OpenCL to speed up physics

[unwinding]

One of the reasons for sluggish performance on the PC is due to the use of Transitive Corporation's QuckTransit technology which dynamically translates the PowerPC-optimized code to x86 native. It's the same technology that powers Apple's Rosetta which allows PPC programs to run on Intel Macs. Essentially, it's emulating the Xbox version!

 

Just kidding, I made that all up. But I wouldn't be very surprised if it were true. Anyways, now that I know how this game works I can guess what it's doing behind the scenes which causes so many performance issues even on high-end hardware. There are three things at work: The engine itself, Euphoria, and Bullet physics. Euphoria works alongside Bullet to help out animations or something like that while the graphics engine does it's thing in parallel. This is also likely the extent of the game's multi-threading capabilities and I bet that each runs on its own core.

 

The Bullet SDK is now optimized for OpenCL/Cuda/Directcompute meaning physics-related processes can be executed much faster on the GPU freeing up the CPU. I would imagine that a simple patch would not do the trick for GTAIV, it probably would need to be re-programmed and that's not gonna happen (not that any more patches would happen either). But it's interesting that it is possible, maybe for a future rage engine game or something.

 

PS, yes this would impact the GPU a bit, but keep in mind that the GPU is not the bottleneck for this game:

 

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,669595/...essors/Reviews/

 

[mkey82]

Well, this goes well with the fact GTAIV doesn't scale well with graphics settings. No matter how much you lower them, physics load is still there.