Overclockers hack PhysX in GRAW2

IT SEEMS THAT some Brits in OcUK forum took some time for summer fun with summat from Ubisoft and Grin, Ghost Recon 2: Advanced Warfare.

GRAW2 is heavily advertised as a game that uses real-world physics to enhance gameplay, and for full enjoyment in the game environment, you should own an Ageia PhysX card. A forum member under the name of Ergonomics appears to have hacked the game - by very simple edit of an XML file - to enable PhysX-only effects on a CPU, so avoiding the need for Ageia's PhysX card.

If this were true, it would turn out that GRAW2 requires PhysX just for marketing reasons and whole situation could have taken turn for worse, as far as Ageia is concerned. However, things are not as simple as they sound, since the majority of users actually experienced fewer effects than enhanced particles, and a CPU is very well capable of displaying that effect. Some users reported a massive frame drop, while a few stated that they saw enhanced effects.

Ageia's Island, a level where everything is affected by real-world physics is still unavailable after this hack, and while that does not happen, (if it will ever), we cannot talk about game physics being hacked.

After we have contacted Ageia's PR rep for a comment, we got a following statement:
This hack appears to enable some, but not all, PhysX features. If you do not have all the features turned on, then you will not see the full hardware value. It is not surprising since the hack toggles unsupported flags giving a non-deterministic result. This is why some of you seem to be getting a “slide show” on the CPU, while others are seeing different results. By the way, remember that you will notice a benefit only when physics is actually occurring in the game. The best example of this is the exclusive AGEIA Island level, which uses physics constantly throughout.

All in all, much ado about nothing. We are still ways of seeing massive game-influencing physics, and this fall will prove to be the decider for physics and games, with mega-hits such as Hellgate: London, Crysis, and Unreal Tournament 3. µ

L'INQ
OcUK Forum