PPU question / Soundwave simulation

[codarl 1]

(For the unknowing: PPU = Physics processing unit, that in theory can process the behaviour of 30 000 "objects". In comparison, with your CPU you can calculate about 40 objects without sacrificing gameplay)

I have forgotten wether ArmA will use the PPU or not, I'm 80% certain it would, but I might be confused with some other piece of hardware I only know from text.

If ArmA uses the PPU to calculate physics, couln't you also use the PPU to simulate how soundwaves travel? This would mean that buildings and ground bounce off the soundwaves, wich makes it possible to "not hear" a chopper that's flying low, because the surrounding land is actually covering it's presence.

Somebody that has the privelidge of interviewing Bis can ask this, if it's 200% certain Bis wont use the PPU, feel free to move it to the Game2 forums .

EDIT: Oh ffs, wanted to chance the "working" title to "PPU question / Soundwave simulation" , if this doesn't gets locked, atleast chance this moddy mods .

[bravo 6 0]

very interresting.

[brataccas 0]

theres already a ppu thread on ngpcg section but not for arma, I dont think arma will use ppu for some reason

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Just a note; There is already some soundwave simulation in Ofp Elite, nothing extreme though. But it's damn nice.

Edit: When I think about, it might be "extreme" after all...

[JdB 151]

PPU support in ArmA?

Doubt it...development was started too long ago, before PPU was even made public.

[Batukhan 0]

Same here, don't think it will use. IMO the base engine which deals with object handling and movement was made like kazillion years ago. It would be a major change to bring in PPU support, and as we all know ArAs is just a successor to OFP..

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Acctualy, it's more possible than it sounds for older games to use the PPU.. Why?

The demo software for the hardware, someone (I can't remeber how, a faked driver I think.. There was a story on it not too long ago) ran fine without the phsyical hardware.. The performance was terrible, but it ran.. So, my logic, if it works without the hardware, it's not totaly essitial to have it.. So a game runs without hte PPU, but you see a large improvement with the PPU installed, but ofloading some of the work on to the CPU (inverse of what happens when the fake-PPU drivers are installed, and it shoves the PPU's processing tasks onto the CPU, and slows it down)

Sorry if that made no sense, it's 0130

But yes, it's interesting idea, to use it to calculate sound, and maybe things like bullet trajectories, and penetration values etc, rather than useless junk lying around on the ground (Which is easily handled by the CPU and a bit of restrainint in the mission-editing ).. The sound stuff would require far more processing power than something like pipes falling over, espically since you only see stuff falling over nearby, but sounds can travel long distances (Espicaly things like explosions and gun shots)

ArmA will not fully use the PPU (even if the PPU will improve perofmrance by taking some of the processing), but I'm certain Game2 will, which will be.. fun

- Ben

[Mr_Tea 0]

Why buy a Physics Card when you better spend that money on a quad core CPU? It will come in a few month and will shurely have enough resources to handle complex physics by itself.

[max power 21]

The aegia PPU is designed specifically for the PhysX physics solver. It's like how some graphics engines are openGL and some are D3d. If your graphics engine is OpenGL, then you need an accellerator that is compatible with it. I'm not saying that it would be impossible for the devs to write their own physics solver that would be compatible with the Aegia chip, but it's not like the chip will detect ANY and ALL physics calculations and steal them from the processor. It would take a ground up implimentation, or porting ofp to use the PhysX system, I think.

I would love to have some simulation of soundwaves regardless.. That way you could have it so that you can't hear supersonic bullets coming... you could have them snap when they go by.. and you could have them loud enough for the firer to hear without having the target hear them throughout their entire flight like vanilla OFP. Ssssshhhhhheeewwwww pop pop pop. ssshhhheeeewwww pop pop. It was terrible. You wouldn't be able to hear the bullets flying like that because the bullet would get there before ALL sound, not just the firing sound.

[x al 1]

soundwaves...hm...why not simulate human ears? ...like def soldiers

My question concerning "soundwaves" would be: Does ArmA support X-FI? That would interest me, as a X-FI owner. Battlefield 2 & Vietcong 2 already showed how things could be done...of course there is always space for improvement

[Guest Ti0n3r]

I just tested the soundwave simulation in Elite, and it's nice. Better than I thought.

A BMP was moving towards me. When I was in first person mode I could hardly hear it, since it was behind a steep hill ~300 meters away. But if I switched to the command view and zoomed out I could hear it clearly. So as I said, soundwave simulation will be in ArmA.

(I thought someone would find this interesting)

[joshfox0 0]

**mutters** i don't like the ppu its just more stuff that i need to buy to run games

[DBR_ONIX 0]

**mutters** i don't like the ppu its just more stuff that i need to buy to run games

..again, that was my point.. Design your games to run without the PPU, and if you happen to have one, it ofloads some processing to the PPU, making it run better.. Just like buying a dual-core CPU, it'll run on one-cored processors, but it'll run faster on dual one

- Ben

[Rg 0]

Interesting,

Well, will games be programmed to designate certain areas to certain cores? Let’s say you have a quad-core machine. Most of the core game stuff would be run off of the 1st core. Would other demanding areas of a game be sent to the other unused cores? For instance, nothing but AI calculations would be on core 2 and nothing but Physics calculations would be on core 3? Is this how these mlti-core machines will run future games?

[Spoock 3]

Maruk say, that Game2 not support PPU, but Who know - very soon for prognosis?

[shinRaiden 0]

Here's the flip side... IF Aegia's PPU does catch on, the only way to utilize it is Aegia's Novadex SDK. This has the risk of becoming an even-worse technical monopoly and hegemony than the atrocious Creative SB/EAX leviathan.

Now what would make more sense to me would be to tune the graphics target to a 'reasonable' current-tech target, then offer GPU accelerated physics - which are being supported by a wide variety of SDK's for those with heavier rigs. Besides, there's only so many pixels that you can push anyways.

[Dwarden 1125]

i hope BIS stays with use of ODE (claimed they use it for Game2 and i think in sort limited way in ArmAs too)

and when needed it will utilize Ageia, ATI or NVIDIA drivers to accelerate the physics via available hardware ...

Ageia claimed theirs API will be able to "support" other physical engines not just PhysX.

ATI claims theirs solution will be transparent (not just HAVOK FX) to use for all physical engines.

NVIDIA no idea but for sure same way...

[shinRaiden 0]

It's not drivers, it's sdk's and they're not interchangable. Software or hardware rendering of the single sdk is interchangable.

[Dwarden 1125]

It's not drivers, it's sdk's and they're not interchangable. Software or hardware rendering of the single sdk is interchangable.

that's why i said better is to "wait" and use SDK (ODE) where chance of compatibility with all the Havok / Ageia / NVIDIA / ATI offerings turns optimal (sure maybe some features will be accessable only via Novadex on PhysX chips.

But again for that is competetion (ATI, NVIDIA) to kick in and offer same or more easier

[berghoff 11]

Luckily both ATi and Nvidia are working on intregrating this into the gfx card :P

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

As Tionor says, I have found the occlusion in OFP:E to work great.