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.

Rigid Bodies

• Introduced a new contact generation mode, see eENABLE_PCM.

Persistent Contact Manifold (PCM) is a fully distance-based collision detection system, which uses the Gilbert-Johnson-Keerthi algorithm (GJK) and the Expanding Polytope Algorithm (EPA) to calculate one contact at the point of deepest penetration. It then uses an incremental method to build up a contact manifold by recycling contacts from past frames, accumulating up to four contacts per frame.

This approach is quite efficient in terms of performance and memory. However, it can reduce stacking stability when simulating with large timesteps, tall stacks and small objects. As this approach is distance-based, it will generate the correct contact points for arbitrary contact offsets/rest offsets.

• Introduced two new friction simulation modes, see eENABLE_ONE_DIRECTIONAL_FRICTION and eENABLE_TWO_DIRECTIONAL_FRICTION.

The Coulomb friction model is based on the Coulomb laws of friction. It is less efficient than the default friction model and it can require more solver iterations to achieve stable stacking behavior. However, its friction behaviors are much closer to the analytical results than the default friction model so could be preferable for applications where accurate friction behavior is important.

The Coulomb model comes in two variants, one-directional and two-directional. The one-directional approach is similar in terms of workload to the default friction model and can be stable at similar solver iteration counts. Its behavior is closer to the analytical results but diverges slightly. The one-directional approach is a simplification of the full Coulomb model, in which the friction for a given point of contact is reduced to a one-directional friction model.

• Introduced a new scene query flag PxSceneQueryFlag::eINITIAL_OVERLAP_KEEP to control how initial overhaps are treated in scene queries.
• Per-triangle materials have been implemented.
• Changes to material properties are automatically reflected in contact resolution.
• New helper methods to compute mass properties for a dynamic rigid body taking per shape density/mass values into account (see documentation on PxRigidBodyExt for details).
• A new set of methods for overlap, sweep and raycast tests based on PxGeometry objects has been introduced. See documentation on PxMeshQuery and PxGeometryQuery for details).
• The contact report API has changed (for details see the documentation on PxSimulationEventCallback::onContact()). Among the changes are:
  • Reports only get sent for shape pairs which request them. Previously, reports were sent for an actor pair even if the requested shape pair event was not triggered (for example because other shapes of the same actors started colliding etc.)
  • The following PxPairFlags have been removed eNOTIFY_CONTACT_FORCES, eNOTIFY_CONTACT_FORCE_PER_POINT,  eNOTIFY_CONTACT_FEATURE_INDICES_PER_POINT.
  • Forces and feature indices are now always provided if applicable.
  • It is much easier now to skip shape pairs or contact point information when traversing the contact report data.
  • The memory footprint of contact reports has been reduced.
• The members featureIndex0/1 of PxContactPoint have been renamed to internalFaceIndex0/1 for consistency.
• For trigger reports, the eNOTIFY_TOUCH_PERSISTS event has been deprecated and will be removed in the next release. For performance and flexibility reasons it is recommended to use eNOTIFY_TOUCH_FOUND and eNOTIFY_TOUCH_LOST only and manage the persistent state separately.
• Added PxConstraintVisualizer interface and code to visualize joint frames and limits.
• Improved PxBatchQuery API.
• PxPhysics::getProfileZoneManager() now returns a pointer rather than a reference.
• PxRigidDynamic::moveKinematic() has been renamed to setKinematicTarget() to underline its precise semantics.
• Added new function PxShape::getGeometry and class PxGeometryHolder to improve Geometry APIs.
• Added new actor creation helpers PxCloneStatic, PxCloneDynamic, PxScaleActor.
• Added new functions PxTransformFromSegment, PxTransformFromPlaneEquation to simplify creation of planes and capsules.
• Some methods of PxAggregate have been renamed for consistency or replaced for extended functionality.
• getMaxSize() is now called getMaxNbActors().
• getCurrentSize() is now called getNbActors().
• getActor() has been replaced by getActors() which copies the actor pointers to a user buffer.

Particles:

• Removed descriptors from particle API: The properties maxParticles and PxParticleBaseFlag::ePER_PARTICLE_REST_OFFSET need to be specified when calling PxPhysics::createParticleSystem() and createParticleFluid(). All other properties can be adjusted after creation through set methods.

