Monday, March 8th 2010
AMD Open Physics Initiative Expands Ecosystem with Free DMM for Game Production
AMD today announced that, along with partners Pixelux Entertainment and Bullet Physics, it has added significant support to the Open Physics ecosystem by providing game developers with access to the newest version of the Pixelux Digital Molecular Matter (DMM), a breakthrough in physics simulation. In addition, to enabling a superior development experience and helping to reduce time to market, Pixelux has tightly integrated its technology, DMM, with Bullet Physics, allowing developers to integrate physics simulation into game titles that run on both OpenCL- and DirectCompute-capable platforms. And both DMM and Bullet work with Trinigy's Vision Engine to create and visualize physics offerings in-game.
"Establishing an open and affordable physics development environment is an important accomplishment for both game developers and gamers, signaling a move away from exclusionary or proprietary approaches," said Eric Demers, chief technology officer, AMD Graphics Division. "Not only does the integration of Bullet Physics into partner middleware help drive broader adoption of physics in games, it ensures that when those games are released, all gamers, regardless of the hardware in their PC, can benefit from the more realistic experience enabled by those effects."
AMD's announced open physics development environment now adds Bullet Physics as the default rigid body physics system provided with Pixelux's DMM2 material physics engine. Developers can now design and interact with rigid body systems familiar to them and easily add DMM objects incrementally enabling them to bend and break based on real physical properties.
In addition, AMD is announcing its sponsorship of FREE DMM2 for the PC platform. The Free PC version has no DMM license fee for development or production deployment and includes all the features of the premium version including GPU acceleration. Free PC DMM2 is expected to be made available shortly to interested developers.
"With today's announcement, the incredible physical simulation effects seen in the latest games and blockbuster films can be used by all developers - a tremendous milestone for the industry," said Mitchell Bunnell, chief executive officer, Pixelux. "Working closely with AMD and Bullet's main author, Erwin Coumans, we've enabled tight integration of our DMM2 system and Bullet Physics, giving developers a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use physics pipeline they can use to create things that have never been seen before".
"At Trinigy, one of our guiding principles is ensuring game developers have the freedom to use the tools they need to create the effects they want," said Danie Conradie, president and chief executive officer, Trinigy Inc. "AMD's Open Physics Initiative with Pixelux DMM and Bullet Physics, coupled with our long-standing relationship with all three companies, helped us deliver on that core philosophy by giving developers access to these state-of-the-art technologies for producing advanced effects in games."
All of the Bullet Physics implementations described above can be run on any OpenCL- or DirectCompute-capable platform. On AMD platforms, ATI Stream technology is used to drive the enhanced game experience. As a further enhancement, AMD has developed new parallel GPU accelerated implementations of Bullet Physics' Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) Fluids and Soft Bodies/Cloth. The new code written in OpenCL and Direct Compute will be contributed as open source.
"Establishing an open and affordable physics development environment is an important accomplishment for both game developers and gamers, signaling a move away from exclusionary or proprietary approaches," said Eric Demers, chief technology officer, AMD Graphics Division. "Not only does the integration of Bullet Physics into partner middleware help drive broader adoption of physics in games, it ensures that when those games are released, all gamers, regardless of the hardware in their PC, can benefit from the more realistic experience enabled by those effects."
AMD's announced open physics development environment now adds Bullet Physics as the default rigid body physics system provided with Pixelux's DMM2 material physics engine. Developers can now design and interact with rigid body systems familiar to them and easily add DMM objects incrementally enabling them to bend and break based on real physical properties.
In addition, AMD is announcing its sponsorship of FREE DMM2 for the PC platform. The Free PC version has no DMM license fee for development or production deployment and includes all the features of the premium version including GPU acceleration. Free PC DMM2 is expected to be made available shortly to interested developers.
"With today's announcement, the incredible physical simulation effects seen in the latest games and blockbuster films can be used by all developers - a tremendous milestone for the industry," said Mitchell Bunnell, chief executive officer, Pixelux. "Working closely with AMD and Bullet's main author, Erwin Coumans, we've enabled tight integration of our DMM2 system and Bullet Physics, giving developers a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use physics pipeline they can use to create things that have never been seen before".
"At Trinigy, one of our guiding principles is ensuring game developers have the freedom to use the tools they need to create the effects they want," said Danie Conradie, president and chief executive officer, Trinigy Inc. "AMD's Open Physics Initiative with Pixelux DMM and Bullet Physics, coupled with our long-standing relationship with all three companies, helped us deliver on that core philosophy by giving developers access to these state-of-the-art technologies for producing advanced effects in games."
All of the Bullet Physics implementations described above can be run on any OpenCL- or DirectCompute-capable platform. On AMD platforms, ATI Stream technology is used to drive the enhanced game experience. As a further enhancement, AMD has developed new parallel GPU accelerated implementations of Bullet Physics' Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) Fluids and Soft Bodies/Cloth. The new code written in OpenCL and Direct Compute will be contributed as open source.
34 Comments on AMD Open Physics Initiative Expands Ecosystem with Free DMM for Game Production
I'm glad of the above, this is win for everybody - nvidia users included.
hope keep better and better :)
any one sight a preview about what we talking about... and where
They may not have all the budget and resources of certain other large tech corporations, but they know how to work strategically with others. It suits progress well.
God bless them, every one.
Oh and moar Open Source FTW!
Either way I am happy for this!
I liked PhysX when I used NV card. I wished ATI had access to it. Now they will have it and every one will be able to use it and it will take that PhysX NV crap and shove it right back down their throat!
Physics should have been open from the beginning! But that's NV always trying to pull crap like that!
Either way ATI FTW
Let's just hope this doesn't fall by the way side and get forgotten like so many other ATI ideas that never got done.
Now if I was head honcho in NVIDIA I'd make PhysX work on DirectCompute too and steal AMD's thunder :p They have this years games with PhysX only but after that it's (exclusivity) gone, so might as well make it free too.
Re-read this bit and it becomes clear
"
AMD’s announced open physics development environment now adds Bullet Physics as the default rigid body physics system provided with Pixelux’s DMM2 material physics engine. Developers can now design and interact with rigid body systems familiar to them and easily add DMM objects incrementally enabling them to bend and break based on real physical properties."
Has material level physics and everything, throw a brick at glass the glass will behave like a brick has hit it, and will even shatter outwards from the point of impact etc : ]
However, if it's true, and titles using this engine will start to come up - it's a big win.
A good step in good (and the only good) direction.
Broad OpenCL adoption ftw.
also, this works for everyone... unlike PhysX, this doesnt cut their consumer base down - so you know, its possible to make a game that requires/heavily uses this physX, since just about anyone could use it.