Certainly, many of you will agree that the addition of GPU PhysX effects to PC games has a positive influence on overall gaming experience and immersion in such titles. But how difficult is to attach hardware accelerated physics effects to a game?

Today, with the help of David Schoemehl, Manager of GPU PhysX Content in NVIDIA, and Johnny Costello, Technical Artist, we will try to give you a brief “behind the scenes” view on the process of enhancing games with extra PhysX content.

PhysXInfo.com: Hi, Johnny and David. Can you please introduce yourself?

Johnny Costello: My name is Johnny Costello, I’m 29 years old and am a native to the Midwestern United States. I went to college at Savannah College of Art and Design and received my B.F.A. in game development. I have been a technical artist at NVIDIA for about two and a half years. During that time I have worked on several GPU PhysX titles such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, Mafia II, Dark Void, and Alice: Madness Returns.

David Schoemehl: My name is David Schoemehl, I joined AGEIA in 2006 as an applications engineer and was the project manager on Warmonger. Since the purchase of AGEIA by NVIDIA in 2008 I have led or supported several shipping GPU PhysX titles and demos including Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Samaritan Demo, Sacred 2, The Great Kulu Demo, and Alice: Madness Returns.

My current title is Manager of GPU PhysX Content and I am responsible for aligning NVIDIA’s engineers and artists to support developers on GPU PhysX engagements. I also work closely with Epic Games to ensure a solid integration of GPU PhysX/APEX features in UE3.

PhysXInfo.com: Johnny, what is your task as a PhysX technical artist?

Johnny Costello: My tasks can change a lot from day to day, but usually I’m working on a game title in some capacity. Our goal at NVIDIA is to provide the tools that developers need in order to add great GPU features to their games. So I spend much of my time working with developers to help guide them as they use our technology to create exciting content.

Depending on the structure of a particular engagement I may also work alongside the developer to create GPU PhysX content. Then there are other days where I help design and review our tools and production workflows.

PhysXInfo.com: So what is in the process of adding GPU PhysX effects to a game?

Johnny Costello: We usually start by getting a build of a game and playing through it in its current state. We also read any available design and art documents to familiarize ourselves with the gameplay mechanics and the aesthetic style. From there, we identify any story events, environment locations, special effects, characters, etc. that could be enhanced with our feature set and make the game more fun to play.

From there, we work with the developer to refine this list and plan out a timeline. After that, it’s all about creating content with our tech that players will enjoy.

Once the content gets in the game, it starts getting reviewed by QA. We usually spend our time at the end of a title engagement addressing any bugs that QA has found and making minor content adjustments.

APEX Toolset helps artists to create content more easily

PhysXInfo.com: Users are often complaining that extra PhysX effects are not optimized properly for CPU execution (not using multiple cores, for example). What is the reason behind this?

David Schoemehl: This is a legacy issue regarding PhysX versions prior to 2.8.4. With proper setup it is possible to achieve some threading on PhysX 2.8.4, for instance running multiple cloth simulations in parallel. However, the overall threading performance issues have been addressed in PhysX 3, which is available today. With PhysX 3 we have improved the rigid body, clothing, and particle pipelines to take better advantage of multiple CPU cores.

PhysXInfo.com: Also, there is an opinion that with disabled GPU PhysX option, minor effects (like sparks or cloth banners) are omitted from the games on purpose, while they can be easily calculated on CPU or substituted with non-physical objects. What can you say about this?

David Schoemehl: When NVIDIA engages with a developer to work on a GPU PhysX title we will offer suggestions for enhancing existing effects and adding entirely new effects. For the existing effects that are enhanced by PhysX you will see original version of the effect with GPU PhysX disabled. For effects that are created new as part of the GPU PhysX effort you will not see a fallback, because it did not exist in the original game.

Our goal is to work with developers to enhance their original game to take advantage of the latest hardware NVIDIA has to offer. We want to provide gamers that select NVIDIA a superior play experience for these games. We would not want to raise the min recommended specs for a game determined by the developer by adding additional default effects to the original game.

PhysXInfo.com: You work closely with developers – is exclusivity of GPU PhysX content to NVIDIA some kind of a barrier for PhysX adoption? In other words, are developers interested in OpenCL / DX Compute version of PhysX engine?

