The Arkham games had awesome phys x! Smoke, snow, objects on the ground would move when you ran past them! Made the game so much cooler!

This is one of the features that still feels very much “next gen” but already is gone from most features list for developers. Its a shame

GTA 4 had some awesome physics utilizing euphoria tech. I put so many hours into that game just messing around with the physics. Would love a DF retro on that game someday.

Mafia 2's physx particle effects was great

Physx in Mirrors edge was minor but still neat. I loved shooting holes in tarps in and seeing them wave differently in the wind. Was so cool.

I LOVED physx’s promise and some implementation. Open source physics more common on games like havoc again would be welcome. We’ve gone backwards on destruction and interactive toilets.

Borderlands 2 was a fantastic example of why PhysX was amazing. Peak gaming was seeing particles and debris flying everywhere and witnessing the aftermath of a big battle.

Borderlands with PhysX was pretty cool. I liked being able to make pools of goo and see their physics on the things the goo would land on. Seeing pools of whatever I was shooting out of my gun was pretty cool.

Batman Arkham Asylum Phys-X was amazing. I remember having 2 GPU’s and thinking it was so worth it. The smoke, the money flying everywhere, etc. so good!

Sad thing about physics today is, 15 years old titles being PhysX showcases look impressive. Another sad thing in general, it all started with AGEIA cards bringing hopes for physics-driven games, mechanically-wise, but it all end up mostly as eye candy like prettier versions of explosions and fps killer for non-Nvidia cards. With limited capabilities of consoles it looks like ray tracing took physics' place. I'd like physics more - it was not only nice to look at, but also fun to play with.

i remember playing borderlands 2 and being mind blown by debris and liquids orbiting around gravity grenades, or bits of enemies and dirt/rocks filling the screen, cloths being moved by gunshots or ability impacts because of the wind, same with borderlands the pre sequel

Half Life 2 is still one of the most immersive and replayable games due to its physics.

Killing Floor 2 with gibs and fluids reminded me of physx in borderlands. It killed performance and was kinda cartoonish looking, but it is still impressive to me today.

I believe many major studios do have such physics simulation code written for GPGPU, they are just not being utilized in many games, partly due to design choices and/or issues with other design elements. For example Ubisoft had a presentation showing them running physics like 25x faster on PS4 GPU than PS3 SPUs. Doesn't mean it's suitable for all projects.

The Finals has a ton of networked and gameplay impacting physics objects, highly recommend.

John radiates the vine boom sound with his facial expressions 😭😭😭

The Finals is the first time in a long time (Bad Company 2) where destruction impressed me. It looks great, and it plays great, even on my 2070. We need more of this!

I'm playing Arkham Knight with GPU PhysX enabled and noticed that the effects are buggy if I didn't cap it to 60fps(no issues running it uncapped with PhysX disabled)... It seemed to be a common issue with other hw accellerated titles also(Mafia II classic and Mirrors Edge had the same problem in my experience)...

Bad company 2 had amazing destruction same as red faction guerrilla

Cape of the Batman Arkham Knight is just amazing, especially shoulder plates

The vortex/black hole grenades were amazing in BL2 with the PhysX elements.

Plenty of games have cloth physics currently, even fully integrated, but that was largely made possible with SIMD extensions on the CPU. Similarly, particle collisions and physics are done on the GPU using compute shaders these days, any limitations are artistic not technical. A good demonstration of the latter is the Battlefront II level Naboo, where the wind picks up leaves and creates clusters of leaves and debris in dust devils; something you'd see PhysX be touted for done with little expense other than particle artist effort now.

Nice to see PhysX topic, looking forward for the upcoming video. I don't understand why it's so forgotten when it was quite remarkable but didn't reach its protentional.

I'd take a game that reacts to my actions realistically than a game that looks realistic.

I loved the PhysX in Borderlands 2, Killing Floor 2, Batman Arkham City, Mirror's Edge, Ghostbusters, and Mafia 2. Also Dirt 2. It had water physics for the mud puddles, which looked great in replays. After the ray tracing hype dies down (maybe by the 11th gen, PhysX needs to come back in full swing. It's just a matter of time. Also, even later down the road, we're gonna have games that have ray tracing, PhysX, and VR together, running at 120 fps. I hope I'm alive by then to see it

I think its the consumer demand for locked frames that has stopped most developers. A few dropped frames here and there is often considered "unplayable" by modern users so it isn't worth the effort.

