ATTENTION DEVS ... Physx 3 for Unity?!

[withinboredom]

Hi devs,

Just fyi, http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/215307-Is-there-any-interest-in-PhysX-3-x-integration ...

Either hire this guy or assign a guy to do what he did. We would love you forever (we'll do that anyway, but it is besides the point).

Sincerely,

Your Players

[IrRedemption]

May the gods look upon your request.

[Seshins]

i too would be interested to see this looked at by the devs

[NeoMorph]

Holy crap... did you see the stats for his test?

Simulation time on physx 3.3 is ~20ms

Simulation time on unity is ~430ms

That's crazy.

[Guest]

[Deleted by user]

Edited November 25, 2019 by Guest

[sjwt]

Just remember, this may be optimizations that are already in the game, or they may not affect KSP in any way what so ever, Physx3 is more then just the physics that KSP could be using.

[withinboredom]

I've been digging into it all night, (no formal mentions from devs or anyone at Squad withstanding) but it appears that they are using the standard Physx engine that comes with Unity. I'm a developer, and while they may have begun rolling their own multi-threaded implementation, it's doubtful. Physics is a very math / logic (when it comes to multithreaded) implementations. Ask anyone who has ever made a game engine from scratch, and they will tell you the physics part -- the part that makes the game act like real life -- is the most complex part, especially if you need to make it fast.

That being said, the physics aspect is what determines whether your space ship blows up or lands, how far the ship goes down on its landing struts, and how fast you can go. Because the current implementation in the Unity engine, it can only do calculations in one core. This technology is antiquated at this point, but as the Unity Engine is used by hundreds -- if not thousands of games -- that don't need super fast math done ... it is probably very low on Unity's todo list. Now, I bet Squad could pay a hefty sum of money and make it happen -- or even do it in house -- but lets face it, there is a game to finish! However, if someone is already doing all the work, and they only need to pay a small sum of money, then hey, we all benefit.

What are the benefits? Well, for one, no more 15 minute realtime but 3 minute game time launches... and more importantly, a higher part count before hitting unbearable lag. If this guy's implementation is really 2.5x faster, then we could be looking at 2.5xish more parts ... meaning bigger ships, bases and stations.

[m4rt14n]

Please implement more optimizations. My poor comp cant habdle ksp

[IrRedemption]

please let devs look at this

[Camacha]

Yeah, it would really help to put this in the development forum. Putting it up here will not attract much developer attention.

[Nemrav]

look just do as the above said, if not i'm going to link it my self !!!

[sjwt]

moved as reqeusted

[Nemrav]

thanks !, though since im not an admin, my post would be a new thread linking the older post.

[allmappedout]

Did anyone notice in there a certain post by a bac9? Could it be.....?

[coolitic]

YES, PLEASE.

Since Unity refuses to make windows multi-core stable, WE NEED THIS.

[Nemrav]

bumping this !, deserves a higher place than the yet ANOTHER 64bit request..

[Seshins]

i agree - rather than the same tired threads about "why you no 64 bit Squad", this actually seems interesting and possibly something that could be integrated? (im not a programmer so i could be widely off).

Would be nice if one of the devs was to at least look at it and comment whether its applicable to KSP in the near future, or something that will only benefit FPS games (which i think he's done this for)

[jaredkzr]

This is a must-have. From my limited understanding, this would not require near as much re-coding as multi-core support and would offer a very large performance gain. I think this should definitely be at the very least considered by Squad. Maybe they could hire the guy or work out some kind of deal.

[landeTLS]

Yeah the native physics in unity really isnt good for ksp as it is very physics intensive and not so graphics intensive. (Physics is being calculated completly on the cpu in ksp/unity) if i am understanding the unity addon linked here it is an nvidia physx implimentation that would allow for moving the flops intensive part of physics calculations to the gpu instead (which is far more well suited for fast floating point operations)

In comparison. My two 8 core xeons are capable of less than a fraction of the 5 somewhat tflops that my 780ti can do.

64 bits ksp in windows would be very nice too. But mostly ppl with modding addiction(like me) would have the most enjoyement from it(adressing more than 3.5gb memory, and yes im already using the texture compressor plugin). For that we will first need to wait for stable 64bit builds of unity to be released so there is really nothing squad can do atm.

EDIT:

I do get the sensation that nothing being discussed here in the suggestions subforums gets reviewed by the devs at squad (which is why this is my first post on this subforum, i mainly post in the mods/plugins subforums because there are actually communication between the plugin devs and the community. Squad dont really do hands on communication with the community too much. Probably in fear of their ideas and feedback getting taken as official statements and ppl raging when their Expectations are not met) anyway i posted in this thread because it seemed very interesting. And i have a small hope someone at squad sees the thread

Edited March 4, 2014 by landeTLS

[Red Iron Crown]

(snip) I do get the sensation that nothing being discussed here in the suggestions subforums gets reviewed by the devs at squad (which is why this is my first post on this subforum, i mainly post in the mods/plugins subforums because there are actually communication between the plugin devs and the community. Squad dont really do hands on communication with the community too much. Probably in fear of their ideas and feedback getting taken as official statements and ppl raging when their Expectations are not met) anyway i posted in this thread because it seemed very interesting. And i have a small hope someone at squad sees the thread

I'm not so sure. It certainly is mostly one-way communication, but I'm sure someone at Squad reads this forum and cherry picks the best suggestions for them to consider.

[Arran]

I'm not so sure. It certainly is mostly one-way communication, but I'm sure someone at Squad reads this forum and cherry picks the best suggestions for them to consider.

I think thats Rowsdowers job as community manager.

[pizzaoverhead]

As Nvidia has bought Ageia and isn't letting anyone else use GPU PhysX, wouldn't this preclude support for anyone using AMD or Intel graphics? If this is the case, the developers would have to support two different physics engines, doubling their workload, as well as having gameplay differ depending on the player's hardware.

EDIT: Tom's Hardware has a well-researched writeup on the subject here.

Edited March 4, 2014 by pizzaoverhead

[Red Iron Crown]

More advanced PhysX falls back to CPU processing if no compatible GPU is available.

[Alex_Leonardo]

Hey, my relative works at unity.

Anyways, MUCH OPTIMIZATIONS

SO OPTIMAL

SUCH PERFORMANCE

WOW