Our reader ‘ihatedisqus3’ (I know, I know… pretty hilarious nickname) has informed us about Nvidia’s FLEX system, a multi-physics solver for visual effects that will be integrated in PhysX 3.4. Nvidia’s FLEX was showcased a while back and today we got some new info – thanks to Physxinfo.
FLEX uses a unified representation for all these material types, which means they can interact with each other in a fully coupled way. According to Nvidia, this is a unified solver that works wonderfully with multi-GPU systems, and is mainly designed to simulate:
-Liquids (water, goo)
-Granular materials (sand, dirt)
-Environmental cloth (flags, newspapers)
-Rigid bodies (environmental debris)
-Soft bodies (inflatables / tetrahedral meshes)
As Physxinfo revealed, Nvidia currently has a CUDA implementation, however a DirectCompute implementation is planned (in other words, FLEX may be supported by all AMD cards via this implementation). Nvidia is also considering a CPU implementation.
As Nvidia’s Miles Macklin unveiled, FLEX will be initially available as ‘a stand-alone SDK that can be used alongside PhysX 3.3.x for a select group of early adopters, and later FLEX will become a first-class feature of PhysX 3.4′.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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