One thing about all physics stuff is that you cant use it on stuff that might be noticeable. I keep bringing this up but when I played Mad Max, the doors have physics and sometimes you have to blow them up so they "fly off". However its not perfect and lot of times the door falls in a way that blocks progress for few minutes until the door despawns. Even on stuff like HL2 it doesnt take but one glitch in "physics engine" for the puzzle parts to fly in the air and soft lock your progress, needing reload.

I remember having a demo disc back 2005/6 with PhysX and there was a tech demo game ( which they turned into an actual game eventually) and trying to run the liquid physx on my AMD FX57 and was really impressed despite it tanking performance.

Red Faction

PhysX is literally the default physics engine in Unity. So almost every 3D unity game within the last 10+ years was running on PhysX. It's software based tho and doesn't run on the gpu, but it still spits out the same results. So if anyone wants to implement more physics tech demo stuff into their games they totally can. Also there is very little reason to have physics run on the GPU these days. The physics algorithms are very efficient now and CPUs are more than fast enough for most video game physics requirements. Also with graphics requirements and costs of GPUs going through the roof recently, i don't know how much sens it would make to offload even more in the rendering pipeline onto the graphics card.

I am still enamoured by PhysX in Borderlands 2. With that set to the highest option and you going ham with grenades, rockets and elemental effects it looks amazing as sludge and rock particles are flying all over

Memories! My friend and I spent hours in Crackdown sniping car tires on the highway just to watch the cars instantly fling off into space.

Because all of Nvida old gimmicks caused so much stutter and crashing it was unusable even today games just cant run using gameworks or physx better alternates were found but are only used in games that need it A shame though My autstic brain likes stupid things like that

I wouldn't mind Alex testing out some of my vehicle destruction prototype games. PhysX is fun when used right. Unfortunately, I don't think DF explores indie devs as much.

1:28 why John Linneman looking like he caught a bad whiff?

I wish we could get back to physics in games, as well as more believable AI. I remember the AI in Half-Life 2 and FEAR being quite awesome.

Batman, Alice madness returns, Borderlands 2.... So much memories!

Believable physics in games do so much to make me feel immersed, much more than higher fidelity visuals ever will. In fact, higher fidelity visuals without the physics being on par with it starts creating an uncanny valley for my immersion. So I would really love to see a push for more advanced physics sooner rather than later.

Very hopeful this branch of gaming, the systems driven stuff, can see the revival it deserves. I think the dynamism of overlapping systems is what people are really looking for from an open world experience.

Ff7 rebirth also has some interesting physics going on.

Zelda too. Games that don't use much physics somewhat feel like they are half in the past.

Batman Arkham PhysX was peak. Aside from the crappy drivers crashing Arkham Knight, those memories

I hope we get more games like Hydrophobia with the realistic water physics.

Mirrors edge and the arkham games having physx made them so memorable for me.

The shame about PhysX is it's still better then what's used in games today for example Chaos in Unreal Sucks it's crazy unstable and slow making it almost impossible to work with what took me 2 days to get working in chaos and ran at 15 to 20 fps I was abel to do in just 30 minutes in Apex running at 144 fps

Max Payne 2 had Havoc physics (I'm probably wrong) but the way the objects changed after every fight was just amazing

The Metro series also had some top tier Physx features.

We definitely need more realistic physics in games , physics seem to have been overlooked in next gen games ..

Should be mentioned, Nvidia broke Physx support for older games on the RTX line with drivers from 2021 on up. This means effects will glitch out, not work, or games will crash if you try to enable it on older titles, like Fallout 4, the Batman games, etc.

I play old game sometimes and phy is still great that tech never looked outdated its still games since ps4 era that used it

Can’t wait for the deep dive video of physx that you have cooking 😊

And of course BotW and TotK are completely left out of the physics discussion despite offering the most impressive physics interactions in games to date.

I wish more games used more physics throughout their games. I don't want games driven by physics like teardown, but games with realistic physics are so cool to me.