David Schoemehl: No, we have not seen this as a blocker for PhysX adoption in general. PhysX provides a strong set of core physics engine functionality across a wide array of platforms including PCs, consoles, and mobile devices. PhysX powers game engines such as UE3 and Unity, and can be found in many of the AAA titles that are shipping today.

PhysX 3 addresses memory, threading, and performance concerns, which should further increase the adoption rate of PhysX. In addition to this core functionality, PhysX and APEX offer hardware acceleration for certain features, such as particles, cloth, rigid bodies, and turbulence, through CUDA. This is a powerful value add but does not interfere with developers using core PhysX and APEX features.

PhysX engine can be found in many AAA titles

PhysXInfo.com: What is your impression on NVIDIA APEX toolset? Is it really simplifying process of adding PhysX effects to games?

Johnny Costello: I definitely think so. For example, look at where we’re heading with APEX tools like PhysXLab and the Clothing plug-in for 3dsMax and Maya. They are becoming more robust with each release and are definitely making it easier to create APEX content for games.

One of my favorite things about PhysXLab is the Playground Mode where you can preview how your mesh is going to fracture in real time before bringing it into a game engine and placing it into a map. This saves valuable time between making parameter changes and seeing those changes visually affecting the fractured mesh.

PhysXInfo.com: You have probably already worked with the new clothing simulation engine, introduced in PhysX 3. How well does it performs in comparison to current one?

Johnny Costello: The PhysX 3 clothing engine gives us a stronger set of features. More attributes allow the artists and animators to make better aesthetic choices regarding their cloth. One of these new features is the ability to created tapered capsule collision shapes. These shapes allow the artists and animators to create a collision representation that is more true to the characters silhouette.

The new system also allows for more reliable behavior during intense, fast-moving, animation sequences. In addition to these features, overall performance has been improved allowing developers to use clothing across more platforms.

PhysXInfo.com: What additional features you would like to see in APEX, as a technical artist?

Johnny Costello: As a technical artist, I spend a lot of time trying to decompose exciting artistic ideas down into their components so they can be created in games. What I’m looking forward to in the future with APEX is seeing various features come together for a combined effect.

What happens when turbulent dust is spawned when a destructible is fractured? Can a character’s clothing move when it gets hit with particles? I can’t wait to see all these things come together to make games even more dynamic and intense for players to experience.

Unreal Engine 3 includes robust PhysX Particle System

PhysXInfo.com: We have noticed that recent GPU PhysX titles, like Alice: Madness Returns or Batman: Arkham City are not using APEX Particles but built-in PhysX particles system instead – why is that? Isn’t the Particles module more effective?

David Schoemehl: Both of these games are built using UE3, which already had a robust particle editor using NVIDIA’s GPU PhysX particles. APEX provides some great features for particle systems but for these cases UE3 was already providing the functionality we needed.

APEX Particles are a win if you are stepping into project that doesn’t already have an existing PhysX particle pipeline or if you are interested in doing some simulations, such as turbulence, which require a great number of particles that don’t require the high-fidelity collision of PhysX particles.

PhysXInfo.com: Dark Void was the only title to impress us with awesome Turbulence smoke, why much newer games are still using good old SPH method for smoke and fog simulation?

David Schoemehl: The turbulence in Dark Void was added as a one-off feature for that specific game so that we could see how it would show in a game. While we feel that turbulence was an awesome feature we have been focused on improving APEX Clothing and Destruction, because that is what developers were telling us they needed.

However, we are pleased to say the APEX Turbulence module is now scheduled for the APEX 1.2 release in Q2 of this year. So we hope to see it appear in many games in the future.

PhysXInfo.com: Mafia II was the first title containing APEX Clothing engine. Do you think this “benefice” was successful? What difficulties have you faced during development?

David Schoemehl: Yes, the work done in Mafia II was invaluable for clothing. We learned so much about how to improve the tools and features for clothing from the work done on this game. The payoff was visible in later titles such as Batman: Arkham City where the time to create clothing and get it in game was drastically reduced.

Mafia II: first game to utilize APEX Clothing module

PhysXInfo.com: Batman: Arkham City also seems to be using APEX Clothing pretty extensively. Is it true that Clothing module is utilized not only as part of PhysX effects, but also for non-GPU accelerated clothing simulation, even on consoles?

