Anyone who watched comparisons between Borderlands 2 with PhysX enabled and disabled could see how much physics engine is adding to visuals. And not just usual stuff like rigid body physics, particles and clothing - seeing fluids flowing and making puddles is really something that makes you wish all games have those things incorporated by default. Unfortunatelly, once again it's an age old problem - only owners with nVidia cards can enjoy it.

Lot of the talk about next-gen consoles' GPUs is about how powerfull they will be and what graphics they will be able to push, but if rumours turn out to be true that all 3 consoles have AMD/ATI GPUs (and eveything points in that direction), we'll see unique situation where developers for the first time can finally mainstream GPU accelerated physics - unlike nVidia who uses closed proprietary solution, AMD has been pushing for OpenCL physics, so it is reasonable to expect that something like Bullet Physics (or Havok) becomes a norm - engines that (in theory) are supported by all OpenCL capable cards, and not just from one manufecturer.

My opinion is that this will make developers job much easier in deciding to go "physics" route - they will be able to incorporate physics engine as part of the visual desing, knowing that their game will look (more or less) the same on all platforms. Rumour is that nVidia is making OpenCL version of PhysX, so whatever solution developers decide on, let's hope it will bring "visual physics" as default.

List of games that use one of 3 popular physics solutions:

Havok: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havok_%28software%29#Havok_in_video_games

PhysX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardware-accelerated_PhysX_support

Bullet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_%28software%29#Commercial_games

nVidia pays, so there will be developers who will use the free money.

Nvidia will likely support GPU accelerated PhysX on consoles even if they use AMD GPUs, there is no practical reason not to. I imagine they will continue to keep it exclusive to their cards on PC tho sadly.

To my knowledge there still isn't a true competitor to PhysX yet, no one has built another physics engine that supports GPU accelerated, particle, cloth, rigid body, and fluid simulation.

Bullet only supports rigid/soft body physics as far as I know. And no game so far has used GPU accelerated Bullet Physics as far as I know ether.

And Intel cancelled the GPU accelerated version of Havok so that is not really an answer ether.

I wish there was a good OpenCL physics engine, but sadly I can't see any turning up any time soon.

OP....

You're about 5 years late to the party.

Its funny because PhysX has nothing to do with special hardware. Nvidia bought Ageia PhysX and then dropped their hardware.
They made it run on normal gpus without adding any kind of Ageia hardware.

There once was a guy that made PhysX run on his ATI/AMD Radeon GPU that proves that PhysX is nothing only Nvidia can do.

The problem was he had to do this everytime new drivers come out and this was just to much work for 1 guy.

Its really a shame that no mod project was born out of this....

for people who don't know what you meant with borderlands:

Impressive difference, especially I found the cloth getting sucked into the blast of a grenade and shredding up, that was impressive.

Sorry, not sure what you mean by that.

Point was that if all next-gen consoles are using AMD's GPUs, developers will start using solutions that can run on those GPUs, and PhysX in current state does not - whether is Havok or Bullet or something completely different that way we'll see games that can run same GPU physics no matter if it's AMD or nVIdia card - thus making "physics enhanced visuals" something that is norm, and not exception. And don't get me wrong - I'd sure be glad to see nVidia being influenced by this to make OpenCL version - after all, PhysX is really good physics solution.

Nvidia already has PhysX versions for all current-gen consoles, even though the 360 and Wii have AMD GPUs. I don't see why they wouldn't port it to next-gen consoles, regardless of what GPUs they use.

Sorry but that's just not true.

PhysX is not a really good physics solution, it's simply an industry (somewhat) adopted one. As already mentioned, PhysX can technically run on non-nvidia hardware, it's just that nvidia own the licensing and SDK for it's implementation.

It could very well be included on a hardware level on the next gen consoles even if powered by AMDATI hardware - that is completely besides the point and it simply comes down to if Microsoft or Nintendo will cough up the cash to allow this. On the PC it's different since the cards you buy are made by AMDATI and thus they will not be selling the rights to AMDATI for their direct use.

Would suggest you research a little on what PhysX actually is - and isn't.