Mirror's Edge & PhysX

[Voodoo]

The first thing I want to state is that I am not reviewing Mirror's Edge itself. My purpose here is to simply answer this question: Does PhysX in Mirror's Edge make a difference? To answer this question, I would have to say it did. What it doesn't do is change gameplay. Instead, the effects are used to enhance the environment that further brings the player into the game's world. If you are interested in a review of the game itself, AgtFox did an excellent job (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=2691) at CoG proper.

The game itself is based upon parkour, a real-life sample of which is found below. If that's something that interests you, then this is definitely your style game.

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Instead of explaining the PhysX effects in the game, I used two parts of the game that DICE recommends. I recorded these videos myself and are in the Immortal Machines channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/ImmortalMachines) of YouTube. High quality versions of these videos are available. The first set of videos is the same section of the game with PhysX enabled and disabled. This section is called Flight...

PhysX Enabled
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PhysX Disabled
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While PhysX adds quite a lot of visual effects to the level, it didn't interfere with gameplay at all. As previously mentioned, it only gave greater depth and more sense of realism to the levels. Another example is the Jacknife section. Check it out for yourself...

PhysX Enabled
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PhysX Disabled
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As you can see in the top video, I was able to manipulate the fog in the room. Whereas, in the second video, the room became rather boring and stagnant. So this brings us back to my original question: Does PhysX in Mirror's Edge make a difference?

I've played halfway through the game twice, with PhysX enabled and disabled. I can definitely say that with PhysX enabled, I was brought deeper into the game's environment. When I was running down hallways with a helicopter outside shooting up the windows, it felt more visceral. With PhysX disabled, the impact of the attacks on my character weren't as apparent.

I would have played all the way through, but I'm just not very good at it. The controls on the PC are very good, but my problem is that the path to get through sections weren't apparent to me right away. Often I'd be running along just to jump off the edge of a roof to a delightful drop and squish.

This all being said, I played the game at 1920x1200. Throughout, with PhysX enabled, I didn't see much impact to the framerate. It was definitely present but not at a level that game the game unplayable.

My PC Gaming system is as follows [relevant components]:
Phenom 9550 (Quad 2Ghz)
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PC2 6400
XFX 8800GT 512MB

[Esquilax1138]

Thanks for this, I am interested in this game but still working on a huge backlog of great titles I've yet to play so I've yet to grab this one. Interesting to note you are running the physics on an 8800 GT? I was led to believe you needed something in the 9800 and above cards to play with physics, but maybe that was just PR crap to get people to buy newer cards.

So this should play fine on my 8800 GTX with full physics?

[H.Bogard]

The best part is that I don't notice any performance drops when I enable PhysX. Now this is how you do an enhanced port!

[Grifter]

I love this game and I was incredibly impressed at how much PhysX improved the overall experience for me. I played through the game the first time on the 360 and a second on the PC and I enjoyed it even more on my second run through. This is one of my "Go To" games when I don't have anything else to play or am not sure what I feel like playing and I am continually impressed by little details the PhysX option adds.

[biosc1]

It's things like this that make me sad that I went with an ATI 4870 instead of an NVidia card for my last upgrade.

Apparently, I can get PhysX running with tweaked drivers, but I'm not in the mood to fiddle with that at the moment. I would prefer if I could just jam an old NVidia card in and make it act purely as a PhysX card...

[Grifter]

It's things like this that make me sad that I went with an ATI 4870 instead of an NVidia card for my last upgrade.

Apparently, I can get PhysX running with tweaked drivers, but I'm not in the mood to fiddle with that at the moment. I would prefer if I could just jam an old NVidia card in and make it act purely as a PhysX card...

I know that I can install a second Nvidia card (like a 9600) in my system (non SLI) and have it run PhysX while my GTX260 handles the graphics so you may be able to do the same even though your primary card is not an nVidia card.

[Xerxes]

Can i say I didn't see much of a big difference and the first video is awesome. I'd like a third person parkour game. I want to see myself pulling of the bad ass moves. Not little hands and little feet popping in and out of POV.

[Voodoo]

Can i say I didn't see much of a big difference and the first video is awesome. I'd like a third person parkour game. I want to see myself pulling of the bad ass moves. Not little hands and little feet popping in and out of POV.
There's a 3rd person cheat mode, but it makes her movements look very goofy...
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[Xerxes]

Exactly. It doesn't look like parkour even when you look at it from 3rd person so it never looked right in 1st to me. I want to try it still but I wouldn't confuse it as any free running I've ever seen.

[Codicier]

Can i say I didn't see much of a big difference and the first video is awesome. I'd like a third person parkour game. I want to see myself pulling of the bad ass moves. Not little hands and little feet popping in and out of POV.

Maybe you should temper your expectations a bit. This is the first parkour game (at least that I'm aware of) out there, so if this is something that's popular, odds are they'll continue iterating on it to make it better. Personally I haven't played the full game yet and I'm still very eager to play it just based on my demo experience. (I've played the demo 30+ times I think) That might just be because I really like parkour though.

[Xerxes]

Maybe you should temper your expectations a bit. This is the first parkour game (at least that I'm aware of) out there, so if this is something that's popular, odds are they'll continue iterating on it to make it better. Personally I haven't played the full game yet and I'm still very eager to play it just based on my demo experience. (I've played the demo 30+ times I think) That might just be because I really like parkour though.

Me too and I don't see it in that game at all. I see it more in Assassin's Creed.

[Codicier]

Me too and I don't see it in that game at all. I see it more in Assassin's Creed.

Yeah, AC, that's what I'm forgetting.

AC wasn't very interactive though. Most of the time Altair was on automatic and all you had to do was not try and jump too far. Seeing the cool parkour moves is nice, but I'd like to have a bit of control over it as well.

[Xerxes]

Yeah, AC, that's what I'm forgetting.

AC wasn't very interactive though. Most of the time Altair was on automatic and all you had to do was not try and jump too far. Seeing the cool parkour moves is nice, but I'd like to have a bit of control over it as well.

Yeah. I was thinking of a big city sandbox like from District 13, but like the skateboard or snowboard games where you just run around interacting with things for points. Avoiding people during chases, or getting from point B to point A scoring as many points as possible, time runs, and what have you. Multiplayer games as Do As I Do, or Catch me if you can, Hide go seek, it's a bunch of other fun things that could be done.

[Food Nipple]

Great writeup.

After watching the first set of videos, I was really impressed by the PhysX improvements. The chase scene just feels flat when you watch it again immediately after seeing it with PhysX enabled. It's a bunch of little improvements whose additions are greater than the sum of their parts.

I know when PhysX first debuted I couldn't have been more skeptical, but smart ports like this and the GPU -> PPU angle have changed my mind.