NVIDIA has revealed PhysX SDK 3.2 Beta-1, thus providing early public access to next general release of PhysX 3, enhanced with many features and improvements – as a Christmas present, we suppose.

Update [25.01.2012]: PhysX SDK 3.2 Beta-2 is available

Binary SDKs are available for Windows PC, Linux, Mac OSX and Android platforms.

PhysX SDK 3.2 Beta-1/Beta-2 can be downloaded at Developer Support Center.

If you are experiencing trouble with registration of PhysX Developer account, please refer to our registration guide.

PhysX SDK 3.2 Beta-1/Beta-2 Release Notes:

General:

• Three new sample applications: SampleCharacterCloth (character with cloth cape and cloth flags), SampleBridges (character controller walking on dynamic bridges and moving platforms), SampleGravity (character controller with arbitrary up vector).
• On Windows, the PxFoundation instance is now a process wide singleton and part of the new PhysX3Common.dll library.
• PxCreatePhysics() does not create a PxFoundation instance any longer. The PxFoundation instance has to be created in advance through PxCreateFoundation().
• Calls to PxCreatePhysics() are not valid anymore if a PxPhysics instance already exists.
• If profiling information should be sent to the PhysX Visual Debugger, a PxProfileZoneManager instance has to be provided when creating the PxPhysics instance.
• The version number constant PX_PUBLIC_FOUNDATION_VERSION has been replaced with PX_PHYSICS_VERSION. Both PxFoundation and PxPhysics use the same version number now.
• The API now distinguishes between input and output stream types.
• Added mechanism to reduce code size by not linking optional components. See PxCreateBasePhysics() and the PxRegister*() functions.
• Added getConcreteTypeName() to API classes to provide run time type information.
• Added PxScene::getTimestamp() to retrieve the simulation counter.
• PxGetFoundation has been moved to PxGetFoundation.h
• Changed the functions PxPhysics::releaseUserReferences(), releaseCollection(), addCollection() and releaseCollected() to now take a reference rather than a pointer.
• The signature of PxCreatePhysics has changed: The Foundation SDK instance must be passed in explicitly. One can also hook profiling information by passing a PxProfileZoneManager.
• [Beta-2] Platform conversion for serialized data has been moved from the ConvX command line tool to the PxBinaryConverter interface in the cooking library.
• [Beta-2] Documentation has been updated.
• [Beta-2] Samples have been updated.
• [Beta-2] Various bug fixes.

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Updated PhysX 3.1.1, which adresses many issues found in SDK 3.1.0, is now available for download.

Update [11.01.2012]: PhysX SDK 3.1.2 available

• Fixed wrong write/read clash checks.
• Removed some compiler warnings from public header files.
• Fixed PxScene::getActors() returning wrong actors when a start index is specified.
• Fixed broken joint projection in connection with kinematics.
• Fixed inaccurate normals returned from height field scene queries.
• Fixed a crash when the geometry of a shape changes and then the actor gets removed from the scene while the simulation is running.
• Fixed a crash when re-adding scene-query shape actors to scene.
• Fixed crash bug in particle simulation code on GPU.
• Fixed a crash when GPU fabrics are shared between cloths.
• Fixed a hang in cloth fiber cooker when handed non-manifold geometry.
• Fixed SampleVehicle doing an invalid write.
• Fixed SampleVehicle jitter in profile build.

PhysX SDK 3.1.1 Release Notes:

General

• Ported samples to Linux.
• Fixed crash bug in ConvX.
• Fixed crash bug in the allocator code of PXC_NP_MEM_BLOCK_EXTENSIBLE.
• Fixed crash bug when connected to PVD on various platforms.
• Fixed bogus asserts due to overly strict validation of quaternions.
• Fixed one frame lag in PVD scene statistics.
• Fixed a number of OSX PVD sockets issues.
• Fixed SampleSubmarine code that violated concurrent read/writes restriction.
• Added warnings about read/write hazards to the checked build.
• Fixed RepX not reading joint properties.
• Fixed support for concurrent scene queries.
• Fixed PhysX GPU Visual Indicator support.
• Made it more clear in documentation that simulate(0) is not allowed.

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Earlier this year, Matthias Müller-Fischer, PhysX SDK Research Lead in NVIDIA, has presented new universal solver that can be used simulate almost any kind of objects – rigid, plastic, cloth or soft body.

You can familiarize with this work via previously published research papers: Solid Simulation with Oriented Particles and Adding Physics to Animated Characters with Oriented Particles.

Today, interesting video was revealed – it is showcasing impressive 20x performance improvement for this type of simulation running on GPU through CUDA, in comparison to CPU execution (5 “Lionfish” objects on CPU vs 100 on GPU – in real-time).

Sometimes findings of PhysX Research team are incorporated in PhysX/APEX products, and sometimes, for various reasons, they just become a research paper or presentation. We hope that in case with solver there will be only one option – first one.

Following previosly revealed roadmap, NVIDIA has updated 3.x generation of PhysX physics engine to version 3.1

List of publicly available free binary PhysX SDKs includes SDK for Windows PC, Linux, Mac OSX and, for the first time, Android platforms.

Update: PhysX SDK 3.1.1 is available for download

Update #2: PhysX SDK 3.2 Beta released

PhysX SDK 3.1 Release Notes:

General

• VC10 support has been introduced.
• VC8 support has been discontinued.
• Upgraded GPU tech to CUDA 4.
• Various improvements to Foundation and classes shared with APEX.
• Extensions, Character Controller and Vehicle source code made available in binary distribution.

• Namespaces cleaned up.
• Cleaned up a large number of warnings at C++ warning level 4, and set SDK to compile with warnings as errors.
• No longer passing NULL pointers to user allocator to deallocate.
• Added x86,x64 suffix to PxTaskCUDA.dll
• Removed boolean return value from PxScene::addActor(…), and similar API calls.