David Schoemehl: It is true that clothing can be run on the GPU, CPU, and even consoles. However, for Batman APEX Clothing can only be seen on the PC running on either the CPU or GPU. It should be noted that APEX Clothing was also used for some hair simulation in the pre-rendered cutscenes that can be seen across all platforms.

Clothing performance on consoles is something which we have been focusing on improving with the PhysX 3 and APEX Clothing effort. We are seeing an increase in the number of developers wanting to get APEX Clothing into their console games so I would expect to start seeing this soon.

PhysXInfo.com: One of the most vibrant effects in both Batman titles – scenes containing GPU Rigid Bodies. How has this technology evolved since Arkham Asylum?

David Schoemehl: To be clear, GPU Rigid bodies were only featured in Batman: Arkham Asylum. They were not used in Batman: Arkham City. However, we have been making great progress with GPU Rigid Bodies with regards to performance and simulation stability.

They were last featured in the APEX Art Gallery demo [link] at GDC 2011, and they will be available to the public in APEX 1.1 very soon.

PhysXInfo.com: Another interesting scene – physically simulated banknotes in a bank vault. Are those all individual cloth pieces? How many of them are there?

Johnny Costello: Yes, those are all APEX cloth. During production, that was a really neat scene to watch come together. Initially we weren’t sure if the player would be able to see the characters interacting with the dollar bills since they are so small, so we added forcefields to Catwoman’s animations, and then the scene came alive in a big way.

It is definitely one of my favorite fights in the game. There were about 500 individual bills in that scene, which adds up to approximately 10,000 simulating vertices of APEX cloth.

Around 500 bills are scattered on the floor

PhysXInfo.com: You have worked on many GPU PhysX games, but which one is your favorite?

Johnny Costello: I have great memories of all of the game engagements that I’ve been involved with, but working on the Batman series has probably been the most memorable experience for me. I’ve been a Batman fan since I was a little kid, and I basically joined NVIDIA in 2009 and immediately started working on Batman: Arkham Asylum. That was pretty amazing.

And then I had the opportunity to work on Arkham City! I feel very lucky to have been involved with both.

PhysXInfo.com: We bet you are already working on PhysX content for future games. Will they be able to surprise us?

David Schoemehl: Yes, we are constantly on the lookout for upcoming titles that can be enhanced with PhysX and APEX features. On each title we work with developers to do something new or better than in previous titles. In addition, we are seeing a growing number of developers independently experimenting with APEX tools. This is particularly true of the UE3 APEX integration.

Our job on the PhysX Content Team is to show developers and gamers what NVIDIA technologies can bring to games and we measure our success by the ease at which developers can add the features and the response we see from gamers when they play games with PhysX effects enabled. We look forward to continuously improving tools for developers and helping them bring more cutting edge PhysX enhanced games in the future.

Our big thanks to PhysX Content Team for the interview !

New version of Hybrid PhysX mod was released today by GenL – yet another round of confrontation between Hybrid PhysX community and NVIDIA.

Release Notes:

1.05ff – 26/10/2011:
- added support for fixing new limitations introduced in 285.xx drivers and PhysX System Software 9.11.0621
- mod will now delete all application 3D settings profiles from NVIDIA Control Panel (prevents problems with known PhysX games)
- updated old patterns

As revealed in latest interview, NVIDIA still has no plans to support AMD + NV PhysX systems officially, but admits modified drivers as opportunity for users to achieve desired result.

For download, FAQ and installation instructions please refer to Hybrid PhysX thread at NGOHQ

Almost four years has passed since NVIDIA aquired Ageia and presented their version of hardware accelerated PhysX Technology. However, anyone who is watching GPU PhysX progress closely can say, that so far it has not shown any significant advancement – but is the fight already lost or is it just taking time to harness up, but will ride fast?

We got a chance to chat with Tony Tamasi, Senior Vice President of Content & Technology in NVIDIA, Ashu Rege, Vice President of Content & Technology, and Rev Lebaredian, Director of Engineering, to clear up these questions, and recieve some insider information on future development plans for PhysX SDK and NVIDIA APEX toolset.

PhysXInfo.com: Over last years, amount of GPU PhysX games is actually decreasing. There were five games in 2009, three in 2010 and so far only one in 2011. How can you explain that?

Tony Tamasi: It was a choice on our part. We had a large amount of resources we could otherwise dedicate to content, but we needed to advance the core technology. We needed to get PhysX 3 done, and we needed to get APEX done to the degree where it is usable by game developers. We had to put a lot of resources there, which meant that some of those resources weren’t directly working on games.

