AMD Open Physics Initiative Expands Ecosystem....

[Android1]

....with free DMM for game production and updated version of bullet physics.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. —3/8/2010

AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced that, along with partners Pixelux Entertainment and Bullet Physics, it has added significant support to the Open Physics ecosystem by providing game developers with access to the newest version of the Pixelux Digital Molecular Matter (DMM), a breakthrough in physics simulation. In addition, to enabling a superior development experience and helping to reduce time to market, Pixelux has tightly integrated its technology, DMM, with Bullet Physics, allowing developers to integrate physics simulation into game titles that run on both OpenCL- and DirectCompute-capable platforms. And both DMM and Bullet work with Trinigy’s Vision Engine to create and visualize physics offerings in-game.

“Establishing an open and affordable physics development environment is an important accomplishment for both game developers and gamers, signaling a move away from exclusionary or proprietary approaches,” said Eric Demers, chief technology officer, AMD Graphics Division. “Not only does the integration of Bullet Physics into partner middleware help drive broader adoption of physics in games, it ensures that when those games are released, all gamers, regardless of the hardware in their PC, can benefit from the more realistic experience enabled by those effects.”

AMD’s announced open physics development environment now adds Bullet Physics as the default rigid body physics system provided with Pixelux’s DMM2 material physics engine. Developers can now design and interact with rigid body systems familiar to them and easily add DMM objects incrementally enabling them to bend and break based on real physical properties.

In addition, AMD is announcing its sponsorship of FREE DMM2 for the PC platform. The Free PC version has no DMM license fee for development or production deployment and includes all the features of the premium version including GPU acceleration. Free PC DMM2 is expected to be made available shortly to interested developers.
“With today’s announcement, the incredible physical simulation effects seen in the latest games and blockbuster films can be used by all developers – a tremendous milestone for the industry,” said Mitchell Bunnell, chief executive officer, Pixelux. “Working closely with AMD and Bullet’s main author, Erwin Coumans, we’ve enabled tight integration of our DMM2 system and Bullet Physics, giving developers a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use physics pipeline they can use to create things that have never been seen before”.

“At Trinigy, one of our guiding principles is ensuring game developers have the freedom to use the tools they need to create the effects they want,” said Danie Conradie, president and chief executive officer, Trinigy Inc. “AMD’s Open Physics Initiative with Pixelux DMM and Bullet Physics, coupled with our long-standing relationship with all three companies, helped us deliver on that core philosophy by giving developers access to these state-of-the-art technologies for producing advanced effects in games.”

All of the Bullet Physics implementations described above can be run on any OpenCL- or DirectCompute-capable platform. On AMD platforms, ATI Stream technology is used to drive the enhanced game experience. As a further enhancement, AMD has developed new parallel GPU accelerated implementations of Bullet Physics’ Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) Fluids and Soft Bodies/Cloth. The new code written in OpenCL and Direct Compute will be contributed as open source.

Source: AMD

[Mystik]

Is there a list of games somewhere that use, or plan to use, open physics?

[noko]

All sounds good but are there any examples, demos etc.. one can bite into and test out? ATI and now AMD has been promissing GPU physics forever but who has ever downloaded a demo or anything to test out using there own GPU and an ATI GPU? I am happy developers have more tools, hopefully powerful, easy as possible to use with some examples for developers and for us folks as well.

[nutcrackr]

They need games to show it off. I hope they get that chance.

[cbsboyer]

Finally, some motion (hopefully) on an open standard for physics. PhysX looked so good, but now it's pretty much stagnant as a one-vendor solution (particularly when said vendor disables it if any other vendor's hardware comes to play). Now if everything can just converge on a single standard API, life will be grand for PC gaming.

[Targon]

Originally Posted by cbsboyer

Finally, some motion (hopefully) on an open standard for physics. PhysX looked so good, but now it's pretty much stagnant as a one-vendor solution (particularly when said vendor disables it if any other vendor's hardware comes to play). Now if everything can just converge on a single standard API, life will be grand for PC gaming.

The big problem with getting physics to be adopted is the lack of any true improvement. And if you think about it, it makes sense.

Back when 3D acceleration first came into play, you had two things happen at the same time. Not only did the graphics quality improve, but at the same time, your framerates also were improved, at least when the 3DFx Voodoo based cards were used. Other companies just couldn't compete in terms of performance, but even then, there was still that feeling that gameplay was better with 3D acceleration.


When physics was first implemented, and even through today, the eye candy went up, more detailed explosions and such were now possible, but at the same time, framerates went DOWN as the video card(not PPU) had to handle the effects. Even if things are better on the NVIDIA side today, NVIDIA does not control the market for video cards. Physics as it is implemented does not really change how games are played, and while certain effects may look better, do you see physics giving anyone an advantage?


That is the long and short of it. 3D when it was adopted, was a huge improvement to gameplay. Physics on the other hand, does what? Is there anything being done that makes physics really seem like a great addition? No matter what demos may show, PhysX doesn't make me wish I had a NVIDIA card in my system compared to my Radeon 4890. Things like Eyefinity on the other hand just seems like a more desirable feature.

[noko]

Physics if done right is like an environmental AI where objects respond more naturally, instinctly and interactively with the environment. Once physics is well done on a game or what not then I think advance AI can be developed for the characters.

One can say the same thing about shadows, how does that effect game play? Yet without good shadowing the environment looks rather bland, hard to hide in or explore etc. I think once Physics gets established broadly then game play will be enhanced dramatically in the end.

[Mystik]

i think, in the end..
i'd prefer aureal3d to come back.

i'd rather have _real_ sound in games than the ability to watch a plastic bag
float realisticly past my screen as it catches a small gust of air that just came
out of my ass.