Enabling old school PhysX support?

[khy]

I remember playing the game all those many years ago, I got an nVidia graphics card and it had the PhysX support. When I turned it on, I noticed some amazing stuff - used shells from my (and my pets) guns would not disappear when fired, they'd LITTER THE GROUND. There were shells everywhere, and my powers would affect them. I'd see grenades send shells flying all over the room, storm powers would blast objects and shells everywhere around with gusts of wind.

 

My machine these days is light years ahead of that, and while it doesn't have the dedicated PhysX support it used to I imagine it should have no problems handling the extra opjects. Is there any way to turn all those physics objects back on? To make used shells from guns actually stay around and interact with powers? Is there any way to make all that fun and uselessly cool stuff still happen?

 

EDIT : Here's what I mean! Watch these videos to see why some people think enabling physics is desirable!

[Prototelis]

Bumping because I wanna know!

[The Fifth Horseman]

I remember playing the game all those many years ago, I got an nVidia graphics card and it had the PhysX support. When I turned it on, I noticed some amazing stuff - used shells from my (and my pets) guns would not disappear when fired, they'd LITTER THE GROUND. There were shells everywhere, and my powers would affect them. I'd see grenades send shells flying all over the room, storm powers would blast objects and shells everywhere around with gusts of wind.

 

My machine these days is light years ahead of that, and while it doesn't have the dedicated PhysX support it used to I imagine it should have no problems handling the extra opjects. Is there any way to turn all those physics objects back on? To make used shells from guns actually stay around and interact with powers? Is there any way to make all that fun and uselessly cool stuff still happen?

As I understand, COH's PhysX support was first built for Ageia's PhysX accelerator (yes, it used to be a separate hardware device) and hasn't been updated when Nvidia moved to GPU-based physics acceleration.

 

What's most likely happening is that the PhysX libraries used by COH are not compatible with the modern version of PhysX - something I've ran into with other games, eg Mirror's Edge and I believe also one of the Arkham games.

[khy]

I never had a separate Physics card myself, but I can say 100% for certain that I have had the Physics enabled in the past.

 

Or rather, there used to be a setting SOMEHOW somewhere within the game that made things like bullet shells actually 'stay' in the world and could be interacted with by various powers.

 

I'm not alone in this, I noticed this post where someone else remembers the same thing.

 

Since I never had a separate card, I'm sure that somehow I got it working with my nVidia graphics card back when they'd advertise that PhysX was a thing. If so, in theory, there should be some way to re-enable this, right?

 

-----

 

Back in the day I used to run a Merc/Storm mastermind. The mercs would use full auto and just spray bullets and casings everywhere. I'd go through a warehouse, then run back out because there'd be literally thousands and thousands of shell casings littering the warehouse floor, and I'd have fun sucking them up with Hurricane and sending them all flying.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Not necessarily. APIs change, and there was some kind of change around v2.7 of PhysX SDK that made earlier products incompatible.

 

It seems Nvidia did release something to fix it - PhysX Legacy System Software - but I have no idea how well it works, if it does.

 

EDIT: Looks like it doesn't. :/

[khy]

That is so super disappointing.

 

I kind of wonder if there'd be a way to enable 'persistent physics objects' (Bullet shells, paper and scraps from destroyed mayhem objects, etc) without the Ageia support using some config file or something? I dunno.

 

I know the server source code is out there, I don't know about the client-side and since all the physics stuff was purely client side I have no idea if some bored coder or experienced modder from other games would ever be interested in being lured over to take a look and enable those defunct options.

[Colette Valiant]

As I understand it, a lot of effort's being invested into "refactoring,'  or tidying up the spaghetti code that is City of Heroes. I'd wager that's when the game's graphics will be brought into the modern era.

[khy]

As I understand it, a lot of effort's being invested into "refactoring,'  or tidying up the spaghetti code that is City of Heroes. I'd wager that's when the game's graphics will be brought into the modern era.

 

That'd be amazing, though I hope that someone out there within the extremely talented modder communities takes pity upon us and create some high res textures. I know a lot of games out there have had 4k retextures, but since CoH/V has been gone there has never been any reason for them to take a look our way.

 

If I could get 4k textures AND the persistent shells and other physics objects? I'd be in 7th heaven.

