The latest NVIDIA PhysX SDK (Free for commercial and non-commercial use) -- version 2.8.1 -- is now available from http://developer.nvidia.com/. The new version improves joint performance, Vista support, and includes updated demos. Find it at http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx_downloads.html
For more PhysX info, click http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx.html for our main PhysX page.
The Cg Tutorial teaches you more than just the Cg
Shading Language. It serves as a lucid introduction to all the basic concepts
of the modern graphics pipeline – from vertices and polygons, and the building
blocks of shader programming, to more advanced topics like bump mapping and
toon shading. Most chapters also introduce graphics concepts first before supporting them with implementation details, making them ideal for learning computer graphics.
This resource is now available here for free in HTML on the NVIDIA Developer
site.
Two new Direct3D 10 SDK samples have been released. Skinned Instancing shows how to use instancing and vertex texture fetch to implement a crowd of GPU animated characters, all independently animating drawn with a single draw call. Stencil-Routed K Buffer illustrates a technique for capturing 8 layers of fragments with a single geometry pass.
Public betas of FX Composer 2.5 and our brand-new Shader Debugger plug-in are now available, providing:
- DirectX 10 support (including geometry shaders and stream out)
- Support for debugging of pixel shaders, including run control, variable inspection, and powerful visual debugging functionality
- Particle systems
- Visual models and styles (the ability to create, define, and export multiple looks for a model)
- Improved user interface
- Remote control over TCP/IP
- And much more...
We strongly encourage you to join our Software Improvement Program, which will allow you to drive the development of future product versions based on features that you value. In addition, it allows you to instantly send comments anonymously to us from within FX Composer, simply by pressing F4.
Welcome PhysX developers to the newest area of the NVIDIA Developer Forums -- the new PhsyX SDK Area provides the same service and support staff as the previous PhysX site, combined with the resources of NVIDIA, into a single location for discussion of physics, graphics, hardware, and their interaction. Visit the forums at http://developer.nvidia.com/forums/
The latest round of Documentation Updates to NVIDIA's OpenGL Support are now available at http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_opengl_specs.html -- there are new extensions and a fair number of updates to the existing documentation, all clearly-marked and easy to find.
Check our new 3D Stereo for Developers page to find out! NVIDIA's Vista Stereo 3D driver can can enable 3d stereoscopic viewing on hundreds of existing games without any required changes in your game code. Check our developer page to see if your game is already "NVIDIA 3D Stereo-ready" (chances are good!), and for information on how a few slight enhancements can make your game even better.
GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Real-Time Graphics, the first in our series of award-winning series of Gems books, is now available for free reading in HTML. The HTML version contains the entire text of the original Frontline-award-winning book.
With over 40 authors from game studios, movie effects, academia, and hardware companies, this is an instantly-invaluable web resource.
Main GPU Gems Page: http://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems
As a follow-up to his presentation at GDC 2008, Eric Preisz has created an illustrated writeup on Optimizing Marble Blast Ultra. (PDF, 1.2MB). Eric details how he used NVIDIA PerfHUD for this task, as recounted also during the GPU Performance Session at GDC.
We've published a new user guide, available in HTML or PDF form, covering the use of Standard Annotations and Semantics ("SAS") in NVIDIA's FX Composer and the NVIDIA Shader Library. This new document collects the previously-scattered info on SAS, includes examples of scripting, and also covers CgFX.
URL: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/using_sas.html
