Apolo Studios Framework Physics Integration by apolostudioschannel

PhysX SDK integration in Apolo Studios rendering engine.

Block Fuse – Playthrough by AquaGeneral

Simple physics game by our fellow reader AquaGeneral. It is using Unity engine.

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After long period of beta-testing, Unity 3.0 game development platform is available officially.

Apart from other substantial features and changes, like Deferred Render, Beast Lighmapping technology, Umbra Occlusion Culling and Unified Editor, Unity 3.0 also includes updated physics engine, based on  recent version of PhysX SDK.

Physics Improvements:

• Upgraded PhysX to 2.8.3.
• Cloth and clothing simulation: use the new InteractiveCloth, SkinnedCloth and ClothRenderer components.

New in Unity 3 are two kinds of cloth: Fully physically simulated cloth effects that interact fully with the rest of the environment. The other, Skinned Cloth, is an optimized solution for garments on animated characters.

You can use it for animated shirts, trousers, skirts, capes and hair in a physically accurate way. It is highly optimized and can handle high poly animated cloth pieces.

• Layer based ignore collisions: use the Physics inspector or Physics.IgnoreCollision().
• Continuous collision detection, to make sure that fast moving colliders will not pass through other colliders. See Collider.collisionDetectionMode.
• Added Physics.SphereCast() and Physics.CapsuleCast() to implement volume raycasts.
• Added Rigidbody.SweepTest() to check if a Rigidbody would collide with anything if moved into a certain direction.

You can check most of Unity 3.0 features by yourself directly from your browser, using newest Unity Bootcamp Demo (unity webplayer is required).

Gramy Mafia II by matrixserek

13 mins of gameplay sequences from upcoming Mafia 2 title, Chapter 9 “Ball & Beans” (initial version is available at tvgry.pl). As you may notice from flowing character clothing and lots of dynamic particles – APEX effects are enabled.

Unity Bootcamp by Hemiogenic

Tech demo, developed by Aquiris for Unity 3.0 engine release. All physics is held by latest 2.8.3. version of PhysX SDK.

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As we mentioned previously, one of the many features of upcoming Unity 3.0 engine is going to be improved PhysX SDK integration. Now, when pre-purshase betas of Unity 3.0 are shipping, additional details have emerged.

According to developers, highlight for Unity 3 is cloth physics on arbitrary and skinned meshes – video of new cloth feature in action was uploaded to YouTube by one of Unity demo team members.

In addition, PhysX core was updated to version 2.8.3., collision layers and “thick” raycast were added.

Update: Another cloth test, with tearing | Cloth features overview from one of beta users

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BSG Viper Test in Unity3d/PhysX by imjinc2k

Colonial Viper fighter from Battlestar Galactica. Realistic space flight simulation with maneuvering thrusters.

rayfire tool by QbickSan

Nice and clean destruction sim using RayFire Tool and PhysX solver.

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UNITY is popular multiplatform development tool, used in many titles, from numerous iPhone games to major one like Interstellar Marines.

Internal physics system in Unity is using custom driverless version PhysX SDK – unfortunately, since main SDK core is very old (2.5, afair), it’s missing not only recent updates and bugfixes, but some features like fluids, cloth, forcefields and even GPU-acceleration. While Unity Technologies were keeping PhysX un-updated for years in a matter of “combability”, such renovation was actually needed by developers.

And, finally – recent announce of long awaited Unity 3.0 engine promises not only iPad and Ps3 platforms support, deferred render, built-in lightmapping system and unified editors, but “major updates to Unity’s.. physics features“

No details were revealed, but Tom Higgins, Unity Product Evangelist, made a short sneak-peak

We are upgrading PhysX but will be saving the specifics until later, let’s just say it will have some juicy new features for sure!

We’ll try to keep an eye on this, so stay tuned.

Update: new details on PhysX features for Unity 3.0 beta