But in the long term, game developers can actually use PhysX and APEX, and make use of the GPU without significant amounts of effort, so that a year or two years from now more games will come out using GPU physics.

Alice: Madness Returns - most recent GPU PhysX title

Rev Lebaredian: When we initially acquired Ageia, we made a big effort to move many games over to GPU PhysX. We learned a lot in that period of time: getting GPU physics into games, what are the problems, what works and what doesn’t. That gave us the opportunity to regroup, refocus, and figure out how to do it correctly.

We made a conscious decision. After we did a bunch of PhysX and APEX games in 2009 and early 2010, we said “Ok, we have learned enough, we need to sit down and focus on finishing APEX and changing it based on what we just learned, as well as PhysX 3”. Doing as many titles as we were doing before was just going to slow us down.

It made more sense to slow down the content pipeline but get the tools right, but that puts us in the position when once those are complete, it is actually less work for us to get PhysX in games.

This slowdown has not been because of any problems. It is something that we have decided to do.

PhysXInfo.com: So NVIDIA APEX is supposed to give developers the tools for easy creation on physical content in games, and you will receive GPU PhysX support as a byproduct. Is this idea working already?

Rev Lebaredian: It won’t be 100% free. Anytime you’re going to change the quality of something, you’re going to have the artists and level designers do a little bit of work to tweak it so it will look right.

Sure, let’s say if you have clothing you can just increase the number of vertices or increase the number of bodies for something with destruction, but most likely they going to want to tune it at different levels.

What we are trying to do with APEX is minimize that work. If you spend 10 hours putting together a set of assets for consoles, it shouldn’t take you another 10 hours to do the GPU stuff, maybe an additional half hour—depending on the developers and game in question obviously.

Tony Tamasi: And  I can actually tell you for sure, when we first started on the GPU PhysX effort, it often took more time to do the GPU physics work than core physics work, which is not the right balance. So we have to get the balance to make it incremental effort.

Ashu Rege: If you compare some games with APEX and GPU PhysX from one or two years ago, with some other games we are working on today, we have improved by 4-5 times in terms of less man-hours of work to get GPU PhysX done.

PhysXInfo.com: So how many GPU PhysX games are we going to see in upcoming years?

Rev Lebaredian: I think you’ll see more GPU PhysX games next year than you did this year, and I would expect to see a lot more in 2013. PhysX 3 and APEX are now just getting integrated–that’s why you see that kind of lag.

Tony Tamasi: We’ve also taken steps to integrate it [APEX/GPU PhysX] in major engines, like UE3—that enables a lot more developers to be able to use it out of the box now. When we did the GPU titles in 2009, essentially we have to do that integration each time. So there should be a large increase in GPU physics content just because it’s easier.

PhysXInfo.com: And for how long are you planning to further develop and use PhysX Technology?

Tony Tamasi: As long as we can see!

Ashu Rege: The interesting thing is that we haven’t even touched, frankly, the surface of the cool new things that can be done in many directions; things like heightfield fluid simulation, better cloth–I mean, there are so many different improvements, for both algorithms and technology as well as improvement for the tools so developers can integrate these features much faster.

So yes, we keep working.

PhysXInfo.com: Is the fact that GPU PhysX is exclusive to NVIDIA some kind of barrier for GPU PhysX adoption?

Rev Lebaredian: It is not a secret that most of game developers are concerned about consoles. PC for them is a smaller SKU usually, so PhysX not running on competitor GPUs  does not really matter that much to them.

Tony Tamasi: For every title we have worked on; for every one that I’m aware, that was never a reason for someone to use or not to use GPU PhysX.

PhysXInfo.com: Do you have any plans to port GPU PhysX to DX11 (Direct Compute) or OpenCL?

Rev Lebaredian: No plans to do it. Maybe if there will be a good reason for that in the future, but there is no current plan.

PhysXInfo.com: So developers are not asking you to port GPU PhysX to OpenCL?

Tony Tamasi: Nope.

Rev Lebaredian: No.

PhysXInfo.com: Are GPU PhysX effects going to be friendlier to multi-core CPUs in the future?

