Borderlands – What do the levels of Nvidia PhysX do

borderlands-2

In the Video options there's a setting for Nvidia PhysX effects on PC. What are the effects of each setting on visual/physics effects? Are any aspects of gameplay itself effected?

PhysX started at Low on PC and I enabled Medium and I started to notice blood/acid pools from enemies that had physics effects. Are these enabled by this option?

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No aspects of the gameplay are effected by enabling this, but aesthetically there is a large difference. An nVidia card is not required to run with higher PhysX settings in Borderlands, the calculations can be done on your CPU but you will take a noticeable performance hit.

Turning the PhysX option up will effect things like cloth animation, particle effects, fluid animations, etc.

There are several videos on YouTube that run side by side comparisons of the various visual differences between the settings, here is one which does a side by side comparison with the PhysX setting on 'Low' and 'High' (the video says 'Without GeForce/With GeForce', but it has been discussed elsewhere that many users of AMD hardware are able to run the game with the PhysX setting on 'Med' or 'High' without any nVidia hardware at all).

The differences between the settings are pretty noticeable, but especially so with liquids and explosive weapons.

There is an article on the nVidia website (right at the bottom of the page) which details more specifically what the individual PhysX levels affect, along with a performance related graph comparing nVidia and AMD hardware.

            Low              Medium                   High
Debris     No GPU effects   Particle count reduced   Max quality debris
SPH Fluid  No GPU effects   Particle count reduced   Full range of effects
Cloth      No GPU effects   Low quality cloth        Max quality cloth
Particles  No GPU effects   Particle count reduced   Lots of sparks and embers

Furthermore, here is some nVidia descriptive text as to the differences between CPU based physics and PhysX, quoted from the above article:

With CPU physics, the emitted debris would shoot across the screen before fading out of existence, or in some cases, sitting motionless on the ground, unaffected by the action occurring around it. In Borderlands 2, with hardware-accelerated PhysX effects enabled, this debris will be kicked about by further weapons fire, or from characters running through it. Pieces will land on inclines and roll towards a level surface as in real life, and should another piece be in the way the two will collide, further changing their final position. Bring enough pieces together and they’ll pile up, and with the highest level of PhysX enabled these pieces will persist until removed to make room for yet more mayhem.

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Borderlands – How do extremely low accuracy levels work

Quoted From Borderlands Wiki http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Stat_modifiers

Negative totals

When the total is negative, borderlands uses another formula. Instead of directly applying the modifier, Borderlands applies it to a reciprocal function. For example, for a gun with a spread modifier of -130% from a barrel5, the modifier will be of 1/(1 + 1.3); if that gun had a base spread of 2, the final spread would be 0.87.

The rationale for this mechanic is to have the same scale of effect, regardless of the modifier's sign.

A notable list of stats that are affected by this rule are:

-Damage: Many weapon parts actually have negative bonuses.
-Spread: Very often breaks the -100% bar.
-Damage reduction: Brick's Juggernaut skill; Lilith's Silent Resolve and Resilience skills; Roland's Grit skill.
    -50% Damage Reduction => Player takes 66% Damage
    -100% Damage => Player takes 50% Damage 
-Recoil: Internally, the game uses a "Recoil" stat, which it displays as its inverse, "Recoil Reduction"

So I think it will be same for borderlands 2 :)

Borderlands – What factors determine enethe levels or: How do enethe levels scale to the player character’s

In playthrough 1, outside of the DLC, there's no such thing as scaling. Enemy levels are determined solely by the area they're in and your mission (certain missions effectively "level up" areas, notably Sanctuary and The Dust). You can easily check the level of an area by checking out the vending machines in the area, they sell items scaled to the level.

DLC in playthrough 1 scales to your level...ish. It maxes out at level 30. I played the DLC as a level 34 character and was disappointed to see everything was at level 30 in playthrough 1. Not sure if it has a minimum level it scales to.

Playthrough 2 works the same way until you beat the Final Boss; then everything in that playthrough scales to your level (except mission rewards for missions picked up before the final boss).

Playthrough 3 works the same was as Playthrough 2 after the final boss: Everything scales to your level, period. In team play, it will always be scaled to the highest level player's level. And you have to be at least level 50 to unlock it, so enemies are effectively level 50-61 at all times. Though if you take a mission before leveling up, the mission will still stay at that lower level, as always.

Basically the game works like a standard RPG without level scaling until you A) beat the game twice (because you should be maxed out anyway) or B) enter a DLC (because you can do that at any time so a preset level would be a really bad idea)

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Related Solutions

Borderlands – How do extremely low accuracy levels work

Borderlands – What factors determine enethe levels or: How do enethe levels scale to the player character’s

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