NVIDIA has released the PhysX 5.6 physics simulation engine and its associated PhysX SDK toolkit. A new version of the Flow liquid simulation library, Flow 2.2.0, is also available. The project code is distributed under the BSD-3 license and supports platforms including Linux, macOS, iOS, Windows, and Android.
Although the PhysX SDK has been available with source code under the BSD license since 2018, it previously had one significant exception — the core simulation code (GPU simulation kernel) was not included. In the PhysX SDK 5.6 update, NVIDIA has opened all such code under the BSD license and included it in the SDK. Over 500 ready-made CUDA kernels are available, providing features such as rigid body dynamics, fluid simulation, and object deformation modeling. Additionally, access to Flow GPU is opened with a complete implementation of compute shaders for Flow SDK.
PhysX is one of the most popular physics engines used to handle physical interactions in nearly a thousand games and is integrated into many game engines including Unreal Engine, Unity3D, AnvilNext, Stingray, Dunia 2, and REDengine. The engine scales for various hardware, from smartphones to powerful workstations with multicore CPUs and GPUs, and allows the use of GPU capabilities to accelerate effect processing.
Among the applications of PhysX are the implementation of effects such as destruction, explosions, realistic character and vehicle movements, swirling smoke, trees bending in the wind, water flowing and sculpting around obstacles, fluttering and tearing clothing, collisions, and interactions with both rigid and soft bodies. Besides game development, the engine can also be used in areas such as data synthesis for AI research and training neural networks, creating realistic environments for robot training, simulating real-world conditions during the testing of autonomous vehicles and autopilots.
Source: opennet.ru
