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

[btarunr]

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

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Basard]

Robot apocalypse @ 2:20..... Get your tennis balls ready guys!

 

[SIGSEGV]

that gayworks logo hurts my eyes.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

love how their last try is so shit , really, did you not sell it as amazeballs back then, this does happen weekly to be fair what with new cillit bang yada yada every month.

so just .06 versions ago it was a potato now its f"£@in iron mans assitohand but smarter.

lets see what the uptake of physx is post this in a few years , dick move imho,too little way way too late.

 

[Fluffmeister]

We all know AMD won't support it, the whole but it's not "open source" was just an excuse for them and the nutters above anyway.

But yes, lets see what uptake there is now, maybe after they have fixed primitive shaders and other broken promises in their dodgy drivers first.

 

[Xzibit]

Havok out lasted them

Guess no one was licensing it.

 

[R-T-B]

dick move imho

Calling the open-sourcing of anything a "dick move" is kind of... dare I say it?

A dick move.

Havok out lasted them

Or died by virtue of being not open-source. Take your pick, the fortune teller has lots of cards...

 

[TheGuruStud]

Calling 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...

Nvidia killed physx so bad they had to give up control lol. It's glorious.

Nvidia deserves this L for gimping it into oblivion.

 

[R-T-B]

Havok is still used. Nvidia killed physx so bad they had to give up control lol. It's glorious.

Really not true and a poor arguement. PhysX is still used. Heck, PhysX is baked into Unity which probably gives it more use than the entire Havok engine installbase by that alone.

You really should stop parroting misinformation just because it fits a narrative.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Really not true and a poor arguement. PhysX is still used. Heck, PhysX is baked into Unity which probably gives it more use than the entire Havok engine installbase by that alone.

You really should stop parroting misinformation just because it fits a narrative.

Tell 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.

 

[R-T-B]

Tell me, glorious physx lover, how much beyond rudimentary physics is used?

Irrelevant as the entire stack is open source. At any rate all Unity game physics are done on cpu PhysX unless you bring your own code.

I am not a "PhysX lover." As a gamer I don't give two shits how the physics are delivered and neither should you. I am however a developer and unity physics are so easy for ragdoll physics I can certainly say the choice for me of PhysX over Havok wasn't even a choice really, more of a natural "why in the world would I use anything else?"

That speaks volumes, and open sourcing this project for cpu physics helps everyone. Drop the hate and realize this hurts no one, helps everyone, and deserves praise not mockery.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Irrelevant as the entire stack is open source. At any rate all Unity game physics are done on PhysX unless you bring your own code.

I am not a "PhysX lover." As a gamer I don't give two shits how the physics are delivered and neither should you. I am however a developer and unity physics are so easy for ragdoll physics I can certainly say the choice for me of PhysX over havok wasn't even a choice really, more of a natural "why in the world would I use anything else?"

That speaks volumes, and open sourcing this project for cpu physics helps everyone. Drop the hate and realize this hurts no one, helps everyone, and deserves praise not mockery.

They're not delivered, that's the point. Nvidia killed real adoption possible by gimping CPU accel. Now, this is hilarious, b/c that guaranteed its failure of not being able to sell cards for it. There wasn't a performance limit from using CPU. Devs didn't continue when a small subset have the top card or extra card for it (later outright blocked gpu accel when using AMD card) This is nvidia's own doing trying to be extra greedy.

Wrong. It deserves mockery and no praise, b/c they didn't want it to come to this. And I care how tech unfolds and comes about. Just b/c DX11/12 is far less shitty than all of the old versions doesn't mean I'm going to forget how it killed IQ and performance, b/c m$ wanted to muscle in with their garbage.

 

[R-T-B]

Nvidia killed real adoption possible by gimping CPU accel.

You'll need to justify that. Unity physics are plenry well capable and utilize cpu only paths.

There wasn't a performance limit from using CPU.

There is by nature of serial vs parallel computations, of which gpus are better at the latter and physics happen to prefer, really.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Yeah I would love to see some good PhysX in new games. Let dedicated cards make a comeback.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Really not true and a poor arguement. PhysX is still used. Heck, PhysX is baked into Unity which probably gives it more use than the entire Havok engine installbase by that alone.

This..

Irrelevant as the entire stack is open source.

This..

Unity physics are plenry well capable and utilize cpu only paths.

And this.

@TheGuruStud Considering that Unity is being used on ARM as well as X86, one can hardly argue that's it's not well used. Open-sourcing PhysX is a very positive move and opens the door for a lot of development of physics engines across many platforms. Please quit your senseless and needless whining. It comes off not as objective input on the subject, but more fanboying against NVidia.

 

[_Flare]

I think it got open-souced because in the future physics will get far beyond the PhysX of today.

It will be implemented deeper via Vulkan and pure DX12, thru compute shaders on GPU and /or CPU.
This could happen out of open-sourced and then wider parellelized PhysX and/or other solutions.

This will go very deep in the engines including the whole animation, destruction and environment stuff.