Tony Tamasi: You can use multi-core CPUs in PhysX 2.8, but it requires a lot of extra work to do that.  In PhysX 3 most solvers are parallelized across as many threads as are available.

Rev Lebaredian: It is usually not possible to get linear scaling with increasing numbers of CPU cores automatically. It is not reasonable to expect that if you’ll throw 8 cores at it, it will be 8 times faster.  However, we’ve done a lot of work in PhysX 3 to maximize usage of multiple CPU cores whenever possible.

PhysXInfo.com: What do you think about Hybrid PhysX? Isn’t it for good?

Rev Lebaredian: Good at what cost?

Supporting it would be a huge amount of QA for us, and it would be weird too – if we’ll find a bug in AMD’s drivers, what will we do?

Ashu Rege: For the foreseeable future we will not supporting it officially. If it works- it works, if some guys can figure out how to make it work – great for them.

After discussion of common topics, we have moved to more specific questions regarding PhysX SDK and NVIDIA APEX toolset.

PhysXInfo.com: New PhysX SDK 3. Has it already equals the hopes or was it waste of time, which has created more problems that it has solved?

Tony Tamasi: As far as I can tell, every developer we talked to is happy with it.

Rev Lebaredian: We have had developers demand to use it over 2.8, and that’s actually accelerated our plans for getting APEX working with it.

PhyXInfo.com: So developers now prefer PhysX 3 over 2.8?

Rev Lebaredian: Yes.

Ashu Rege: We build it to satisfy all their needs, so it would be really strange if they won’t use it. And we will be continuing to improve it to meet what developers are asking for.

PhysXInfo.com: Will PhysX SDK support next-generation consoles in the future?

Rev Lebaredian: Here is what we can say: we will always support all platforms that are relevant to our developers, so when the next generation consoles will become a reality, we will be on it.

PhysXInfo.com: Will PhysX SDK remain focused on games/game development area only?

Tony Tamasi: The focus is games. People can use it for visual effects or for manufacturing–that is awesome. And if we can do some incremental work to enable them, we’ll do that when we can, but the focus is games.

PhysXInfo.com: Are you thinking about enhancing PhysX/APEX product line with additional middleware packages, for animation or AI simulation, for example?

Ashu Rege: We work closely with our partners, with Natural Motion, with Autodesk, with game engine guys, but we are not interested in participating in that market; making money selling software. So it is not our goal to enter all of these areas.

PhysXInfo.com: What is the current development course for NVIDIA APEX?

Rev Lebaredian: We have decided to currently focus on two modules that have the highest priority for game developers – Clothing and Destruction.

EvE Online: APEX Clothing will make your hair long and silky

PhysXInfo.com: When we are going to see APEX with PhysX SDK 3 support? What are going to be the benefits, in comparison to current APEX with SDK 2.8?

Rev Lebaredian: Internally we already have version that works with PhysX 3. That’s one of the things on the roadmap. APEX 1.2 is going to be the first version of APEX we’ll release that will support PhysX 3.

Essentially, the benefits will be all the benefits that you get from PhysX 3 – better performance, and we’ll have all new features, new solvers, and all that kind of stuff.

PhysXInfo.com: Are you planning to port APEX to mobile platforms?

Rev Lebaredian: Yes.

Ashu Rege: Internally, we already have all of those working.

Tony Tamasi: And as soon as mobile devices will support CUDA, we’ll have GPU computation on mobile devices too.

PhysXInfo.com: APEX Destruction 1.1 will include fully functional GPU Rigid body solver (you were able to see in Art Gallery demo at GDC 11) – can you provide more details about it? Is this already finished technology or first iteration with many improvements to come?

Rev Lebaredian: We’ve done a lot of work on it since the Art Gallery demo last GDC.  It is more robust now, and behavior is better.  It is essentially the same, or maybe in some cases even better quality than the rigid body behavior in PhysX 2.8

Ashu Rege: We are at the point right now where we have three baseline things working–behavior, robustness and performance. We are continuing to enhance and improve it, especially on the performance front. It is using the exact same API [as CPU RB], except some pieces of the API are not implemented yet, so things like joints are not done.

Art Gallery demo was featuring GPU Rigid Body physics with up to 10 000 individual objects

PhysXInfo.com: What other features are planned for future versions of APEX Destruction?