 

Well I mean I'm ALREADY in 7th heaven having this game back, but I'd be in 8th heaven or something.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Digging more... disregard what I said about PhysX 2.7. The DLLs that came with the last game version were using PhysX SDK 2.8.4 - which modern drivers are supposed to be compatible with ( cf https://www.nvidia.com/object/physx-9.19.0218-driver.html , note that if you already have GeForce Experience installed then you most likely already have this driver installed ).

 

I kind of wonder if there'd be a way to enable 'persistent physics objects' (Bullet shells, paper and scraps from destroyed mayhem objects, etc) without the Ageia support using some config file or something?

No. I've tried changing the value in system registry, but it always resets. Setting particle physics to Very High under Advanced Graphics Settings doesn't seem to have the expected effect either.

[khy]

I did some looking into that 'refactoring' that Colette mentioned, and it mainly leads me to SEGS. I'm a bit confused about that.

 

My assumption about SEGS was that they were trying to recreate the server-side stuff from scratch, since the code was never made available. Once the server code was made available, the advantage that SEGS had would have been twofold - being 100% legal by containing no code that was written by the NCSoft employees, and being potentially faster by being more optimized.

 

But all the SEGS stuff I see seems to mainly be server side, and I don't see much about client. So I have no idea if that's going to be a future option or no.

 

If CoH is using the latest PhysX SDK, however, it introduces possibilities. Slight, perhaps, but possibilities. Perhaps there's advanced options using Profile Inspector, I'll head home and dig around there to see if there's anything I can find that might enable support.

 

I know it probably seems stupid to fixate on this, but it was seriously an amazing feature and I had so much fun with it way back when.

[The Fifth Horseman]

For what it's worth, OuroDev has updating PhysX support on their laundry list.

 

Also, documentation of server commands on OuroWiki suggests there may be something server-side to do with PhysX (!), although no indication what that is.

[khy]

Sadly I could find nothing helpful within the profile inspector.

 

This is gonna drive me nuts I can already tell.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Far as I can tell, we're stuck with the current situation (PhysX not working) until OuroDev gets around to updating the client.

[Prototelis]

Later on today I'm going to try installing an additional Nvidia card I have laying around and try the legacy support patches.

 

Supposedly you can set a single GPU as just a physX processor.

 

If that doesn't work... the cards are REALLY cheap on ebay.

[Prototelis]

Uhg. I tried everything I could think of short of having an actual Ageia PPU, and nothing worked.

 

Did physX ever work with Nvidia cards when the game was live?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Uhg. I tried everything I could think of short of having an actual Ageia PPU, and nothing worked.

 

Did physX ever work with Nvidia cards when the game was live?

From what I'm reading, supposedly yes - but it was with hardware and drivers that date ten years back. The general shift to 64-bit operating systems since then may be or not be related.

 

Getting Ageia's hardware is a non-solution unless you've got an old rig running XP or Vista on hand - the last official driver for it was released in 2008 ( 8.09.04 ) and only supported those systems. NB: there are copies on Guru3D: https://www.guru3d.com/files-categories/videocard-acceleration-physx-|-cuda.html

[Prototelis]

Well the game is 32bit and runs in 32bit already, right?

 

I have a GT550 that I could use as a PhysX processor, but nothing I tried would allow me to enable it in game. This card was released in 2011 and should be age appropriate. I use an AMD RX580 right now, and I was able to install the nvidia card with the drivers and all that running without removing or disabling the AMD card. Windows 7 came out in 2009, so maybe I wouldn't need to hunt down a copy of XP.

 

 

Maybe some other time when I'm feeling zesty I'll load up a VM and try installing 32bit XP and the what not and see where that gets me.

[Prototelis]

So I got a power dongle that will hopefully allow me to run both my AMD RX580 and the NVIDIA GT 550 at the same time. (I should have the wattage to do this, its really going to come down to airflow in my case. I can't fit a dual slot card in the bottom PCI-Express slot, so I have to use the one thats right below the very fat RX580)

 

I think what I'm going to try is installing a driver wipe for the NVIDIA stuff and installing an era appropriate 32 bit driver for the Nvidia card and start from there.

 

If that doesn't work I'll try a virtual machine at some point.

