Nvidia releases PhysX and Flow open-source libraries

Nvidia has made two of its proprietary technologies open-source: Flow, a real-time, grid–based fluid simulation library, and PhysX, a GPU acceleration library for physics.

While Nvidia initially released the PhysX library on GitHub a few years ago, it wasn't fully open source. As Wccftech highlights, Nvidia has now updated its PhysX GitHub repository to include the complete SDK source code, encompassing its GPU acceleration capabilities. In addition to PhysX, Nvidia is open-sourcing its Flow technology, providing the complete GPU compute shader version of the SDK.

PhysX recently garnered attention due to performance discrepancies in some games on Nvidia's latest GeForce RTX 50 series hardware, as these GPUs lack support for 32-bit PhysX. However, Nvidia has indicated that it does not intend to reinstate compatibility for the older 32-bit library.

Now that it has become open-source, developers might develop a 64-bit PhysX library to run on newer hardware or a translation layer so that newer architectures can interpret the instructions. Hopefully, now that it has become open-source, someone capable will find a way to run PhysX on modern hardware with decent performance.

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KitGuru says: Would you like it if the RTX 50 series could run PhysX properly, or is it something that doesn't bother you?

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