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Browse All TopicsI am playing the first level of Batman Arkham Asylum and I am trying to compare the difference between the phyx effects between Normal and High. So far I am unable to notice any significant differnce between normal and high, the only thing I noticed is extra curtains hanging from beams, pillars and ceilings. Is that all?
The reason why I am curious about it because at high setting my frame rates are between 30 and 40 while it is 40 to 50 when at normal. Both are decent frame rate of course but the more the merrier, I mean 8 to 10 FPS increase is good to have. So unless the difference is large enough I rather have phyx at Normal setting so those who played the game is the difference noticeable enough for which its worth trading 8-10 fps?
P.S: I know there are lot of phyx comparison youtube videos around, the problem though the ones I found so far only shows the difference betwen phyx off and high, none of them shows phyx at Normal setting
My system specs are:
CPU: E8400 Core 2 Duo 3GHZ 6MB L2 cach
RAM: 4GB 667MHZ (dual channel)
Graphic Card: XFX Geforce 260 GTX 896MB
Motherboard: Nforce 650i ultra
Audio: Onboard audio (Realtek)
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit RTM
Thanks in advance
a_anis300
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by: MASQUERAIDPosted on 2009-10-11 at 05:50:29ID: 25545750
There are still very few games that take full advantage of physics engines, mainly because GPU power has advanced so rapidly that the GPU alone has been doing a lot of the grunt work.
Introduction of separate physics cards a few years ago created a headache for games development. If the assumption was that everyone would have separate physics processing and the market didn't buy into this then games (which take a few years to arrive from conception to launch) would arrive on the shelves and no-one would have the hardware to make the best of them.
The nVidia phyx has helped to solve this dilemma but Batman AA has still been designed to run without dedicated physics hardware.
In answer to your question @ 40 fps you'll get good gameplay and the best of the graphics but at this stage in integrated physics hardware development really all you are gaining by putting phyx on max is you see the weave of the curtains! Gameplay has to remain unaffected as the developers need to keep the high end graphics card owners who haven't yet moved to seprate physics processing happy too.
If and when physics hardware becomes the norm for gaming (including the highly lucrative casual gamer market) then you'll start seeing the hardware actually changing the quality of the game experience.