Remaining presentations from GDC 2012 are now available at GDC Vault.

Particularly interesting detail was revealed during “Mastering DX11 with Unity” (PDF) talk – NVIDIA APEX framework will be added to popular Unity game engine, which is currently using modified PhysX SDK 2.8.3 as physics engine.

A short demo (bus smashing through propane shop) of basic APEX Destruction module usage was presented, followed by promises to expand integration on other APEX modules in the future.

Next presentation, “Enhancing Games with Clothing and Destruction” is absolutely indentical to Game Technology Theather talk of the same name, we have reviewed it earlier.

Finally, it is worth to check a “Solving Rigid Body Contacts” tutorial from Richard Tonge, however, it is a bit technical.

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.

Physics Silo – 100,000 PhysX Particles in UDK by joshcaulton2007

Artistic simulation with physical particles, made with UDK. According to the author, most of the demo sequence is running in real-time.

Oddity Engine Physx Tower by OddityInteractive

1000 collidable rigid bodies, powered by PhysX SDK and Oddity Engine.

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.

PhysX in Unreal by unrealop

Some new tests of PhysX SDK integration with Unreal 1 engine, we’ve mentioned it before.

3Impact Physx Force Field Test by gtxx

Scene consisting of 150 primitives, 1736 fluid particles and a forcefield – result of PhysX SDK implementation into 3Impact engine.

Weapon,Vehicle & pawn impact test by DigitalDemolition

Some more impressive, fully destructible environments in UDK.

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

Update #2: official presentation of cloth feature

Update #3: Release notes

• Cloth and clothing simulation: use the new InteractiveCloth, SkinnedCloth and ClothRenderer components.
• 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.

Keep an eye on beta preview thread for further details.

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.

Cellfactor Revolution PhysX Demonstration by MCFiete

Cellfactor: Revolution – half-baked and thus failed killer-app for Ageia PPU. Today you can even play it fine on fast CPU.

Hybrid physx ON in metro2033 @level “Frontline” by tripkj

Another video from Metro 2033, running on Hybrid system (HD5850 + 8600GT) with Advanced PhysX effects. Same level, but without help of dedicated PhysX GPU and, thus, degraded performance – here

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