Cloth:

• Added convex collision shapes, see PxCloth::addCollisionConvex().
• Added friction support, see PxCloth::setFrictionCoefficient()..
• Added angle based bending constraints, see PxClothPhaseSolverConfig::SolverType::eBENDING
• Added separation constraints, a spherical volume that particles should stay outside of, see PxCloth::setSeparationConstraints().
• Added drag, see PxCloth::setDragCoefficient().
• Added inertia scaling, controls how much movement due to PxCloth::setTargetPose() will affect the cloth.
• Added support for setting particle previous positions, see PxCloth::setParticles().
• Added controls for scaling particle mass during collision, this can help reduce edge stretching around joints on characters, see PxCloth::setCollisionMassScale().
• Particle data is now copied asynchronously from the GPU after simulate (rather than on demand).
• Improved fabric layout, you can now share fabric data across multiple phases to reduce memory usage, see PxClothFabric.
• Fixed bug in collision when capsules are tapered at a slope > 1.

Vehicles:

• Added PxVehicleDriveTank, a vehicle class that enables tank behaviors.
• Support for vehicles with more than 4 wheels, see PxVehicleDrive4W, PxVehicleDriveTank.
• Significant refactor of vehicle api to allow further types of vehicle to be added.
• Americal English spelling used in vehicle api.
• PxVehicle4W replaced with PxVehicleDrive4W, PxVehicle4WSimulationData replaced with PxVehicleDriveSimData4W.
• Removal of scene query helper functions and structs: PxVehicle4WSceneQueryData, PxVehicle4WSetUpSceneQuery, PxWheelRaycastPreFilter, PxSetupDrivableShapeQueryFilterData, PxSetupNonDrivableShapeQueryFilterData, PxSetupVehicleShapeQueryFilterData. See SampleVehicle_SceneQuery.h for their implementation in SampleVehicle.
• PxVehicle4WSimpleSetup and PxCreateVehicle4WSimulationData have been removed and replaced with default values in vehicle components, see PxVehicleComponents.h.
• PxVehicle4WTelemetryData has been replaced with PxVehicleTelemetryData, a class that supports vehicles with any number of wheels, see PxVehicleTelemetryData
• PxVehicleDrivableSurfaceType no longer stored in PxMaterial::userData. A hash table of PxMaterial pointers is instead used to associate each PxMaterial with a PxVehicleDrivableSurfaceType, see PxVehicleDrivableSurfaceToTireFrictionPairs.
• PxVehicleTyreData::mLongitudinalStiffness has been replaced with PxVehicleTireData::mLongitudinalStiffnessPerUnitGravity, see PxVehicleTireData.
• Tire forces now computed from a shader to allow user-specified tire force functions, see PxVehicleTireForceCalculator.
• Added helper functions to quickly configure 3-wheeled cars, see PxVehicle4WEnable3WTadpoleMode, PxVehicle4WEnable3WDeltaMode.

What we removed:

• Deformables have been removed. Use the optimized solution for clothing simulation instead (see documentation on PxCloth for details).
• PxSweepCache is deprecated.
• PVD is no longer enabled in the release build.
• Removed anisotropic friction.
• Renamed PxPhysics::getMetaData() to ::PxGetSDKMetaData().
• Removed the CCD mode eSWEPT_CONTACT_PAIRS.
• PxActorDesc has been removed.
• [Beta-2] The ConvX tool has been removed.

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.

Rigid Bodies

• eNOTIFY_TOUCH_LOST trigger events do now get reported if one of the objects in contact gets deleted (see documentation of PxTriggerPair for details).
• Dynamic rigid bodies with trigger shapes only do not wake up other touching bodies anymore.
• Added lost touch events for trigger reports when objects get deleted.
• Fixed dynamic triggers waking up actors they are triggered by.
• Removed an inapropriate assert from articulation code.
• Fixed problem with the angular momentum conservation of articulations.
• Fixed articulation sleep problems.
• Fixed a linear velocity related bug in CCD.
• Fixed crash bug CCD.
• Optimized performance of joint information being sent to PVD.

PhysX SDK 3.1.1/3.1.2 can be downloaded at Developer Support Center.

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

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.

Cloth

• A new solution for simulating cloth and clothing.