• Removed individual sample executables in favor of SampleAllInOne from PC and console builds.
• Fixed alpha blending in samples.
• Simplified some code in samples.
• Improved ambient lighting in samples.
• Made samples work with older graphics cards.
• Renamed some XBOX 360 specific files and folders.
• Improved and added more content the user’s guide.

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Another interesting research paper was published by Dr. Matthias Müller-Fischer, PhysX SDK Research Lead in NVIDIA.

Update: Oriented Particles solver through CUDA

It is called Adding Physics to Animated Characters with Oriented Particles and it further expands oriented particles approach with techniques for simulation of clothing on animated characters.

Abstract:

We present a method to enhance the realism of animated characters by adding physically based secondary motion to deformable parts such as cloth, skin or hair. To this end, we extend the oriented particles approach to incorporate animation information. In addition, we introduce techniques to increase the stability of the original method in order to make it suitable for the fast and sudden motions that typically occur in computer games. We also propose a method for the semi-automatic creation of particle representations from arbitrary visual meshes. This way, our technique allows us to simulate complex geometry such as hair, thick cloth with ornaments and multi-layered clothing, all interacting with each other and the animated character.

Current developer (and probably future public) builds of DCC PhysX plug-ins have interesting feature – you can switch your simulation engine and feature set between two different PhysX SDK versions – SDK 2.8 (as in all previous plug-ins) and new SDK 3.0

However, in latest 2.61 PhysX plug-in for 3ds Max you can already enable PhysX SDK 3.0 mode, as suggested by opethism and further explained by Blake:

All you need is to add npx.UsePhysXPlugin(2) line to px_globals.ms file,

located at “\3ds Max 2012\stdplugs\stdscripts\(PhysX)“.

Final code should look like this:

fn PxInitializePlugin =
(
try ( nvpx.InitializePhysX listener )
catch ( format nvpxText.TXT_GLOBALS_WARN_NO_DLM; )
– create toolbar
nvpx.UsePhysXPlugin(2)
nvpx.CreateToolbar()
)

In this mode, one particular feature will be very usefull for PhysX developers – ability to export your scene in RepX format, currently only one serialization format supported in PhysX SDK 3.

Other than that, most simulation features are seems to be working (except for Viewer tool), but stability is not quaranteed.

Despite the release of the new PhysX 3 engine, NVIDIA still continues to improve 2.x branch of PhysX SDKs – new PhysX SDK 2.8.4.6 has arrived today for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Release Notes:

* Fixed a bug when vertex count is not a multiple of 4 and when NX_CLF_HARD_STRETCH_LIMITATION is enabled.

* SPU code enabled for APEX.

* Fixed SPU raycast bug.

* Other minor bugfixes for APEX.

As always, you can download PhysX SDK 2.8.4.6 via Developer Support Center.

If you are experiencing trouble with registration of PhysX Developer account, please refer to our registration guide.

NVIDIA has uploaded first minor bug-fix release for PhysX SDK 3 – PhysX SDK 3.0.1 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Update [04.10.2011]: PhysX SDK 3.1 released

Update [16.06.2011]: PhysX SDK 3.0.1 for Linux released, 32-bit libraries added, linking issues resolved.

Update [24.06.2006]: PhysX SDK 3.0.2 for PC released, with minor bugfixes.

Bug-fixes in 3.0.1 version include following:

• removed a troublesome assert, bad character fixes and a few broken macros
• fixed Xbox and Win32 install scripts
• renamed zeroDataCache to invalidateChache

Documentation was also updated. In addition, official Release Notes for SDK 3.0 were included with installation package. You can view them here.

As always, you can download PhysX SDK 3.0.2 via Developer Support Center.

If you are experiencing trouble with registration of PhysX Developer account, please refer to our registration guide.

Two new research papers have landed on a homepage of Dr. Matthias Müller-Fischer, PhysX SDK Research Lead in NVIDIA and NovodeX co-founder.

Fisrst one, called “Real-Time Eulerian Water Simulation Using a Restricted Tall Cell Grid“, presents further impovements to the real-time hybrid fluid solver, that we were able to see in recent demos like Lighhouse and Raging Rapids Ride.

Abstract:

We present a new Eulerian fluid simulation method, which allows real-time simulations of large scale three dimensional liquids. Such scenarios have hither to been restricted to the domain of off-line computation. To reduce computation time we use a hybrid grid representation composed of regular cubic cells on top of a layer of tall cells. With this layout water above an arbitrary terrain can be represented without consuming an excessive amount of memory and compute power, while focusing effort on the area near the surface where it most matters. Additionally, we optimized the grid representation for a GPU implementation of the fluid solver.

To further accelerate the simulation, we introduce a specialized multigrid algorithm for solving the Poisson equation and propose solver modifications to keep the simulation stable for large time steps. We demonstrate the efficiency of our approach in several real-world scenarios, all running above 30 frames per second on a modern GPU. Some scenes include additional features such as two-way rigid body coupling as well as particle representations of sub-grid detail.

We badly want to see this one in further releases of PhysX SDK 3 or APEX.

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During “Tegra Game Devcon 2011” presentation at Google I/O conference, NVIDIA has revealed release plans and roadmap for PhysX SDK 3.

SDK 3.0 has been moved to a 6 month release shedule (~12 months for latest 2.8.x SDKs), and since it features now unified code base across multiple platforms, we can expect more synchronous releases of SDKs for different platforms (we can assume, some of you are still waiting for Linux version of PhysX SDK 2.8.4).

You can also notice, that iOS and Android were added as default platforms of PhysX SDK 3.0.

Source: 4Gamer.net