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NVIDIA Launches PhysX 3.0 SDK With Support For Emerging Gaming Platforms

NVIDIA has released the PhysX 3.0 SDK for developers and features a plethora of new improvements to the previous PhysX SDK. New features include support for streaming, larger levels, better multithreading support and more that you probably need to be a developer to understand. This is exciting though in hopes that we will start to see more PhysX features from this new 3.0 SDK implemented into games. Zogrim over at PhysXinfo has done a nice write up going a little but more in-depth about the new features of the 3.0 SDK, check it out here.

From the NVIDIA Blog – NVIDIA Launches PhysX 3.0 With Support For Emerging Gaming Platforms:

I am very pleased to announce the launch of a brand new version of the very popular NVIDIA PhysX SDK. The new PhysX 3.0 SDK is available to all registered developers on our developer support website located at: http://supportcenteronline.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=1949

PhysX is the world’s most pervasive physics solution for highly realistic and real-time simulation based effects for games, film and more. Version 3.0 of PhysX has been over three years in the making and features a new modular architecture and a completely rewritten PhysX engine. It provides a significant boost in overall performance, as well as efficient, reliable simulations across a broad spectrum of multi-core gaming devices – such as PCs, notebooks and gaming consoles, as well as emerging gaming platforms like handheld game devices, tablets, and smartphones.

PhysX 3.0 is available for all major gaming platforms, including PC, Xbox360™, PLAYSTATION®3, OSX, Linux and Android. PhysX 3.0 is designed to run on a variety of CPU architectures. Performance can be accelerated by any CUDA™-enabled NVIDIA GPU – including any GeForce 8-series or higher graphics card.

For more information on NVIDIA PhysX and APEX technologies, please visit: www.nvidia.com/physx.

Source.

GDC 2010: Nvidia’s Sarah Tariq on Simulating Realistic Hair

A cool new video has surfaced on YouTube from GDC 2010 showing Nvidia’s Sarah Tariq talking about and explaining a new DX11/CUDA demo running on the new Fermi cards that shows off realistic hair with over 18,000 strands being computed with CUDA all on the GPU. Pretty fascinating stuff, the hair color reacts realistically to light and in the demo different levels of wind can be applied to the face to show off how the hair reacts realistically. Can’t wait to see stuff like tis really implemented into games and hopefully NVIDIA releases this tech demo when the new Fermi cards are finally announced or released.

AMD – “Game Developers Only use PhysX for the cash” AMD’s GPU-accelerated Physics Alternative Coming Soon

THINQ had a very interesting talk with AMD’s senior manager of developer relations, Richard Huddy. Richard says that developers are implementing PhysX into their games simply for the cash, Richard explains,“They’re not doing it because they want it; they’re doing it because they’re paid to do it”. Richard also states that he is very confident about “AMD’s open approach to GPU-accelerated physics as an alternative, and thinks that it will eventually force PhysX to join GLide and A3D in the proprietary API museum”.

This is very interesting news and good for games and physics development. Here at GamePhys we don’t really care which video game physics engine eventually becomes standard in video games and video game development. Physics is no doubt the next big thing in gaming and will really change the way we play games, whether it is PhysX, Havok, or AMD’s upcoming solution we are just exciting that this battle is really heating up and hope to see more cool video game physics developments in the near future.

From THINQ:

Speaking to THINQ, AMD’s senior manager of developer relations, Richard Huddy, said: “What I’ve seen with physics, or PhysX rather, is that Nvidia create a marketing deal with a title, and then as part of that marketing deal, they have the right to go in and implement PhysX in the game.”

“They’re not doing it because they want it; they’re doing it because they’re paid to do it. So we have a rather artificial situation at the moment where you see PhysX in games, but it isn’t because the game developer wants it in there.”

In fact, Huddy reckons that no developers outside Epic genuinely wanted to implement GPU-accelerated PhysX in their game. “I’m not aware of any GPU-accelerated PhysX code which is there because the games developer wanted it with the exception of the Unreal stuff,” he says. “I don’t know of any games company that’s actually said ‘you know what, I really want GPU-accelerated PhysX, I’d like to tie myself to Nvidia and that sounds like a great plan.’”

Read the rest of the article here at THINQ.


NVIDIA GF100 Fluids( PhysX Based Water) Demo

A cool new water tech demo has been uploaded to the NVIDIA CUDA channel on YouTube. The demo shows some realistic PhysX based water simulation being run on the GF100(Fermi). According to PhysXinfo.com this demo is showing off “Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) PhysX Fluid simulation demo, running on GF100 GPU”. Check it out below, we also embedded an older version of a PhysX fluids demo of Next Generation GPU Fluids according to the YouTube channel it is “128 thousand particles simulated and rendered in real-time on the GPU. SPH fluid simulation with surface tension effects. As demonstrated at the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference 2009″

Pretty awesome stuff, imagine when games start to use realistic physics based water like this.

NVIDIA GF100 Fluids Demo:

Next Generation GPU Fluids:

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