Major studios licence physx

Posted at: 3:35pm 9th December 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Major games studios announce that they’re licensing PhysX for all of their studios around the world

In the space of a few months, PhysX hardware acceleration has gone from an obscure footnote in silicon history to what could be the next big thing in gaming. Following on from the release of the second GeForce Power Pack last week, Nvidia proudly announced yesterday that both EA and 2K Games are now licensing the technology across all of their studios around the world.

2K’s technology director, Jacob Hawley, explained the decision to develop for PhysX now, saying that ‘we licensed it so our studios can use this solution early in development.’ Hawley also added that ‘developing games with an interactive story and immersive gameplay remains our number one priority, and aligning with technology leaders like Nvidia allows our teams to concentrate on making great games.’

Meanwhile, EA’s chief technology officer at its Redwood Shores Studio, Tim Wilson, described PhysX as ‘a great physics solution for the most popular platforms,’ adding that ‘Gameplay remains our number one goal, with character, vehicle and environmental interactivity a critical part of the gameplay experience for our titles, and we look forward to partnering with Nvidia to reach this goal.”

Although hardware PhysX acceleration requires either a CUDA- supporting GPU, from the GeForce 8-series and upwards, or an original Ageia PPU card, the physics API is also supported in software on a variety of systems. These include the PC, as well as the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii. However, Nvidia claims that ‘the massively parallel architecture in GeForce GPUs can handle 10 to 20 times more visual complexity than what’s possible today on traditional platforms, and can leverage the best of both GPU and CPU architectures to deliver the ultimate experience to the user.’

EA has already announced that the forthcoming PC version of Mirror’s Edge will feature hardware PhysX acceleration, and 2K Games says that its forthcoming first person shooter, Borderlands (pictured) will also feature the technology when it’s released in 2009.

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Turok said:

Pff i prefer phisics on cpu because i always have 2 or 1 cpu doing nothing when i play, imagine when 6 core and 8 core come. Yea i know video cards do better work but for what?? some stupid little shiny bum bum effects run a little better than in cpu?? gimme a break, waste of time and money buying a psu and a motherboard plus 2 or more video cards for little effects, and by the way, in what games?? in pc there is almost no games releases, everything is on consoles and pc are just getting bad ports...

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Warmonger

Included in the PhysX pack that NVIDIA will release is the full game, Warmonger.

Seriously, the minute you even start the tutorial and have PhysX enabled, debris everywhere, a nice moving cloths, instant difference. Now this version really is tailored for showing of PhysX though. It isn't that much of a game, but pimping PhysX is what it is all about with this release, that's for sure. It's still really cool to see and explore all the effects and you get to blow up though.

When we disabled PhysX in Warmonger, we left the effects enabled, and they are now calculated over the CPU. It's incredible how much CPU overhead that takes. Now, normally your FPS would be much higher as physics stuff is disabled, but I figured it's a nice example of how well Physics can be done over a GPU. It's just much more efficient.

This title is included for free in the PhysX pack, again ... If you have a GeForce series 8 or newer card, check it out as it won't cost you a thing to try out.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/physx-by-nvidia-review/5

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Complex rigid body object physics system

The rigid body dynamics component enables you to simulate objects with a high degree of realism. It makes use of physics concepts such as reference frames, position, velocity, acceleration, momentum, forces, rotational motion, energy, friction, impulse, collisions, constraints, and so on in order to give you a construction kit with which you can build many types of mechanical devices.

* Collision primitives (sphere, box, capsule, plane, heightfield, convex shape, triangular mesh)
* Various joints types (spherical, revolute, prismatic, cylinders, fixed, distance, pulley, 6DOF)
* Advanced ragdoll, with joints, creation and editing
* Materials and friction model in support of surface collision behavior
* Continuous Collision Detection support for fast moving objects
* Raycast, sweep, trigger, and overlap test collision detection
* Collision groups + Collision Filtering – enable/disable collision detection
* One-way interactions (Body ‘X’ can effect body ‘Y’ but not vice-versa)
* Contact report allowing developers to trigger both alternate actions when specific objects interact or modify behavior of various contacts

NVIDIA PhysX Advanced character controls
Advanced character control

Character Controllers is mainly used for third-person or first-person player control that does not make use of rigidbody physics.

* Auto-stepping feature
* Walkable parts
* Character Controllers are provided in source code so developers can tailor behavior to match differing needs

NVIDIA PhysX Raycast and Articulated Vehicle Dynamics
Ray-cast and articulated vehicle dynamics

NVIDIA PhysX SDK has fully capabilities to simulate real-life vehicles.

* Raycast Cars – single rigid body
* Spherical Wheel shapes – sophisticated tire friction model
* Joint-based suspension – complex steering & suspension geometries
* Lightweight simulation

Multi-threaded/Multi-platform/PPU Enabled

NVIDIA PhysX SDK is optimized for single and multi-core PC, Xbox 360, Playstation®3 and the PhysX Accelerator

* Available now for PhysX-Ready GeForce Processors
* Support for AGEIA PhysX Accelerator
* Fine-grain multithreading control
* Asynchronous Stepping support
* Performance Profiler Support (AgPerfMon)
* PS3 and Xbox 360 Optimizations

NVIDIA PhysX volumetric fluid simulation
Volumetric fluid creation and simulation

Fluids allow the simulation of liquids and gases using a particle system and emitters.

* SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics) or simple (without interparticle forces) simulation mode
* Possibility for the user to control the simulation of each individual fluid particle
* One-way and Two-way interaction with rigid bodies/cloth/softbodies
* Permits simulation of explosions and debris effects

NVIDIA PhysX cloth simulation
Cloth and clothing authoring and playback

The cloth feature of the NVIDIA PhysX SDK allows for simulation of items made from cloth, such as flags, clothing, etc.

* Cloth Attachments
* Self-collision support
* Cloth tearing and Cloth pressure (simulation of balloons or other soft deformable objects)
* Metal Cloth mode support to simulate deformation like dents in barrels, car bodies, or metal doors

Soft Bodies
Soft Bodies

The soft body feature of the NVIDIA PhysX SDK allows the simulation of volumetric deformable objects. It can also be used for items that are not usually thought of as classical soft bodies, such as plants or multiple layers of cloth.

* Soft Bodies Attachments (fixed joints/shapes)
* NVIDIA PhysX Viewer for easy soft body creation
* Soft Bodies Self-collision and damping support

NVIDIA PhysX volumetric force field
Volumetric Force Field Simulation

Force fields are SDK objects akin to actors, which affect cloth, soft bodies, fluid and rigid bodies that enter their area of influence. Force fields allow you to implement for example gusts of wind, dust devils, vacuum cleaners or anti-gravity zones.

* Various Force Fields shapes (sphere, capsule, box, convex mesh)
* Force Functions to control both amount and direction of force

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