A little while back, NVIDIA brought us the news that Mirror's Edge for the PC would feature PhysX support and include some neat effects physics. Effects physics, as you may recall, is the physical simulation of things that don't impact gameplay but simply enhance the visual impact of a game. This can range from particle systems to persistent debris enhanced destructibility or more accurate simulation of fluids, smoke or other volumetric effects. The impact is in immersiveness but it doesn't bring game changing aspects of hardware accelerated physics to the table quite yet.

And we haven't seen anything, until Mirror's Edge, that looked promising in terms of adding anything really compelling to a game. The previous video we posted showed some nice potential, but we still haven't gotten the opportunity to play with it ourselves and really feel the difference. We requested a side-by-side video hoping to get a better handle on what, exactly, is improved in Mirror's Edge. NVIDIA delivered.

Here's the original video of Mirror's Edge we posted.

Here is the side by side video showing better what DICE has added to Mirror's Edge for the PC with PhysX. Please note that the makers of the video (not us) slowed down the game during some effects to better show them off. The slow downs are not performance related issues. Also, the video is best viewed in full screen mode (the button in the bottom right corner).

The effects in there can be simulated on either a CPU or an NVIDIA GPU. The advantage to the GPU is performance and NVIDIA indicates that even an Intel Core i7 processor will have a tough time without GPU support. So these effects aren't anything we've never seen before, but it certainly looks like there is just a lot more of it in Mirror's Edge (and not in that really bad too many particles/too much debris sort of way). The glass breaking itself honestly looks the same (or close enough) to us, but the persistent particles are where it's at. Having a little debris stick around and be affected by the character is a nice touch. The cloth, plastic and tarp effects are what look like the real icing on the cake in the game though. The complete absence of the cloth objects when physics is disabled makes an already sparse looking world look pretty empty by comparison.

We still want to really get our hands on the game to see if it feels worth it, but from this video, we can at least say that there is more positive visual impact in Mirror's Edge than any major title that has used PhysX to date. NVIDIA is really trying to get developers to build something compelling out of PhysX, and Mirror's Edge has potential. We are anxious to see if the follow through is there.

Extending this story is the fact that today NVIDIA is announcing that EA and 2K games have both licensed PhysX and will be working with NVIDIA to include the technology in future titles they publish. All EA and 2K development studios will now have license to develop with PhysX for all platforms. This means Mirror's Edge may not be the only EA title going forward to get the PhysX treatment, and 2K will bring PhysX to the table with Borderlands (which is being developed by Gearbox).

It's no secret that NVIDIA wants effects physics and PhysX specifically to become the next big thing. The fact that this game enables all the effects to be run on any hardware at whatever performance it can manage is a very good move. Only enabling the effects with PhysX hardware present isn't the way to get more developers to adopt the technology. If other publishers and developers start to pick up and extend this technique of including effects physics, we could start seeing physics hardware start to live up to its potential. It may be until we have a physics API that is hardware accelerated on all platforms before we really see ubiquitous use in games, but at least NVIDIA and some game developers our there are doing what they can to move the industry forward in the meantime. That doesn't mean we'll blindly be happy with the way developers use the technology, or that we'll talk about PhysX as a must have feature until there are games that make it true. But moving forward is always a chicken and egg problem and we are happy to see NVIDIA staying behind hardware accelerated physics DICE actually trying to do something interesting with it.
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  • ifkopifko - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link

    Well... I would say that with PhysX turned off they could have implemented some simpler simulations that could be handled by the CPU. We've had hanging and waving cloth simulations done that way for.... many many years without a problem. Tearing cloth is something different of course, but I thing that something really simple would do the job...
    Removing all those objects from the game is just plain lame in my opinion. Anyone can do that. The game developers should show that they can actually do something with any hardware...
    I would not mind to have a PPU card in my computer as long as the price is right and I can still have a choice of video card manufacturer.
    Just my opinion.
  • kumquatsrus - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link

    i understand what you're saying. however, i'm pretty sure they will let everyone enable the physx effects in the game, but those without a ppu or physx capable nvidia gpu will have poor fps.
  • ifkopifko - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link

    Sure they will let everyone enable those effects. But I wonder if they are gonna provide more complex settings (like in graphics) so that you could lower the detail of those simulations in order to have playable framerate. Actually, I am pretty sure they won't. Because then we would find out that the game can run smoothly wihtout physX on GPU and with decent physical simulations. Just like in other games that are out there today....
  • wh3resmycar - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link

    they just have to make sure that they're just removing the environment cloths not the ones on the clothes that the characters are wearing. they'd probably get an R rating if they do so lol.
  • SiliconDoc - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link

    After another look or two - and trying to be nice and ignorant about the missing elements on the left:
    The tearing plastic and the way it stretched and hung off the outside rail was pretty cool I have to say -
    although Kai's powergoo code would probably do the same thing.
    I guess they better show the cartoon sex industry - maybe stretching condoms and jiggling body parts will drive the technology properly.
    (Sadly, that's likely a very accurate guess.) lol
  • george1976 - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

    Indeed, not there yet...i'm not impressed, at all.
  • Lifted - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

    That was one lame demonstration. Looked like Wolfenstein with a cloth waving around.
  • LTG - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

    Mirror's Edge is based on the Wolfenstein engine, licensed from Id.
  • Pirks - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

    LTG is spewing obvious bullshit here, so don't believe this lama :)

    Mirror's Edge is built on UE3, not on some id's tech
  • tim851 - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link

    Wow, you're not very familiar with the concept of humor, are you?

    But thanks for pointing out that ME is not based on the Wolfenstein Engine from 1991, I'm pretty sure a lot of people fell for that...

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