Things such as physx and tessellation are what we need to make games look much better. Those are not so complicated to run and give a much better look and feel to a video game than let's say ray tracing. Can't believe games are still releasing today with the physics and detailed but flat as hell textured of a ps2 video game. Man, you are wearing a cape, why does it look like both parts of your cape are tied to your legs whenever you walk?? Oh at least we can see the grey reflections of the flattest cobblestone path I've ever seen in it, best game ever, 420/-1 rating

I really love physics based/integrated games, the game experience effects that it gets are just one of a kind, I never understood why they stopped using/implementing physics or physX like APIs and adding those effects. BeamNG is also a good example of how much fun true physics can be in a game and how long that can carry fun wise. Or Dark Messiah with just that simple kick the enemy into the nemesis, or back in the days when you could physically deconstruct buildings... In general, Especially in VR it's a extremely important fact for immersion and fun, I could carry on for hours... Nice to see you at DF pointing on that!

Teardown's physics run entirely on the CPU.

No wondering when i am updating GPU drivers the Physx version says its the same version or newer, Been seeing this for a while.

Unreal Tournament 3 had some physx levels released as DLC that are pretty awesome.

I loved in Mirror's Edge, it added a layer of immersion. I wish it comes back with a standalone PCIE card, the way it was before Nvidia bought it.

Warframe had physx for a good while when support was dropped the creative director at the time Steve basically made his own version that ended up looking better than before

I remember Planetside 2 had Physx support super early on. It was real cool to see it at the time, but I almost perfectly remember feeling like it just created so much visual noise while trying to play the game (plus its notoriously poor performance lol). It looked amazing, and a giant open world sci-fi Battlefield game is a perfect place to showcase it, but it was kinda distracting. Maybe if they dialed it back a bit and use it for art direction or performance, like how people say good CGI in movies is really just CGI you don't notice.

GUYS, please Always remember to mention Arkham Origins every time you revisit physx. I’ll never forget my 2x 780ti SLI rig with a 750ti running in dedicated physx mode walking into black gate prison in the opening of the game and walking over toilet paper that would actually move depending on the direction that Batman‘s feet were actually pointing! The other games you mentioned were absolutely awesome showcases, but there was just something about the attitude towards origins because it was not developed by rocksteady even though, and I believe I’ve heard you guys agree with the opinion of it being a decent game that absolutely did fit within the series regardless of some of it narrative issues. If you guys haven’t experienced the physics in that game, I would highly recommend checking it out, not only do you experience the first taste of it very early into the game but the built-in benchmark uses it if it is enabled in the options. Of course I specifically remember that because of testing it to see what a difference that 750 TI as a dedicated physics cardand there was absolutely zero impact on the frame rate but back in 2014 or 15 I’ll admit that that was overkill as a dedicated physics card. Cheers.

The Just cause games were so much fun, still looking forward to Just Cause 5, as long is it doesn't get canceled

I think impressive physics are more important to video games than RT lighting/shadows/reflections, in fact they give huge amount of gameplay mechanics you can implement. That's why Source engine still holds up so well, they put everything into physics and it even spawned masterpiece that is GMOD. Zelda BOTW and TOTK feel amazing to play since everything behaves like you expect it to behave, the same way it worked back in GTA IV, HL2/GMOD, Max Payne 2/3, Hitman 2016, Fear, to some extent Dying Light, Red Faction Guerilla, Crysis, Just Cause 2/3, Red Dead Redemption 1/2, Boneworks... Good physics make the game feel more immersive and in case of sandbox games it can make for hours upon hours of experimentation and fun.

Is it wrong that I'm far more interested in the gameplay of Star Fox 64's last level going on behind John than I am this discussion? Joking aside, I do wish developers would do something game changing with those liquid physics in Borderlands 2.

Darkest of days also makes use of physx, even going as far as not running at all on amd hardware. Though it has been a while, I do remember it looking pretty good.

With all the 12-16 core CPUs that come out these days the game engine could allocate 4 cores of the CPU cores to do the hair, cloth, and character body physics to be done on the CPU side of things and the rest of the environmental destruction to be done on the AI/PhysX processing unit board.

Physx is cool, but it's locked to Nvidia hardware only. Some of the more basic features can run on CPU but that's about it. If the physx feature set was open sourced and platform agnostic, it would be far more useful. There are alternatives like chaos in UE5 but they are still be worked on.

The cloth, hair, water, and destruction physics CIG demonstrated in the Star Engine trailer were amazing.

Reinstalled AC4 Black Flag and was running into so many problems PhysX just yesterday. What a coincidence.