Rev Lebaredian: There are lots of things we want to do with Destruction, real-time fracturing instead of pre-fracturing, all kinds of stuff. There are a lot of things in the plan and we have ideas on how to implement a lot of them, but what ends up driving features is the content. We work with game developers, see what it is they want, and we will change the priority based on demand.

PhysXInfo.com: New clothing solver was introduced in PhysX SDK 3.1. How does it compare to the previous one?

Tony Tamasi: It is faster and more stable, but it is not complete in terms of the feature set that is in PhysX 2.8, but we are adding those in the future.

PhysXInfo.com: Are you going to expand this new solver with all the missing functionality, or add additional specialized solvers in the future?

Rev Lebaredian: For collision geometry and similar features, we’ll expand the same solver. We haven’t decided yet, if we’ll want to introduce tearing for example.  That is a likely candidate for a different solver, because it never quite solved this problem correctly anyway. Sometimes it is better to have different solvers that solve different problems.

PhysXInfo.com: Will it support multi-core CPUs to the full extent?

Tony Tamasi: Yes

PhysXInfo.com: Are you planning to add this new clothing solver to 2.8 PhysX SDK?

Rev Lebaredian: The plan is if the developers are using PhysX 3.1, they can just use the new solver. If the developers are using 2.8 and they can’t switch to 3.1 for whatever reason, we can take the solver and make it build with APEX, so that they can continue to use PhysX 2.8 for all of their normal physics stuff and also use the 3.1 cloth solver with APEX Clothing.

PhysXInfo.com: Is authoring pipeline going to be different for new solver?

Rev Lebaredian: There are some modifications we’ve made. The parameter space is different and there are some new features, like tapered capsules for collision geometry–we obviously had to change DCC plug-in to support that.

PhysXInfo.com: When are we going to see new clothing solver in action?

Tony Tamasi: In games shipping next year.

As for us, all of the above sounds trustworthy enough and yet promising.

And what do you think ? Tell us in comments.

NVIDIA has has published a nice video, that is showcasing technical demo called “Glowball”, running on their next quad-core mobile chip known as “Project Kal-EL” or Tegra 3, presumably.

Glowball demo features some complex (for a mobile device) real-time dynamic lighting and shadowing effects, and decent level of PhysX based physics calculations – rigid body barrels and drapes, fully simulated as cloth obejcts.

Cloth simulation is partically interesting: scene contains 10 drapes, likely 100-150 vertices each, affected by gravity and board movement, calculated simultaneously – new kind of physics effects for mobile devices. This tech can be used not necessarily for flags or banners, but for dynamic clothing on characters, for example.

Demo was running on PhysX SDK 2.8.4.5.

Update: More physical demos on Tegra 3 platform

Mobile devices are interesting environment for PhysX SDK to evolve and adapt, so we are eager to see how things will play out in this direction.

If you know PhysX only as GPU accelerated physics effects for PC games, lack of news and announcements of new GPU PhysX titles may give you an idea that NVIDIA has decided to drop support for PhysX completely. Forum threads like “Is PhysX Dead?” or “Physx dead?“, popping up from time to time, are indicating – users are worried.

We were able to contact NVIDIA and Mike Skolones, product manager for PhysX, has revealed us the company’s plans regarding PhysX Technology.

PhysXInfo.com: Is PhysX still playing important role for NVIDIA ? Are you planning to use and evolve the PhysX Technology over the years, or thinking about abandoning it in a favor for other solutions ?

Mike Skolones: PhysX has been and continues to play an important role for NVIDIA, as well as for the thousands of game developers who use PhysX for physics simulation across a broad range of platforms, including PC, Xbox360, PLAYSTATION 3, Nintendo Wii , iOS (including iPhone, iPod, and iPad), OSX, Linux, and Android (including NVIDIA Tegra™ devices), MMO servers running Linux and Windows; OSX ports; and Windows games, where GPU-accelerated advanced simulation is poised for continued growth.

Monster Madness - one of the fist games that utilizes PhysX SDK on Android platform

More importantly, because PhysX continues to be the choice of developers for integration into world’s leading commercial game engines, including Unreal Engine 3, Trinigy, Unity, Torque, Gamebryo, Lightspeed, Hero, and Dark Basic, not to mention other internal tech engines which also use PhysX, designers and artists know they have compelling development platforms they can immediately take advantage for making their games that much more realistic and interactive.

