The latest version of the NVIDIA PhysX 5 SDK is now available under the same open source license terms as NVIDIA PhysX
After almost four years since the last thread, NVIDIA released the news of the launch of the source code of your physics simulation engine PhysX5, which is the second major release since the project went open source.
For those new to PhysX, you should know that this is one of the most popular physics engine which is used to handle physical interactions in over 500 games and is included in many popular game engines including Unreal Engine, Unity3D, AnvilNext, Stingray, Dunia 2 and REDengine.
The engine is scalable for various types of hardware, from smartphones to powerful workstations with multi-core CPUs and GPUs, and allows you to take full advantage of the power of the GPU to speed up effects rendering.
Among the application areas of PhysX, we can mention the implementation of effects such as destruction, explosions, realistic movements of characters and cars, swirls of smoke, trees bending in the wind, flowing water flowing around obstacles, fluttering clothes and torn, collisions and interactions with hard and soft bodies.
"Having a powerful open source tool for physics like NVIDIA's new PhysX 5 library is a fundamental part of the realism that the Open 3D Engine offers," said Royal O'Brien, executive director of the Open 3D Foundation and general manager of Digital Media and games at the Linux Foundation.
Top PhysX 5 New Features
In the new version of PhysX 5 it is highlighted that library includes NVIDIA Flow (fire simulation, burning liquids and smoke) and NVIDIA Blast (structural failure simulation).
Another change that stands out in this new version is that the support for NVIDIA Flex capabilities to create real-time visual effects based on the behavior of simulated particles. Supported features include finite element model-based soft body dynamics, application of positional dynamics to fluids, tissues, and inflatable objects, advanced collision detection mechanisms.
In addition to this, it is also highlighted that the PBD particle system was implemented (Position Based Dynamics) to simulate liquids and granular materials.
Added a new particle storage architecture which makes it easy to add and remove particles on the fly and does not require defining a maximum number of particles. Also noteworthy is the ability to define custom geometries, for example to support cylindrical shapes and implicit block systems.
In the particle behavior simulation system, the ability to attach a different material to each particle is implemented.
On the other hand, we can find that added support for soft body dynamics based on the FEM method (finite element method) and the ability to create a soft body from a triangular mesh.
Of the other changes that stand out from this new version:
- The performance of parallel computing with CPU and GPU has been significantly improved.
- Added vehicle SDK for simulation in autonomous driving systems.
- A new query system has been added to determine the intersections in the scene.
- A collision detection system based on the SDF (Signed Distance Field) function has been implemented.
- A new API has been added to use the GJK (Gilbert-Johnson-Keerthi) collision detection algorithm.
- Added a mechanism to determine mesh overlap.
NVIDIA hopes that after moving the project to the open source category, you will be able to go beyond game development tools and it will be in demand in areas such as data synthesis for artificial intelligence research and for training neural networks, creating realistic environments for robot training, simulating real conditions in the process of operating autonomous vehicles and autopilots.
As well engine adaptation for high-performance cluster systems is expected Achieve a new level of detail and accuracy in simulating physical processes.
The project code is released under a BSD license and is compatible with Linux, macOS, iOS, Windows, and Android platforms. In addition to the engine itself, under the BSD license, the code and associated PhysX SDK tools are also open source.
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