Some interesting technology prototypes, that might greathly enhance Eve Online visual look in the future, were demonstrated today during “CCP Presents” keynote at Fanfest 2012 event by Tony Tamassi, Senior Vice President of Content & Technology in NVIDIA.

Update: video available

Update #2: devblog from CCP & article from NVIDIA

First one – DX 11 support and tesselation. In a real-time demo scene (running on a GTX 560, btw – “most commonly used card in EvE” as Tony stated), tesselation was used to enhance relatively simple model of Revenant Sansha Carrier with incredible number of smaller details (all the spurs, cables and stuff – being real geometry, not plain normal maps), all properly lightened and casting real shadows.

Second – additionally physically simulated objects in the space. In the same demo, while fairing through massive asteroid field, carrier was colliding with smaller asteroids and debris, flying all other the field, crashing and fracturing them upon impact. All simulation was done through PhysX SDK.

We remind you that currently PhysX/APEX is already used to sumulate clothing and hair on characters in EvE Online.

And finally, innovative offer was presented – capsuleers will have an option to buy NVIDIA GPUs.. for PLEX. GTX 560 was priced at 20 PLEX (however, offer might be limited to this model only).

Presentations from “Nvidia Game Technology Theater“, which were demonstrated at Nvidia booth on GDC 2010, are now live – slides and following sound accompaniment. Let’s take a look at those related to PhysX SDK and APEX toolset.

Update: main PhysX and APEX session are now available as slide decks and video records

APEX Clothing with 3ds Max by Gavin Kistner, Product Designer, NVIDIA

Gavin gives a quick overview of 2.0 PhysX plug-in for 3ds Max, and uses superhero character with cape to explaing full clothing authoring process. Personal love Gavin’s manner of talking.. funny guy

Physically Simulated Clothing By CCP (EVE Online) Using NVIDIA APEX by Vigfus Omarsson, Lead Technical Artist, CCP; Snorri Sturluson, Senior Software Engineer, CCP; Monier Maher, APEX Product Manager, NVIDIA

Include overall cloth sim benefits overview from CCP, clothing tools pipeline features demonstration with Maya, and, of course, authoring process with pretty female character. While authoring was done in Maya, actual simulation was running in “CCP engine” window, as stated by Vigfus.

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Japanese website 4Gamer.net has published an overview of GDC 2010 session called “Physically Simulated Clothing by CCP (EVE Online) Using NVIDIA APEX“, we were specially interested in.

Update: Video demonstration available

Update #2: CCP presentation screencast from “Nvidia Game Technology Theater” at GDC now available.

Update #3: Full session video record available at GDC Vault

Led by Vigfus Omarsson and Snorri Sturluson from CCP, this talk was focused on APEX Clothing system integration with in-house engine, supposed to be used in Incarna add-on for EVE Online and, probably, new World of Darkness MMO.

Using a nice custom character as an example, full clothing authoring pipeline was demonstrated.

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GDC 2010 (Game Developer Conference) is just about to start, and is going to be rich on PhysX related content this year. Apart from session on APEX Clothing integration with EvE Incarna we mentined previously, featured talks will include “Authoring Physically Simulated Destruction with NVIDIA APEX” and “Taking Fluid Simulation Out of the Box: Particle Effects in Dark Void“.

You can read session descriptions via provided links, but actually not only this has catched my eye. Nvidia GDC 2010 page was updated with schedule of presentations, that are going to be demonstrated at Nvidia booth #1702 at March 12-13

Those include such intriguing topics like:

Unity for Engineers – are they planning to demonstrate update physics system in Unity 3.0 ?

Authoring Runtime Animation with NaturalMotion Morpheme 2.3 – I’ve heard that Morpheme is going to be integrated with APEX Clothing, is that it ?

Softimage 2011 Enhanced with PhysX – next version of Softimage will include updated PhysX SDK integration ?

Streamlining PhysX Content in Max – is it related to rumored new physics system in XBR ?

Sadly I can’t visit GDC myself, but I’ll try to provide you with any open or insider information I’ll be able to gather

According to Nvidia GDC 2010 sessions plan, next major add-on for EVE Online, popular sci-fi space MMO game, known as “Incarna” or “Walking on Stations” will use APEX Clothing module for character clothing simulation.

Physically Simulated Clothing in Eve Incarna Using NVIDIA APEX

In this session, we will demonstrate how CCP added physically simulated clothing to their Eve Incarna characters using NVIDIA’s APEX Clothing. We will demonstrate, step by step, the full authoring pipeline, from DCC tools to final integration into the game engine. This session introduces the full NVIDIA APEX suite of artist friendly tools and runtime libraries (Clothing, Destruction, Particles, Turbulence & Vegetation), which significantly speed up creation and inclusion of scalable, dynamic content without a large engineering effort.

Previosly know as “Ambulation”, than “Walking on Stations” and now “Incarna” project is supposed to pare capsuleer pilots out of their ships and put them into stations – for the first time. (currently, players have no ability to control their actual avatars, only space ships)

Update: APEX Clothing and EVE Incarna – first look from GDC 2010.

[18.08.10] Update #2: Carbon technology blog from CCP, and accompanying video.