Nuclear Dawn Update Has Full Linux Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Nuclear Dawn Update Has Full Linux Support

Nuclear Dawn, the post-apocalyptic first-person RTS hybrid video game powered by Valve's Source Engine, is now out of beta on Linux -- two years after the game was formally released for Windows gamers...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTY2OTA

[AJenbo]

Proud to have taken part in developing a game for Linux :-D

[Azrael5]

My compliment I would like to know about physic effect on linux. i use physx pcie card and it would be useful to knw if it will be supported by opnesource drivers also to manage geeric physic engine.

[schmidtbag]

My compliment I would like to know about physic effect on linux. i use physx pcie card and it would be useful to knw if it will be supported by opnesource drivers also to manage geeric physic engine.

Physx is CUDA based, and CUDA is available for linux. However, as far as I'm aware, there are no titles for linux that use physx. I'm not sure if there are even any physx demos for linux, but, I'm pretty sure the libraries for it do exist.

I used to have a GPU dedicated for physx and got a couple games for it (in windows). I even got it to work with my ATI GPUs. But I've found it wasn't really worth it in the end. It's a shame because physics calculations, particularly particle physics, is such a waste of resources for a GPU. I'd love to see more games that support a dedicated physics card but it seems to be a dying feature.

[Azrael5]

Physx is CUDA based, and CUDA is available for linux. However, as far as I'm aware, there are no titles for linux that use physx. I'm not sure if there are even any physx demos for linux, but, I'm pretty sure the libraries for it do exist.

I used to have a GPU dedicated for physx and got a couple games for it (in windows). I even got it to work with my ATI GPUs. But I've found it wasn't really worth it in the end. It's a shame because physics calculations, particularly particle physics, is such a waste of resources for a GPU. I'd love to see more games that support a dedicated physics card but it seems to be a dying feature.

In fact I think that the best way to join physic is a specific card.

[schmidtbag]

In fact I think that the best way to join physic is a specific card.

Haha where do you think physx came from? It was created by a company named Ageia and they made a PPU (physics processing unit) which was a PCI card with I think a 400MHz core and 128MB of RAM. But since it was basically just a GPU without a display, nvidia bought the technology and merged it with CUDA. It seemed to get a lot of attention at the time but once nvidia was adamant about not letting AMD (ATI at the time) use it, the popularity of doing hardware physx quickly dropped. But anyway, I'd love to see dedicated physics cards come back. Gives PC gaming more of an edge, and would also be much more economical. Many people used their retired nvidia products as a physx GPU.

[Azrael5]

Haha where do you think physx came from? It was created by a company named Ageia and they made a PPU (physics processing unit) which was a PCI card with I think a 400MHz core and 128MB of RAM. But since it was basically just a GPU without a display, nvidia bought the technology and merged it with CUDA. It seemed to get a lot of attention at the time but once nvidia was adamant about not letting AMD (ATI at the time) use it, the popularity of doing hardware physx quickly dropped. But anyway, I'd love to see dedicated physics cards come back. Gives PC gaming more of an edge, and would also be much more economical. Many people used their retired nvidia products as a physx GPU.

Yes, I have 4 ageia cards: 2 pci bus cards and 2 pcie bus cards provided by Asus. Currently 2 of them operates on my 2 systems: pci card in 1 of them and pcie version on the other one, managing physic in Joint Task force game, Gears of War game and Sherlock holmes game (by a tweak on latest nvidia drivers release).

[Helios747]

I was under the impression that this game was already dead due to lack of after release support by the devs.


Am I wrong here?

[liam]

Haha where do you think physx came from? It was created by a company named Ageia and they made a PPU (physics processing unit) which was a PCI card with I think a 400MHz core and 128MB of RAM. But since it was basically just a GPU without a display, nvidia bought the technology and merged it with CUDA. It seemed to get a lot of attention at the time but once nvidia was adamant about not letting AMD (ATI at the time) use it, the popularity of doing hardware physx quickly dropped. But anyway, I'd love to see dedicated physics cards come back. Gives PC gaming more of an edge, and would also be much more economical. Many people used their retired nvidia products as a physx GPU.

I wouldn't worry about it. As GPUs become more capable of independent work is expect the engines to develop increasingly sophisticated physics engines that target work to the GPU(s).
It's inevitable that it'll happen and we'll get something today works across vendors.

[schmidtbag]

I wouldn't worry about it. As GPUs become more capable of independent work is expect the engines to develop increasingly sophisticated physics engines that target work to the GPU(s).
It's inevitable that it'll happen and we'll get something today works across vendors.

That's easy to say if you have a single high-end GPU. But you get significantly better distribution of resources if you have 2 GPUs designated for different purposes but work toward a common goal. You lower the efficiency dramatically when you have 1 piece of hardware calculate 2 "unrelated" sets of instructions at the same time, because as far as I'm aware, a GPU can't calculate both the graphics and physics within the same clock; it must do them on separate cycles. That being said, if you have a physically separate processor for just physics, you get real fully parallel calculations, offering a higher theoretical maximum frame rate. A modern IGP (intel or AMD) is perfectly fine for most physics calculations and would put good use to a GPU that most people may have go to waste.