Thursday, December 20th 2018

NVIDIA Announces PhysX SDK 4.0, An Open-Source Physics Engine

PhysX SDK 4.0 will be available on December 20, 2018. The engine has been upgraded to provide industrial grade simulation quality at game simulation performance. In addition, PhysX SDK has gone open source, starting today with version 3.4! It is available under the simple 3-Clause BSD license. With access to the source code, developers can debug, customize and extend the PhysX SDK as they see fit.

PhysX has been the market leader in physics simulations for more than a decade. The SDK holds the top spot due to continuous upgrades and optimizations; NVIDIA has ensured that PhysX is always ahead of the curve, enabling developers to deliver state-of-the-art physics simulations.

New features:
  • Temporal Gauss-Seidel Solver (TGS), which makes machinery, characters/ragdolls, and anything else that is jointed or articulated much more robust. TGS dynamically re-computes constraints with each iteration, based on bodies' relative motion.
  • Overall stability has been improved with reduced coordinate articulations and joint improvements.
  • Increased scalability via new filtering rules for kinematics and statics.
  • New Bounding Volume Hierarchies support fast scene queries for actors with a huge number of shapes.
  • Infrastructure can now incorporate Cmake projects.
BSD 3 licensed platforms:
  • Apple iOS
  • Apple Mac OS X
  • Google Android ARM (version 2.2 or later required for SDK, 2.3 or later required for snippets)
  • Linux (tested on Ubuntu)
  • Microsoft Windows XP or later (NVIDIA Driver version R304 or later is required for GPU acceleration)
Unchanged NVIDIA EULA platforms:
  • Microsoft XBox One
  • Sony Playstation 4
  • Nintendo Switch
Download: NVIDIA PhysX 4.0 SDK on GitHub
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39 Comments on NVIDIA Announces PhysX SDK 4.0, An Open-Source Physics Engine

#26
TheoneandonlyMrK
R-T-BCalling the open-sourcing of anything a "dick move" is kind of... dare I say it?

A dick move.



Or died by virtue of being not open-source. Take your pick, the fortune teller has lots of cards...
Just the timing, they should have done it years ago now ,its a dick move, because it's too late imho.

@Vayra86 calling Nvidia anything bad is a red rag to You.
Posted on Reply
#27
bug
theoneandonlymrk@Vayra86 calling Nvidia anything bad is a red rag to You.
Calling any specific company anything bad is basically childish. They're all the same. They build goodies for us and when they see a legal loophole or a grey area, their accountability to their shareholders coerces them into taking advantage of that. It may not be ideal, but then again, what is?

In general, I tend to dislike negative posts or name calling regardless of them being addressed to Nvidia, AMD or Intel. Poining out weaknesses in one's product lineup, or weaknesses in a specific part when giving buying advice is ok. Anything beyond that is personal opinion.
Posted on Reply
#28
R-T-B
FordGT90ConceptAny Unity developer that actually used it extensively knows it's a constant war to prevent dynamic objects from exploding...like this:
Yeah. Better used for simple ragdolls if you don't know what you are doing. Still irrelevant.
Posted on Reply
#29
TheoneandonlyMrK
@bug ,attack this then
Vayra86Putting PhysX or GameWorks in a headline is like putting a red patch in front of an AMD bull. Careful!
Or is this different from my reply To him , neither call a name.


As I said poor timing (too late) = dick move imho.

See i said it was my opinion from the first post, deal with that
Posted on Reply
#30
R-T-B
theoneandonlymrkSee i said it was my opinion from the first post, deal with that
Noted.
Posted on Reply
#31
FordGT90Concept
"I go fast!1!11!1!"
R-T-BYeah. Better used for simple ragdolls if you don't know what you are doing. Still irrelevant.
Totally relevant. The Temporal Gauss-Seidel Solver in PhysX 4.0 (literally the subject of this thread) attempts to prevent the infamous PhysX derping developers have to deal with (like what resulted in my boat exploding). The developer of the game did implement changes to make it less likely but, that's my point: to use physics engines as a component of gameplay, it's a can of production worms. Games is relatively simple because so much of his time needs to be directed at PhysX.

Oh, PhysX also creates problems around variations in hardware, especially weak processors compared to strong processors. The solver executes more frequently on faster processors so something that works on one may break on the other. The updated solver will hopefully address that issue too.

