Image Quality
Image Quality and PhysX
Batman: Arkham Asylum is a title that heavily features Nvidia's PhysX API. This means that PhysX controls most of physics calculations in the game, and if you have an Nvidia graphics card, you can enjoy extra PhysX visual effects with hardware acceleration. Now, you don't need Nvidia hardware to enable these PhysX effects, but if you don't have an Nvidia card, then your experience will be something of a slideshow no mater how fast your CPU is.
There are three PhysX settings: Off, Normal, and High. The High setting enables cloth (draperies, cobwebs, and the like) that will alter or rip as you interact with it in a very realistic fashion. The High setting also enables fog that will interact with characters, causing a wake behind them as they travel through it. Paper effects are present, causing sheets of paper to move as they are walked over. There is a host of other effects involving the architecture, such as explosions, tiles that break, and walls that crumble.
On the Normal setting, the cloth movements and interactions seem to be removed. Fog and paper effects seem to remain, but others may be muted--it is hard to judge exactly.
Of course, set to Off, cloth, paper, and fog effects are disabled. Explosions and crumbling architecture are a lot less realistic.
Even with PhysX set to Off, though, there are some physics calculations going on. Batman's cape flows beautifully and seems to react extremely realistically to his movement (we're told that this isn't a PhysX-based effect but is a result of custom coding by the developer), and there is the usual toppling-barrel physics and what have you.
In short, PhysX offers a lot of eye candy and added detail. You can play the game through without PhysX enabled and you'd never know there was anything missing--the game still looks gorgeous. But if you set PhysX to High on hardware capable of making it run fast enough to enjoy, the added detail is a real treat.
Image Quality: GeForce vs. Radeon
From what we've seen, you won't notice any difference in Radeon or GeForce image quality, which is just the way we like it. Of course, without GeForce hardware, the game will run much slower when PhysX is enabled, but the visual output will remain identical.
Great article, really informative. Looking forward to hearing back from the devs regarding CPU usage.
cant wait to try it.
This is a Games for Windows Live product. Or On-line account Evil DRM malware tracking software required.
I really want to play this; but alas I cannot buy it
Wow..I didn't expect GT 220 is a good dedicated Physx card,.. Off searching in eBay LoL
Looks to me like nVidia had this game rigged to better benefit it's cards, note the decrease in CPU involvement as the physX options are cranked up.
That is why Arkham Asylum should be Game of the Year - It is a work of art!
Would a setip with an Nvidia card for PhysX and an ATI card for graphics work? Noob question i know :-P
Would a setip with an Nvidia card for PhysX and an ATI card for graphics work? Noob question i know :-P
I don't think it's a daft question - there was a= bit of news or an article a short while back saying that nvidia had set something so that physX couldn't be used if there was a non-nvidia card handling the graphics (or something like that). I was going to raise the same question as to 'can the GT220 be used as a physx card regardless of the main GPU?' as I can't remember much about the other article.
I play this game using 2 8800GTs, one for graphics and one for the physx (on high).
All settings on max and res at 1080p
Benchmark gets about 40fps, played the whole game though with no noticable slowdown.
The physics were locked down because PhysX is an nVidia product (no one supported AGEIA dedicated cards when the original company (Ageia) was making the entry to the market),as some profit based companies would still use havok at that times and not see the huge potential of the PhysX of AGEIA, it's only reasonable that now that Ageia merged with nVidia, they want to make profit by selling their graphic cards.
The second reason, I think, is that the PhysX wouldn't even try to use the CPU for Physics for performance related issues (smooth frame rate in every case scenario rig).
As I recon, AMD is making a move in the Physics with the 5th serie.
Just wait and see... Again