PhysXInfo.com: One may said that GPU accelerated PhysX is dead, since there is no new titles with PhysX support on the horizon. Is the situation going to change in near future, and if yes – what are you planning to oppose the inceptive competition (like OpenCL Bullet) ?

Mike Skolones: Actually, there are quite a few titles on the horizon with GPU PhysX support and more developers everyday are enthusiastically exploring this technology with an eye toward making their Windows-based games richer and more exciting. The gaming experience that savvy designers can deliver with GPU-accelerated PhysX remains unparalleled. NVIDIA is making a serious investment in PhysX to solve the simulation problems that are critical to game developers on all of the platforms that are important to their customers. As the mobile computing revolution continues to transform the gaming landscape, this effort provides more and more value each day.

NVIDIA APEX Toolset is supposed to help developers integrate PhysX effects

The PhysX approach is fundamentally different from the open-source alternative, because in practice what really counts is the ability to support the whole spectrum of platforms. Game developers have many conflicting requirements and clearly we want to support them no matter what library they choose to use for design. Of course, the big difference between PhysX and other open source efforts is that NVIDIA is investing in tools and support for PhysX to directly support designers. We help them adopt and integrate our core technologies and we provide regular updates to address their key issues. Today that type of support is not available with open source alternatives.

PhysXInfo.com: After GDC 2011, you have announced first public release of artist-friendly NVIDIA APEX physics simulation framework. Are you planning to update PhysX SDK core (which is still based on old NovodeX engine) to enhance performance/features based on a modern platforms capabilities, and further improve recently added APEX сomponents ?

Mike Skolones: You bet. The PhysX SDK v. 3.0 is now in beta, and is in the hands of a great number of developers. Although PhysX will always have its roots in Novodex, version 3.0 is a solid re-write of the whole core of PhysX. The PhysX-3 code base is now substantially cleaner, which is absolutely critical to achieve optimal performance across all modern gaming platforms.

NVIDIA has prepared a “surprise” – fully upgraded and rewamped Developer Zone.

Among with full set of new features and content, PhysX section was renovated too (previously, certain parts were staying without update for years).

Browsing through new website, we have found some intersting data, never revealed before – for example, APEX FAQ states that:

What APEX modules are available?

APEX 1.1 will include Turbulence and APEX 1.2 will include APEX Destruction with GPU Rigid Bodies. If you are interested in Turbulence or Destruction with GPU rigid bodies, please email us at apex-beta@nvidia.com.

APEX 1.0 Beta was released to public several weeks ago.

Several updated pages we recommend you to visit:

Main PhysX page

APEX Page

APEX FAQ

NVIDIA and Epic Games are teaming up this week at Game Developers Conference to showcase latest additions to Unreal Engine 3, like DX 11 support and NVIDIA APEX Framework integration.

“Thanks to NVIDIA’s excellent cross-platform physics technologies and DX11 expertise, we have enhanced Unreal Engine 3 to bring unprecedented new levels of realism and demonstrate what the next generation of gaming will be,” said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games.

Alpha and beta versions of certain APEX modules were used in UE3 based games previously (Dark Void and Batman Arkham Asylum), but now full APEX toolset will be available to all UE3 licensees and UDK users as well, and can be used to create high-fidelity physics content (character clothing, for example) even in CPU PhysX and console games.

“Unreal Engine 3 continues to amaze us and represents a generational leap in gaming,” said Drew Henry, general manager of GPU business at NVIDIA. “With the addition of our PhysX, APEX and 3D Vision technologies, it will deliver unprecedented, high-end visual experiences for gamers. We can’t wait to play the games that Unreal Engine 3 will power in the future.”

The new Unreal Engine 3 real-time demo, (probably known as “Samaritan Demo”) being shown during GDC exclusively in Epic’s booth, is showcasing DX11 features like complex environments and detailed character models, and realistic character interactions with the environment using APEX Destruction amd APEX Clothing modules (accoding to some sources, PhysX SDK 3.0 may be utilized as well).

We believe, that more information on new UE3 tech will be revealed in upcoming days, so stay tuned.

GenL has released new 1.04ff version of Hybrid PhysX mod – now it works with 257.21 GeForce drivers and newer.

Update: Hybrid PhysX mod 1.05ff is available

Description:

This mod will enable hardware PhysX support for NVIDIA GPU, when non-NVIDIA GPU is used as a primary display device.

