Ok that sounds great. I can't wait for the "start the engine without the need for directx (for servers)" update

Offtopic (But then this is in offtopic) what happened to the upgrade to PhysX 2.8.4 in the roadmap? I just wanna get rid of the PhysX System Software as soon as possible (I hate asking people to test what i'm doing to install it). Are you considering going 100% bullet? I read that its caught up with PhysX now after using OpenCL in terms of performance - but am by no means an expert on game physics so would be interested in hearing thoughts on what's gonna happen with EE's physics.

I've removed it from the roadmap because I just implemented it
upload will be in few hours

I would like to get rid of PhysX totally, not because of installing, but firstly because there is only three choices when using PhysX for using GPU Physics.

Bullet 3 is going to be first to use full acceleration on OpenCL.
Bullet 2.xx only got some implementations, but again its open source and free for commercial use.
Newton Game Dynamics has/had planned on using OpenCL in version 3(might be long till release)
I would gear towards Bullet.

Hardware PhysX needs
#1 Modded physxinfo's driver hack (to be able run ATI for rendering, and a weak Nvidia for Physx)
or
#2 LucidLogix Chip on motherboard(and apply to the them to develop a driver to support your game(maybe engine is possible)) This is the same path as above^
or
#3 Only Nvidia in your computer.

Blender uses the Bullet physics engine. I can't complain about it. ^^

That's awesome Esenthel, i'm so pleased!
@ Zervox - PhysX is still good now, but I agree that there's a high chance bullet may be the better option in the future - but Esenthels already implemented it so he can't be taking the lazy option here Pitty there's not any decent games with it to see how stable it is - I don't think offline renders count as you can just tweak it to work for a particular render instance.

*is excited for next update*

No, its not the way it performs I am complaining about. its the fact its proprietary and can only be accelerated by Nvidia cards, and thus when releasing a game etc it would only be Nvidia cards which can gain the extra detail, extra speed, if you get my point. ^^

(10-18-2010 06:48 PM)Dynad Wrote:  Ok that sounds great. I can't wait for the "start the engine without the need for directx (for servers)" update

I've just received confirmation that latest update of EE runs on Intel GMA 3000.
It is possible that it will run also on older GMA 900.
I guess any servers have at least something like that?

No, alot of servers dont have a graphic card installed for longer than it takes to install the OS, alot of servers dont have integrated graphic cards either.

Well i have tried it on a laptop with a GMA chipset but even then its very slow.. and not very responsive cause the engine is still rendering the world. Which is not needed if u use the Physx for collision right? If you use it on a server which doesn't have a GPU at all it can be a problem.

You don't need to draw the world on server, you can leave the Draw(){} empty, or even better - minimize the application, drawing will not be called at all.
What model of GMA do you have?

Well on my laptop i have Intel GMA X3100 GPU... but i am not gonna use my laptop as server. It was just a test and yes i get 300fps if the Draw is empty. But does it still work on a server without any GPU at all? Cause if the d3d is needed you will get probably an error that the device couldn't be created.

---

Update: Yes its confirmed when there is no GPU present you will get a error: "Can't create Direct3D Device".

Yeah, if the server doesn't have any GPU at all, it probably won't work.
But I'm curious if they don't even have Intel GMA, Zervox: how do you know that they don't have even integrated gpu's ?

External graphic card devices and docking/tanking stations, a computer doesnt need gpu to work, you got remote control tools for that exact purpose.

I know because as I posted earlier, I have been working with a gamehoster setting up 25 Rackmount servers.

at work we got 120 1U servers, 30 2Us, and 7 4Us.
Out of all these only 8 of these have GPUs and they are the oldest ones.

Thanks!
I'll implement running engine without d3d.