 

A lot of effort I know... but I want my fancy capes and random debri back lol.

[Episode]

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/449045/physx-in-city-of-heroes/

 

"I decided to test this out for myself, and put my GTS 250 into my rig to see what the Physx would look like in CoH. Still couldn't enable the actual Physx option in game. After doing some digging around on the COH forums, it turns out that the game uses such an old version of Physx that it will only run on an actual Aegia card using the actual Aegia drivers. So, for anyone who is running the game on cards newer than the 8 series, going with the Aegia card is just likely to reduce your overall performance for only a minimal amount of increased eye candy; as, by all accounts of those who used the card, the Physx boost in CoH was so minuscule that paying anything for the Aegia card to have Physx in CoH was a ripoff."

 

[khy]

Honestly I don't care in the slightest about the performance increase/decrease. What I care about is that when AGEIA is enabled, it produces a huge amount of persistent physics objects that otherwise vanish. Used bullet shells, debris from trash cans and destroyed objects in Mayhem/safeguard missions. Leaves from trees. Rocks and rubble from stone powers. They would stick around, and interact with powers in useless but visually fantastic ways.

 

Need to see what I mean for yourself? Here's a couple (low quality) videos showing off what it was like.

 

 

Without being able to turn AGEIA Physics on, those objects are no longer persistent. The shells eject from weapons but the second they hit the floor they vanish entirely. Trash and debris does its own animation then vanishes into thin air. All I want is to be able to turn on the feature that makes those shells become permanent (While you're on the same map, at least) objects that can be interacted with by powers. The old, old option would actually have a max count of 1500 of these 'persistent' physics objects in the map :

 

 

I never had an AGEIA card, but I know that old nVidia cards would allow this to be turned on because at one point, ages ago, I had these physics enabled and working. I ran around with a Merc/Storm MM and they'd use full auto to just SPRAY the area with bullet shells, and then use Hurricane to suck 'em up and swirl 'em around. Gravity Controllers were amazing too - Lift would not only grab the target, but EVERYTHING Around the target would be flung up then down. Gravity Distortion would suck up all kinds of things. Super-strength stuff like hand clap would send everything flying in all directions.

 

All I want is for those 1500 persistent physics objects to be present in the world and to be affected by my powers like they always used to.

[Episode]

Not sure if this would be helpful.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/463312/ageia-physx-card-support-geforce-drivers-remove-the-physx-applet-in-windows-control-panel/

I also had a card that ran the system and had working on an nvidia card, I am thinking of building a rig now dedicated to this.

 

So may be venturing into an old school rig, still have my old cards but may need to research a better build for COH.

So please any known, top spec information for CHO/COV would be vital and needed.

 

After a bit more research.

http://physxinfo.com/wiki/Ageia_PhysX_PPU

http://physxinfo.com/forum/index.php?topic=120.0

 

May be useful to some.

 

[Zep]

I also fondly remember the old school physics. Newspapers and what not blowing around and not just with hurricane.

 

I am looking forward to its return.

[Prototart]

Would an actual PhysX card work today? They're not old enough or weird enough to be collectable, so you can get them super cheap.

[desarix]

I remember playing the game all those many years ago, I got an nVidia graphics card and it had the PhysX support. When I turned it on, I noticed some amazing stuff - used shells from my (and my pets) guns would not disappear when fired, they'd LITTER THE GROUND. There were shells everywhere, and my powers would affect them. I'd see grenades send shells flying all over the room, storm powers would blast objects and shells everywhere around with gusts of wind.

 

My machine these days is light years ahead of that, and while it doesn't have the dedicated PhysX support it used to I imagine it should have no problems handling the extra opjects. Is there any way to turn all those physics objects back on? To make used shells from guns actually stay around and interact with powers? Is there any way to make all that fun and uselessly cool stuff still happen?

 

OMG I recall that...damn wish we could have it back.

[rheeor]

One of you guys with a NVIDIA GPU should try jumping on the Ouroboros i24 test server, see if it works there. Maybe it's an i25 thing that's keeping it from being enabled? I'd do it, but I have an ATI GPU, so I can't enable it either way :(

 

(would totally buy an actual PPU if it would work, though. Those things are literally only like $15 nowadays)