• intended only for WDDM 1.1 OS (Windows 7) and NT5 WDM OS (Windows XP/2003).
• only for multi-vendor multi-GPU configurations.

1.04ff – 29/06/2010:

• removed support for fixing GeForce driver binaries as current 256 series don’t need this (dropped support of all older 19x series drivers)
• added support for fixing a new limitation in PhysX System Software, introduced in 9.10.0223 (aka 9.10.0528/9.10.0529)
• added extra optional command line files (nvsvc and PhysX related)
• removed most of gfx/sfx stuff (the mod is now tiny and no more requires 96dpi mode)

You can download Hybrid PhysX mod 1.04ff from our server (not available, use NGOHQ instead)

Q: Why do we need both v1.03 and v1.04ff, which should I use?
A: If you are not going to use anything older than 257.21 – forget about v1.03 and use v1.04ff. The mod v1.03 is intended for old 19x series and 9.10.0222 (+older) PhysX SS.

If you update any component from the [old] 19x.xx and/or 9.10.0222 (+older) to [newer] 256 series and/or 9.10.0223 (+newer) – you should apply the mod v1.04ff afterwards. The mod v1.04ff will not help with 19x series GeForce driver.

For download, FAQ and installation instructions please refer to Hybrid PhysX thread at NGOHQ

Update: 1.04ff mod works with 258.69 Beta; 258.96 Beta/WHQL; 259.09; 259.31; 259.32; 259.47 WHQL; 260.63 Beta; 260.89 Beta/WHQL; 260.93 Beta; 260.99 WHQL; 261.00 Beta GPU drivers and 9.10.0224; 9.10.0512; 9.10.0513; 9.10.0514 PhysX System Software

Users at NGOHQ Hybrid PhysX Mod 1.03 discussion have discovered awesome fact – with recent 257.15 GeForce/ION drivers combo ATI + NV PhysX setups are working without need to apply any modifications !

Quoting GenL, Hybrid PhysX mod creator

I’m seriously amazed… seems like you are right! I just didn’t test it yesterday because i saw a user report saying otherwise on another site, but now i’ve tested it by myself on Windows XP and Windows 7 x64 – it really works “out of the box” with 257.15.

In Windows XP i’ve just extended the fake desktop, and on Windows 7 i created one non-extended – that’s all i needed to get GPU-PhysX working. And even more surprising – timebomb issue is gone too, at least for its normal time interval (~30 seconds in FluidMark).

Originally, Hybrid PhysX configurations were officially blocked by Nvidia in Q4 2009.

Update: video from TweakPC, showing Hybrid system working with 257.15 drivers. In addition – tests by Geeks3D

What’s this – accidental mistake or permanent change, ticket to the bright future for Hybrid PhysX systems ?

Update #2: unfortunately, this was just a bug.

Yes, this is a bug in the latest build of PhysX that was packaged with the driver. We’ll be fixing this issue ASAP – the WHQL driver launching in early June won’t have this issue. – NVIDIA.

Shame on you, Nvidia. Anyway, we still have Hybrid PhysX mod.

Update #3: official statement from Nvidia

The fact remains that the investment to do a full QA cycle on this AMD/NVIDIA hybrid GPU configuration is beyond what NVIDIA can support at this time. The cost of maintaining AMD/NVIDIA hybrid configurations is larger than the development expense for PhysX, and I do expect that there are games and configurations where this type of system just won’t work.

Use comments to this post to provide your feedback.

KitGuru website has brought us news that Manju Hedge, former CUDA and PhysX Solutions Vice President (previously – CEO and co-founder of Ageia) has left NVIDIA to join AMD.

Our own sources at NVIDIA are indicating  – this information is truthful.

However, according to our data, Manju departure won’t affect PhysX (he hasn’t been working on PhysX for over a year) or CUDA development process in NVIDIA, and his new roll in AMD won’t be connected to game physics related projects (instead, Manju is going to be involved in ISV recruitment).

Update: Pursuant to latest press-release, Manju Hedge will lead AMD Fusion Experience Program.

Update #2: from X-bit Labs article

In particular, [Manju Hedge] will manage the developer relations teams that help independent software developers (ISVs) to implement program code optimized for heterogeneous multi-core microprocessors.

We want to thanks Manju Hedge for awesome work on PhysX front and wish him best of luck with this new assignment !