Josh Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 So I talked to the product manager of PhysX today on the phone, and I was telling him about our current vegetation technology, and my desire to go beyond the bounds of 32-bit floating points in the next version. I was told they are currently trying to ramp PhysX 3.0 up to handle tens of thousands of bodies, because in the past it hasn't been able to handle as much. I told him that it's perfectly possible to handle millions of static instances, and they just need to think of vegetation and other static geometry differently than dynamic bodies. We had an interesting conversation, and he's interested in pursuing this, but of course it would be a long time until we actually had some results. At this time, PhysX doesn't come close to being able to handle the number of vegetation instances we are used to using. I have developed the technology, and NVidia is interested in pursuing this in the future, so maybe they will end up licensing our C++ code when I implement it. The actual code is pretty trivial, and the valuable asset I have is the knowledge of how this works together with rendering, and how to optimally manage and store the data. Where does that leave us for the present? I don't know exactly, and I would be reluctant to start with PhysX knowing that it cannot support our vegetation goals. However, I have NVidia's attention now, and if they want to move in this direction, I have the knowledge to help them do that. I am posting this in the private forum since this is a little more sensitive than I would want to post in a blog. Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixel Perfect Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 That's certainly an interesting connection you've forged there Josh! I agree that it probably isn't a good reason in itself for going with PhysX but certainly worth consideration as ties like that can prove quite valuable in the longer term. Quote Intel Core i5 2.66 GHz, Asus P7P55D, 8Gb DDR3 RAM, GTX460 1Gb DDR5, Windows 7 (x64), LE Editor, GMax, 3DWS, UU3D Pro, Texture Maker Pro, Shader Map Pro. Development language: C/C++ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted August 16, 2011 Author Share Posted August 16, 2011 He's asking for more examples. I need to get their engineers in a room with a power point presentation. Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Road Kill Kenny Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 lol. Do it! Give them a good lecture. Quote STS - Scarlet Thread Studios AKA: Engineer Ken Fact: Game Development is hard... very bloody hard.. If you are not prepared to accept that.. Please give up now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Thomas Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 I'm curious how your vegetation differs from other libraries like SpeedTree/SpeedGrass. I haven't played around with the latest vegetation system in LE, so I should probably do that before asking, but this thread looked like you were interested in talking about the techniques involved in your vegetation system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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