Teardown is actually a CPU heavy game, but it is also a GPU heavy game. It will use your system, as much as you can throw at the game. It just doesn't max the CPU loads, but it is a multi-threaded game and has been known to easily cross 20 threads.

Arkham asylum and city were pretty cool with PhysX, Blag Flag was also very cool but horribly optimized with it enabled.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag had PhysX smoke that made the gunfights more atmospheric (black powder weapons and all).

it wAs indeed a clear "frame killer" feature

The last time I saw a physX demo was Luigi mansion 3.

I liked Fallout 4's Weapon Debris, I would sit there for like 15 minutes sometimes, just shooting the ground and walls with infinite ammo turned on, and then you throw a grenade or shoot a fatman at the debris and watch it fly all over the place. Borderlands 2 had a lesser version of the effect, being 3 years earlier, but Borderlands 2 had really cool goo PhysX with the weapon elements. Then you have Killing Floor 2 which without Gibs is significantly less satisfying, the fluid is similar to Borderlands 2, but the blood looks kind of like jelly

Im glad so many people are mentioning Red Faction Guerilla and Battlefield Bad Company for they are the benchmark for destruction physics and unfortunately gaming took a different route ever since.

BL2 implementation is crazy lol.

Because graphics are being designed to be more static and less dynamic. There was a point where games focused alot on dynamic interactions with the environment. Physics. Destructibility. Nowadays its mostly giant textures. Games are being made to be looked at, not to be interacted with.

I remember that Batman arkham city support physX

Borderlands 2 + PhysX + Singularity grenade was all I needed to be sold on to build a PC back when the game came out. Seriously awesome effects!

Will happen the same with ray tracing?

I wonder if games like The Finals will bring a renewed interest by developers to incorporate physics in upcoming games.

Hi Digital Foundry! Do you think Nvidia Omniverse Physx, Blast and Flow technologies have scope for future games? It looks really cool with what Nvidia has been doing with Omniverse and independent models like Blast (Apex earlier) and Flow are now part of Physx API (low-level).

If Nvidia had a good plan they could make a specific card that has both PhysX and Tensor core based "AI processing unit" on it and sell it along with their GPU cards. Most of the high end mother boards have two PCI-E 16X slots. So one of the card would be used for AI and PhysX and the other slot would use the normal GPU!

The gimmick to sell gpu now is reflection in puddles, meanwhile nintendo makes a truly step up in physics and element interaction on a tablet

I was thinking the same exact thing as rich that the old consoles drove the tech. They were way more powerful cpus for the day. Compared to today where everything runs on the gpu and they don’t do physics nearly as well. Remember all the awesome havok games in the ps3 gen

Remember the Pac Man physics? A classic top notch!

If you do a PhysX video, please include Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. Not because the PhysX features are amazing (I have no idea if they are) but because they haven't worked in years and neither NVidia nor Ubisoft seem to care as they've left them that way, despite being advertised, headline features of the PC port when it came out, and being broken just a few years later.

I was thinking about this topic, literally, about a week ago. I really loved the usage of PhysX integrations (and their GameWorks) library into more games. GameWorks is still getting used at times (I believe Baldur's Gate 3 utilizes it, though I'm not sure in what aspects?) -- but those really cool PhysX effects in games like Borderlands 2 and the Arkham games...yeah -- you don't really see them anymore. :( I thought it was because developer were trying to shift away from GPU-specific features, but it does make sense if they're simply not being 'pushed' as hard anymore.

I got an rx 7900xt and physx on a cpu works like garbage. Is it possible to run graphics on a amd card and put my trusty old gtx 1060 only for PhysX?

I started playing FF7 Remake and the first thing that interested me technologically was being able to kick around objects like traffic cones by running into them

After seeing BL2 Phys X, i agree, it needs to make a comeback. If gamers demand it, developers will make it.

Johns face lmao

I wonder how John has a “digital foundry nintendo seal of quality” t-shirt and still wasn’t sued and arrested by nintendo😅

“We got this” The Finals 😎

really important question !

the best game of all time being played in john's background there

The big problem was that since developers couldn't guarantee that players could run PhysX, they couldn't implement it into the gameplay in any form, so it just became extraneous special effects that never affected anything in the game world. So, why use it when you could just use regular physics systems like Havok that have better performance on every system, integrate it into the gameplay, and be done with it and move on?

😂 I can see someone playing lylat wars in the background.