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.

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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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After several weeks of delays, beta version of PhysX 2.0 plug-in for 3ds Max is finally available for testing. We’ll simple quote Gavin Kistner, PhysX Max and Maya plug-ins Product Designer:

The extranet we want to use to distribute the beta PhysX Plug-in for 3ds Max is taking longer than expected to finalize. However, I’d love to get beta testing underway sooner rather than later. To that end, if you would like to be a beta tester for the plug-in (supporting Max 2008, 2009, 2010 on 32- and 64-bit OS), please send me an email. I’ll get you the plug-in if you will in turn give me feedback.

Send an email with subject “PhysX Plug-in for 3ds Max Beta” to “gkistner@nvidia.com“, and include your real name, email address, and company that you’ll be using the plug-in for. Optionally, I’d also love to hear what you intend to use the plug-in for: content development for PhysX-based games; developing for other real-time simulations; improved simulation for standalone rendering; or just repeatedly smashing wrecking balls into brick silos and watching them fall.

Source: Nvidia Developer Forums

Update: PhysX plug-in v2.01 for 3ds Max released