
Another SCAM video - wow I'm so not surprised.
bob4432 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
They probably have "group sessions" where they get some teenagers in a room and show them "no physix" and "full physix"i think the term you are looking for is "think tank" :D all they need is a killernic and they will all be g2g
bob4432 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
hell, i would just be happy w/ a game that actually attracted me to it. the developers are wasting all this time on this special effect in an order to try to make people overlook the fact that their games suck in actual gameplay.the last game that really grabbed me was bf1942, desert combat and then bf2 and its series - that is the kind of interaction i want, i could give 2 shits if the curtains move around...
cod4 could have had it but no interaction w/ all teh vehicles like in bf2, so i wait and still play bf2, and yes i played frontlines - just didn't have the same feel :(
Griswold - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
With such a list of games you dig, you really have little room to complain about sucky gameplay. Seriously.bob4432 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
you can only play the same game for so long. w/ bf2 it has been out since 06/2005. give me something newshin0bi272 - Sunday, December 14, 2008 - link
I think he was saying that you are into games that (unless you add weather to them) there isnt a ton of call for physics additions. Yeah it would be cool to be able to blow up someones base with a bomb in BF2 but it would alter the entire concept of the game from an FPS to an RTS in first person. So games like BF2 are sort of stuck where they are due to their style of gameplay and overall concept. Games like warmonger which uses the concept of destroyable architecture as a basis for their levels are at the opposite end of the spectrum even though they are fps games too. Then you have the games that only use physx objects a little like ut3, Gears of War, and now mirror's edge. They use physx objects as decorations and enhancements to the overall visual style and feel of the game but nothing that actually changes the way you really play it. Though in UT3 there was a ctf mapt that you could blow the walls down on and it made it much faster to get to the flag room...wh3resmycar - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
the part with the chopper rising and dust and particles seems to react with the air blowing towards you was fantastic.silly thing is why did they remove the cloths when physX was disabled?
kumquatsrus - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
because the framerate would chug like a drunken sailer on the non hardware physx accelerated system in attempting to render the cloth physics