PhysX - Dark Void

In terms of the game engine Dark Void uses Unreal 3 as its basis. This has allowed Airtight to create a game which looks great throughout, often touching on exceptional. Airtight, the games developer, was one of the pioneers of PhysX compatible software so it comes as no surprise that their second major title includes this technology. In fact, Dark Void is the first title to be released which uses NVIDIAS APEX SDK, PhysX plug-ins and Visual Debuggers which were designed to help developers integrate PhysX more easily.

Testing was performed at 2560x1600 with no anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering and maximum in-game settings.

We start our Dark Void/PhysX analysis with all cards set to “low PhysX”. This offers basic enhancements, even on the 5870. At 2560x1600 the Radeon compares well in land areas however in air based gameplay , which has constant PhysX use, it fares less well.

When we enable “High PhysX” the game benefits from additional graphics effects such as the awesome particle cannon in addition to the advanced smoke and heat haze effects from our jet pack. At this setting when we compare the GTX 285 and 480 we see that the new NVIDIA card gives us much improved framerates throughout.

Here is an example of Dark Void gameplay with PhysX set to High. Pay particular attention to the particle gun.