New PxCloth cloth solver in SDK 3.1 is a rewrite of the PhysX 2.x deformables, oriented on clothing simulation. It is promised to offer better performance (especially on consoles) and cloth behaviour, but at this point lacks several features, like softbodies, tearing, pressure and collision with regular rigid bodies (special “conic capsules” are provided instead).

However, as we were told, missing options will be added in future iterations of PhysX 3 cloth solver.

Deformables

• Deformables are deprecated and will be removed in the next release.

Rigid Bodies

• Rigid Body: High performance alternative convex narrow phase code available to source licensees. See PERSISTENT_CONTACT_MANIFOLD in the code.
• Significant advancements in the continuous collision detection algorithm.
• A large number of misc. bug fixes and optimizations.

• Added support for vehicles with more than one chassis shape.
• Fixed swapped wheel graphs in sample vehicle.
• Fixed a crash bug in the tire model.

• Optimizations and robustness improvements for articulations.
• Added sleep code for articulations.
• Solver iteration count for articulations.
• Articulation limit padding configurable.
• Fixed crashing of single link articulations.
• Added articulation documentation.

• The reference count of meshes does now take the application’s reference into acount as well and thus has increased by 1 (it used to count the number of objects referencing the mesh only). Note that a mesh does only get destroyed and removed from the list of meshes once the reference count reaches 0.

• Constraint solver optimizations.
• Removed the angular velocity term in the joint positional drive error formula.
• Fixed D6 joint linear limits being uninitialized.
• Expanded manual sections on joints.

• Improved behavior of character controller on steep slopes.
• Binary serialization now saves names.
• Added reference doc for PxSerializable.
• Fixed bug related to removing elements of an aggregate.
• Fixed bug in capsule sweep versus mesh.
• Improved reference doc for PxSceneQueryHitType.
• Fixed autowake parameter sometimes being ignored.
• Fixed some slow moving bodies falling asleep in midair.
• Fixed missing collisions after a call to resetFiltering.
• Fixed broken autowake option in setAngularVelocity.

• Added some helper code to the API.
• Removed some descriptors from API.
• Improved documentation and error messages associated with running out of narrow phase buffer blocks.

Particles

• Particle index allocation removed from SDK. Added index allocation pool to extensions.
• Replaced GPU specific side band API PxPhysicsGpu and PxPhysics::getPhysicsGpu() with PxParticleGpu.
• Memory optimizations on all platforms and options to reduce memory usage according to use case with new per particle system flags:
  • PxParticleBaseFlag::eCOLLISION_WITH_DYNAMIC_ACTORS
  • PxParticleBaseFlag::ePER_PARTICLE_COLLISION_CACHE_HINT
• Fixed rare crash appearing with multi-threaded non-GPU particle systems and rigid bodies.
• Fixed particles leaking through triangle mesh geometry on GPU.
• Fixed fast particles tunneling through scene geometry in some cases.
• Fixed erroneous collision of particles with teleporting rigid shapes (setGlobalPose).
• Fixed particle sample behavior with some older GPU models.
• Fixed a GPU particle crash bug.

PhysX SDK 3.1 is available for download at Developer Support Center.

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

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.

Second paper – Solid Simulation with Oriented Particles – describes universal solver, based on Position Based Dynamics and Shape Matching approach, that can be used to simulate rigid, plastic, cloth or soft body objects.

Update: Oriented Particles solver through CUDA

Abstract:

We propose a new fast and robust method to simulate various types of solid including rigid, plastic and soft bodies as well as one, two and three dimensional structures such as ropes, cloth and volumetric objects. The underlying idea is to use oriented particles that store rotation and spin, along with the usual linear attributes, i.e. position and velocity. This additional information adds substantially to traditional particle methods. First, particles can be represented by anisotropic shapes such as ellipsoids, which approximate surfaces more accurately than spheres.

Second, shape matching becomes robust for sparse structures such as chains of particles or even single particles because the undefined degrees of freedom are captured in the rotational states of the particles. Third, the full transformation stored in the particles, including translation and rotation, can be used for robust skinning of graphical meshes and for transforming plastic deformations back into the rest state.

Another interesting idea, that is welcomed in future PhysX SDK versions.

Thanks for AquaGeneral for a hint

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