Carmack: Hardware Physics A Bad Idea
id Software's John Carmack spoke out against hardware-based physics at QuakeCon 2009, and it wasn't pretty.
How does it feel when one of the biggest developers of this era thinks your product is a big waste of time and money? That kind of opinion is like a swift kick in the groin, but that's basically what id Software's John Carmack said--not in private behind closed doors--but during a Q&A session at QuakeCon 2009 when asked about his thoughts on hardware physics.
"I think I was fairly public about my thinking that that was a really bad idea, and in fact it was pretty clear to me from early on that the whole idea for that was to do a startup to be acquired," he answered.
As he indicated, Carmack made his feelings regarding hardware-based physics well known in the past (story), stating that he wasn't a "believer" in physics processing units (PPUs), and that multiple CPU cores would be much more useful in general. He also previously said that some tasks would work just fine when GPUs finally get "reasonably fine-grained context switching and scheduling."
But his answer during the QuakeCon 2009 Q&A session seemed more like an attack on Ageia and its PhysX PPU that was eventually assimilated by the Nvidia collective. "I actually had a really quite negative opinion about stuff like that because they went out, they evangelized, they got some people to buy a piece of hardware that I didn't think was actually a good technical direction for things on there; certainly was going to be supplanted by later generations of more integrated compute resources on there," he continued. "I don't think it was a good idea, I certainly wasn't a backer of the company, and I hope NVIDIA didn't pay a whole lot of money for them."
Ouch. To catch the full-blown attack on hardware-based physics, check out Carmack in action captured here on YouTube.

I am sorry, but why do we need hardware to run physics? Havok was doing a fine job and it never required any additional physical hardware to be run.
What will happens with DX11 around the corner?
Lets face it, id software is a little behind the time anywho, even when they released Doom3 and quake 4, the games were pretty stale. The games had decent graphics for the time they were released, but the games were nothing special, and for the part pretty boring. And what have they given to the gaming community since then? Nothing. While other game companies are pushing forward with fresh new ideas, id is sitting around talking trash about how bad physx is.
I think this can all be summed up in 1 sentence. Id is sore that they can't invent anything new and fresh, so they attack new ideas that they wish they had come up with.
and how many people actually use PPUs?
I have seen them in rigs from Falcon Northwest and stuff but are they worth it?
Lets face it, id software is a little behind the time anywho, even when they released Doom3 and quake 4, the games were pretty stale. The games had decent graphics for the time they were released, but the games were nothing special, and for the part pretty boring. And what have they given to the gaming community since then? Nothing. While other game companies are pushing forward with fresh new ideas, id is sitting around talking trash about how bad physx is.
I think this can all be summed up in 1 sentence. Id is sore that they can't invent anything new and fresh, so they attack new ideas that they wish they had come up with.
I do however believe that Carmack's recent love for consoles influences his opinion on this subject. If a game was released today that had ground breaking graphics and to top it off a very advanced physics system that really took advantage of physics capabilities the game simply wouldn't be capable of running on the consoles we have today. With more developers looking to release on both consoles and PC this wouldn't be in their best interest.
I am sorry, but why do we need hardware to run physics? Havok was doing a fine job and it never required any additional physical hardware to be run.
What will happens with DX11 around the corner?
Well, I admit that Carmack is not a really good game developer, but he knows how to code. He's one of the few who can sell graphic engines and make money over his games that way.
tHanks for the info
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/Business/About
When desktop PC's are gone.
Correction: from series 8 and up; although you should at least have an 8800GT to appreciate it.
BTW, ID not inventive... right... first 3d engine, first FPS, first deathmatch game, first real-time shadows game... yeah... I suppose. How many GOOD PC games came out this year anyway? How many Inventive oones then? How many years since you've seen something you could say "wow, this is something totally new"?
It's not Carmack's job to make good games, he's a programmer, he's not responsible for story line, modeling, level design, or whatever other aspect of development.