nVidia physX and ambient occlusion (or slightly geek-like moment)

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rouge34rtw

Charter Member
nVidia physX and ambient occlusion (or slightly geek-like moment)

I am wondering if any of the CFS3 expansions use PhysX or Ambient Occlusion.......? I am guessing that the original CFS3 from Microsoft was written long before either of these was available, but the expansions (namely ETO) have been written more recently and definitely have what feels like improved visuals. I have a beta nVidia GeForce driver installed (185.20 Forceware for Vista X64 from 3dguru.com) and it has the new ambient occlusion setting in the 3D settings, and I have definitely noticed the difference in the depth of shading and light levels.....I am wondering if I stand to gain any more depth or detail by adding a PhysX dedicated GPU to my system....since this is the only game/sim I fly....if it doesn't benefit me here, there is no justification for me to spend the dough on the extra GPU (PhysX is only available on GeForce 8xxx and later cards).

Ok, thats the extent of my geek-like moment for the week....if anyone knows the answer, I would love to hear it......

Thanks :typing::karate::focus:
 
The expansions for CFS3 use the already existing CFS3 game engine, thus they are still limited to the same hardware and software capabilities of the original CFS3. Whatever your GPU does on its own to enhance the graphics has nothing to do with CFS3 itself. The expansions look better do to their use of hi-res textures, effects, more detailed scenery tiles, and many other things. The expansions in no way alter the CFS3 game engine.

CFS3 is just far too old to make use of PhysX. PhysX would only come into play when using an application designed to use PhysX, like the game Mirror's Edge. PhysX is a powerful physics engine enabling real-time physics in leading edge PC and console games. The bottom line is PhysX won't work with CFS3.
 
Thank you for that bit of info.....it is what I was thinking would be the case. I guess I will have to just continue to admire CFS3 and the expansions for the beauty they have already.....
 
I know some modellers use ambient occlusion when preparing textures for models; but that's at skin rendering stage in 3dsMax, not in-game rendering.
 
Upcoming nVidia drivers will allow ambient occlusion to be adjusted at the in-game rendering level. I have nForce drivers 185.20, released as beta for testing thru guru3d.com, and they are the first to feature this setting. I noticed a marked improvement in the shading and shadowing effects once I installed them. I also saw a sustantial increase in overclocking limitations for my GeForce 9800GTX as well as overall FPS and game performance. I believe the read me details noted that ambient occlusion adjustment is only available on GF 8xxx and newer hardware. And, to anyone who installs these drivers.......remember that they are released as beta only untill available from nVidia.com so there is no official support for them as yet......use at your own risk.
 
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