Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Technology => Topic started by: Vicious713 on January 19, 2011, 02:54:35 am

Title: PhysX or Secondary GPU Support?
Post by: Vicious713 on January 19, 2011, 02:54:35 am

I know that physics are pretty much plugged into the engine, and not actually part of it's structure, or something like that. But i was curious if Outerra would utilize a second GPU. I know alot of people are running crossfire or SLI, but some people have one of those cards dedicated towards processing physics. Would this depend on the physics currently being implimented in the engine, or is this something that Outerra would dictate?

Title: PhysX or Secondary GPU Support?
Post by: cameni on January 19, 2011, 06:31:39 am

Currently the physics runs on CPU, but when there will be an advanced physics simulation such as GPU implementation of beam physics, another GPU could come in handy for that.

An existing physics running on GPU would have to be adapted to Outerra architecture for best results. Since the terrain is generated and kept in a special format, the best thing would be to have the physics capable to access it directly.

Title: PhysX or Secondary GPU Support?
Post by: Vicious713 on January 19, 2011, 06:40:16 am

Quote from: cameni

Currently the physics runs on CPU, but when there will be an advanced physics simulation such as GPU implementation of beam physics, another GPU could come in handy for that.

An existing physics running on GPU would have to be adapted to Outerra architecture for best results. Since the terrain is generated and kept in a special format, the best thing would be to have the physics capable to access it directly.

So essentially it's up to the physics engine to decide if it wants to use the other gpu or not?

Title: PhysX or Secondary GPU Support?
Post by: cameni on January 19, 2011, 06:50:46 am

I'd not say it's up to the physics engine, the engine scheduler will be controlling what GPU jobs run where/when.