The PhysX Project

[Allan]

As mentioned in http://www.3impact.com/forum/index.php?topic=2413.0 I am running a little project on integrating the Nvidia PhysX physics engine into 3Impact. I would like to keep this thread as an update on my progress, recording the "humps and bumps" along the way. I am not giving away any source code at this stage, but will post .exe test demos at each stage of the project.
Here is the first one : PhysX_Test01...........A screenshot and the demo installation file.

It basically consists of 3 dynamic PhysX primitive actors (sphere, box and capsule) and one static primitive (a small plane). All of them have a 3Impact mesh attached to them for visualisation purposes. The dynamic primitives can be manipulated by means of the mouse.

[genetransfer]

very cool Allen! ran well on my 9800gt, looks very promissing! good luck on your journey!

[Allan]

Thnx, genetransfer.........one always wonders if what works on one's own PC will work on anoher's PC !

[Developer - Fernando]

Uber cool! It worked for me on NVidia cards but crashed on an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 (at startup). It may be that you are using Physx settings that require functionality only supported by certain video cards.

[Allan]

That's very strange???.........my development laptop uses an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 !

EDIT:
Now I come to think of it, I recently started getting "nvcuda.dll not found" failures on PhysX projects that previously worked quite happily on my ATI system. By re-installing the Nvidia PhysX Driver (yes, for an ATI graphics card !) I was able to put everything back to normal working order again.

The driver is obtainable from here : http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_9.09.1112.html

[Developer - Fernando]

It now works everywhere, thanx!

[Allan]

Here is PhysX_Test02 where I was testing the interaction between a large number PhysX dynamic primitives.
A pyramid-shaped stack of 55 boxes is disassembled by throwing up to 50 balls (Actually one or two balls will bring down the stack; the extra balls are just for playing around with!). The framerate hardly changes, and I'm sure that 3 or 4 times that amount could be handled with ease.

[genetransfer]

where were you when I was using 3Impact Allen  no frame rate drop here ran with ease! great job look forward to more!

[Allan]

So far, this is progressing more smoothly than I thought it would.(Let's hope it keeps on that way!)
PhysX_Test03 coming up.
It is really just a re-hash of Test01, but using a static PhysX trimesh as the terrain, instead of just a flat groundplane.
The trimesh was built up by using the vertices/faces of the default 3Impact terrain.(Thank goodness for the 3Impact Mesh-Buffer functions!)
Note that for this test the 1st person camera is kept at a fixed height above Ground Zero and that there is no collision testing with the ground.........so keep to the lowlands, or walk through the ground! (In an up-and-coming test I will be trying out the PhysX Character Controller)

[genetransfer]

fingers crossed , another good one! I did notice that the rendering was all a bit jittery. if you can set the simulation frequency to that of the monitors refresh rate i.e 60 hz it might run smoother. that what I did with 3Impact with ode to get a really smooth render. the Character Controller sounds really interesting look forward to seeing that!