Nvidia releases PhysX completely as open source
The physics library for games is now also available with sources for GPUs for the first time. This opens up completely new possibilities for modders.
Batman's cape blows particularly beautifully in "Arkham Knight" thanks to PhysX.
(Image: Screenshot heise online)
Nvidia has now also published the previously missing parts of the PhysX source code on the Github platform. The company acquired this library for physics simulation in games in 2008 with the start-up Ageia and ported it from its application on FPGA chips to its GPUs. When the code was executed on these, PhysX titles sometimes showed significantly higher frame rates than when PhysX was running on the CPU.
A complete port to other GPUs was previously not possible due to the lack of source code, but this has now changed. "We are making the complete GPU source code available under the BSD-3 license", Nvidia writes on Github. However, the company has also announced that it will not be publishing any binaries for PhysX with immediate effect, i.e. it will in fact simply discontinue driver support for it. This affects around 40 older games, as a list from PCGuide shows. These include classics such as Mafia II (2010), Mirror's Edge (2008), Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013).
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32-bit PhysX not for Blackwell
This was preceded by the fact that the 32-bit versions of PhysX are no longer supported with the current RTX 5000 graphics cards (Blackwell), but 64-bit PhysX is. This also seems to be over now. However, the 64-bit version was only used in very few games, one example being Batman: Arkham Knight. Apparently, Nvidia is now relying on game developers and modders to further develop PhysX themselves. Porting to other GPUs, such as those from AMD, now also seems possible.
Previously, owners of a Blackwell card sometimes made do by installing an older graphics card in addition to the new GPU to run PhsyX on it, which can be set via the driver. In extreme cases, five to six times higher frame rates can be achieved with an RTX-5090 and an RTX-3050, as Wccftech reports using the example of Mafia II and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
(nie)