 

[Vayra86]

love how their last try is so shit , really, did you not sell it as amazeballs back then, this does happen weekly to be fair what with new cillit bang yada yada every month.

so just .06 versions ago it was a potato now its f"£@in iron mans assitohand but smarter.

lets see what the uptake of physx is post this in a few years , dick move imho,too little way way too late.

Nvidia killed physx so bad they had to give up control lol. It's glorious.

Nvidia deserves this L for gimping it into oblivion.

Tell 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.

They're not delivered, that's the point. Nvidia killed real adoption possible by gimping CPU accel. Now, this is hilarious, b/c that guaranteed its failure of not being able to sell cards for it. There wasn't a performance limit from using CPU. Devs didn't continue when a small subset have the top card or extra card for it (later outright blocked gpu accel when using AMD card) This is nvidia's own doing trying to be extra greedy.

Wrong. It deserves mockery and no praise, b/c they didn't want it to come to this. And I care how tech unfolds and comes about. Just b/c DX11/12 is far less shitty than all of the old versions doesn't mean I'm going to forget how it killed IQ and performance, b/c m$ wanted to muscle in with their garbage.

that gayworks logo hurts my eyes.

Putting PhysX or GameWorks in a headline is like putting a red patch in front of an AMD bull. Careful!

Can you kids grow up?

You all forget to ask the relevant questions:

- How does Havok compare to PhysX in those delivered products? Oh yeah, its vastly inferior... And all those devs doing better physics from their attic, show them please. I'll be waiting for it.
- Why did competition never manage to bring something similar?
- How is that on the one hand its a dick move and on the other its useless technology all at the same time? If its useless, why care so much?

There is so much wrong with all of your stance on this, I can't even begin to understand it. Never did, either. That goes for hating on GameWorks and this whole Nvidia killed PhysX sentiment. I guess it shows how little you know, or 'want' to know.

 

[Xzibit]

- How does Havok compare to PhysX in those delivered products? Oh yeah, its vastly inferior... And all those devs doing better physics from their attic, show them please. I'll be waiting for it.

Don't forget Microsoft bought Havok in 2015 and last year it was rumored to finally be bringing "Direct Physics" to DX API. Something Microsoft has been try'n to do for awhile.

 

[vip3r011]

still locked to cuda?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

At any rate all Unity game physics are done on cpu PhysX unless you bring your own code.

Any Unity developer that actually used it extensively knows it's a constant war to prevent dynamic objects from exploding...like this:

It should be noted that NVIDIA likely didn't open source PhsyX out of the kindness of their heart (pssssssshhhhhhh). They did it because DirectPhysics launch is probably imminent. Microsoft is about to offer Havok-based, GPU-accelerated physics for free on Xbox and Windows. How does PhysX stay relevant? By open source. The decision had nothing to do with AMD.

 

[bug]

Any Unity developer that actually used it extensively knows it's a constant war to prevent dynamic objects from exploding...like this:

It should be noted that NVIDIA likely didn't open source PhsyX out of the kindness of their heart (pssssssshhhhhhh). They did it because DirectPhysics launch is probably imminent. Microsoft is about to offer Havok-based, GPU-accelerated physics for free on Xbox and Windows. How does PhysX stay relevant? By open source. The decision had nothing to do with AMD.

The reason for open sourcing is irrelevant. This is a news piece with Nvidia in the title, so the mandatory "but Nvidia is evil" comments must ensue.
It would be easier if the editors would just make a template and add the derogatory posts automatically, but they won't do that because they're bastards paid by Nvidia (and Intel). </sarcasm>

 

[Xuper]

Now it's open source so can AMD optimize it for own card? Some open source code won't allow you to change code and make New Name.Does Nvidia allow AMD ? I doubt ,

 

[jabbadap]

Havok out lasted them

Guess no one was licensing it.

Nah, Havok has been cpu only since Intel buy out them at 2005. And as @FordGT90Concept said after Intel gave up Havok to M$, there might be hope to see Havok GPU accelerated physics in the future. CPU Physx being the integrated physics engine for Unity, UE4, lumberyard etc. major engines, I can't really see how Havok "out lasted" them in anyway, both are very much a live and wide adopted physics middle-wares...

But yeah Nvidia killed Gpu-PhysX long ago. Most of former GPU PhysX effects(that heavy eye candy crap) are now under gameworks visual FX(Flex, Hairworks, waveworks, turf etc.) and are using m$ directcompute instead of cuda so they can work in any graphics card vendor.

 

[bug]

Now it's open source so can AMD optimize it for own card?

I don't see why not. They just have to come up with an implementation of the lowest layer in that library that runs well on their hardware. There things are usually pluggable, you don't need to write one piece of code that runs at peak performance on everything.

Some open source code won't allow you to change code and make New Name.Does Nvidia allow AMD ? I doubt ,

There is no open source license that I know of that prevents modification. You must be thinking GPL-style licensing where if you modify already GPL code, you must release the modifications under the same license as well. But PhysX isn't GPL, it uses the more permissive BSD license.

 

[mak1skav]

PR attempt to save their declining share price.