There are some titles with GPU PhysX support we haven’t mentioned before, due to their specific nature (oriented on Chinese inner market) and, thus, lack of information about them. Now, as we collected enough data, we are ready to present detailed description.

Hot Dance Party from Perfect World is 3D casual style MMO dancing game, with micro-transactions-like business model. Besides dancing, game includes appearance personalization, pet raising and make-up systems.

Title is using in-house engine called “Angelica 3D“, which is augmented with PhysX SDK based cloth simulation support – dancer’s hairs, ribbons, dresses and skirts are simulated as dynamic cloth objects.

Interesting detail – apart from other GPU PhysX games, which are unplayble with extra PhysX effects enabled and without appropriate GPU from Nvidia, this title runs fast enough with all physics calculated on CPU, while presence of Nvidia GPU only boost framerate.

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Finally, Vadim Mir has released new version of RayFire Tool, plug-in for advanced destruction simulation.

RayFire 1.5 is now based on 2.0 PhysX plug-in for 3ds Max, which allows  to use PhysX solver for both 32 and 64-bit versions of 3ds Max.

Promo Reel, which gathers all the best RayFire shots, is presented above.

We are glad to inform you, that after a month of unavailability due to some “server issues”, binary PC version of  PhysX SDK 2.8.3 is available for download via Developer Support Center.

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

You may notice, that SDK version is now 2.8.3.21 (previous one was 2.8.3.15) – these release includes some minor bugfixes, mostly related to console versions.

eVGA GTX 275 Co-op PhysX Edition Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips by LinusTechTips

Unboxing of EVGA GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX – dual card with GTX 275 and GTS 250 GPUs – on one board. GTS 250 is dedicated solely for PhysX.

Physics Engine Technology Demonstration #2: Meqon by GeekboxProductions

Meqon physics engine – aquired by Ageia in 2005, mostly to avoid rivalry. Sometimes I feel sorry that PhysX is based on Novodex, not this one.

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Interesting video appears on YouTube today – it’s showcasing PhysX SDK integration with Meng Game Engine by Mindware  Studios. Meng was the technology behind recently released painkiller-style game called Dreamkiller.

Video is demonstrating some advanced physics simulation – tearable and pressure cloth, metal cloth based deformables, dynamic hair, and ragdolls, blended with animation using joint motors.

However, we haven’t spotted anything but ragdolls and rigid bodies in actual Dreamkiller game, so perhaps more complicated features are reserved for future projects.

Update: unfortunately, video seems to be removed by user.

As we mentioned before, recent materials from post-CES 2010 special GF100 breifing by Nvidia revealed certain in-depth details on PhysX Technology current status.

Now, thanks to Acrofan, we have now complete video record (20 min) from that briefing, covering part with PhysX SDK and APEX Toolset description, recent improvements on console PhysX versions, engine features and developer tools details, etc.

BTW, at 9:40 they were using graph from our Popular Physics Engines comparison article, and PhysXInfo was called “very cool website”

Dark Void – PhysX by GamerSpawn

Official PhysX comparison trailer from Nvidia nzone.com page. Our comparison video – here

Carmageddon XNA Physics Test 3 by 1amStudios

XNA and PhysX based Carmageddon remake is getting better and better.  Note: Sound may be a little to high, so ajust your volume beforehand.

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Impressive video of realtime Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) PhysX Fluid simulation demo, running on GF100 GPU, was uploaded to YouTube by Nvidia recently.

According to certain slides, this demo is using 128 000 particles, running on 141 frames per second.

First game that made use of PhysX SPH, Cryostasis, simulated 30,000 water particles at average 30 frames per second on the GT200 architecture. Next title with extensive SPH Fluids effects is going to be Metro 2033, as we heard.

Earlier this month, AMD critized Nvidia again, this time on crippling PhysX multi-threaded capabilities.

“When they bought Ageia, they had a fairly respectable multicore implementation of PhysX. If you look at it now it basically runs predominantly on one, or at most, two cores. That’s pretty shabby! I wonder why Nvidia has done that?” said Richard Huddy, AMD worldwide developer relations manager, in an interview with Bit-tech.com

“It’s the same thing as Intel’s old compiler tricks that it used to do; Nvidia simply takes out all the multicore optimisations in PhysX. In fact, if coded well, the CPU can tackle most of the physics situations presented to it.”

Tomshardware asked Nvidia for its responce for such allegations, and here is an answer by Nadeem Mohammad, PhysX director of product management:

I have been a member of the PhysX team, first with AEGIA, and then with NVIDIA, and I can honestly say that since the merger with NVIDIA there have been no changes to the SDK code which purposely reduces the software performance of PhysX or its use of CPU multi-cores.

Our PhysX SDK API is designed such that thread control is done explicitly by the application developer, not by the SDK functions themselves. One of the best examples is 3DMarkVantage which can use 12 threads while running in software-only PhysX. This can easily be tested by anyone with a multi-core CPU system and a PhysX-capable GeForce GPU. This level of multi-core support and programming methodology has not changed since day one. And to anticipate another ridiculous claim, it would be nonsense to say we “tuned” PhysX multi-core support for this case.

PhysX is a cross platform solution. Our SDKs and tools are available for the Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, the PC and even the iPhone through one of our partners. We continue to invest substantial resources into improving PhysX support on ALL platforms–not just for those supporting GPU acceleration.

As is par for the course, this is yet another completely unsubstantiated accusation made by an employee of one of our competitors. I am writing here to address it directly and call it for what it is, completely false. NVIDIA PhysX fully supports multi-core CPUs and multithreaded applications, period. Our developer tools allow developers to design their use of PhysX in PC games to take full advantage of multi-core CPUs and to fully use the multithreaded capabilities.

Source: nTersect Blog

Dark Void page at nzone.com was updated with two new downloads:

Dark Void – PhysX Patch (337 mb)

GeForce users who purchased a retail (boxed) copy of Dark Void. In order to play Dark Void with enhanced PhysX features, a patch must be installed.

Dark Void – PhysX Benchmark (901 mb)

Download the Dark Void PhysX Benchmark and get a taste of this dynamic third-person shooter experience!

Important Notice: Benchmark does not include APEX Turbulence based smoke and particles, so effects amount is equal to PhysX “Low” in-game setting.

If you are insterested in full scale GPU PhysX effects overview, refer to out PhysX comparison video.

Update: Some details on CPU utilization (Intel Core 2 Quad 9400 used)

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