The fact it's taken this long to do something about it is...sad.
Posted on Reply
#32
R-T-B
FordGT90ConceptTotally relevant.
To the rather generic claim open sourcing is good? How?

Maybe I'm just confused because you quoted me. It is THREAD-relevant.
Posted on Reply
#33
Vayra86
theoneandonlymrk@bug ,attack this then
Or is this different from my reply To him , neither call a name.


As I said poor timing (too late) = dick move imho.

See i said it was my opinion from the first post, deal with that
My red patch is utter nonsense and that doesnt exclude any camp or color.
Posted on Reply
#34
bogami
AGEIA Physx was one of the best upgrading for the 3D engine , and nVidia has bought and integrated. The resulting software upgrade is logical , but I think it's slow .
Posted on Reply
#35
mak1skav
bugYou nailed it! Because Nvidia's stock is totally about PhysX :kookoo:
Yeah it would be better for them to use the 2080TI and RTX Titan fails and malfunctions to hit the news as a PR attempt to save their stock price. They just needed something to take the spot light away form their crappy selling numbers and their AI failures and they used that one in my opinion.
Posted on Reply
#36
bug
mak1skavYeah it would be better for them to use the 2080TI and RTX Titan fails and malfunctions to hit the news as a PR attempt to save their stock price. They just needed something to take the spot light away form their crappy selling numbers and their AI failures and they used that one in my opinion.
Outside of fanboys' minds, the stock price has nothing to do with either PhysX or a small percentage (undetermined, but never hinted to be over 5%) of card failing.
If you don't believe me, just take a look what AMD's stock has been doing during the same period. And unlike Nvidia, AMD had Zen going.
Posted on Reply
#37
jmcosta
TheGuruStudTell me, glorious physx lover, how much beyond rudimentary physics is used? Been there done that in every unity game and nothing is utilized. It's almost as if no one cares, b/c it sucks. Nvidia says you can't do anything useful unless it's on the card....and it's dead.

I've seen better physics from tiny devs with their own engines.

Maybe, this will improve since the imps aren't strangling it.

Killing floor 2 actually did try to use it, but the perf even on a high end gpu was lacking. I couldn't turn it on max and achieve 1440p/60.
you are talking about the physics simulation that needed a gpu to run but was left behind (the heavy flex, particles/debris, fog volume etc), the physx that developers use nowadays is run off the cpu and its pretty efficient. you can see it in almost every single game because the nvidia code is implemented into the most popular engines.
not only its easy to use, it delivers better quality than any other that requires similar resources.

I dont like the idea that their code is everywhere but thats what we get and they offer good support. If you are an owner of a small indie game dev with a reasonably successful game they will most likely to contact you, send hardware and help with their optimization tools/missing features
Posted on Reply
#38
renz496
XzibitHavok out lasted them

Guess no one was licensing it.
Lol no one licensing it? The GPU PhysX did not really pan out the way nvidia like it but that's hardly an issue since the truly open source GPU accelerated physics solution that exist for almost a decade also never able to gain any traction. Game developer simply not interested with it be it open source or not. But PhysX as physic engine has been very successful in eroding Havok dominance when it comes third party physic engine.
TheGuruStudNvidia killed physx so bad they had to give up control lol. It's glorious.

Nvidia deserves this L for gimping it into oblivion.
Without nvidia PhysX would have died a long time ago. There is no way Ageia have the money to promote games to use their proprietary solution when havok simply outclassed PhysX in terms of devrel, marketing and popularity at the time among game developer. Nvidia did a right decision when they focus to improved PhysX cpu multi threaded performance with PhysX 3. You can mock nvidia failure in pushing GPU PhysX but there is stilll actual game using the feature vs the other truly open source solution that never got adopted at all in games. GPU accelerated physics never takes off not because nvidia approach with PhysX but game developer simply did not see it as something big to be added to their games.
Posted on Reply
#39
Midland Dog
R-T-BCalling the open-sourcing of anything a "dick move" is kind of... dare I say it?

A dick move.



Or died by virtue of being not open-source. Take your pick, the fortune teller has lots of cards...
too little too late, should have made physx driver side and games access the api through it, that way all games can be running the latest physx, i.e borderlands 2 wouldnt have a single threaded implementation even tho the game uses 2 cores at 80-90 percent and the last 2 at only 30
Posted on Reply
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