PhysX
More info
- Creator
- Ageia (NovodeX)
- Released
- Owner
- NVIDIA
- Type
- Physics middleware
- License
- BSD-3 (open since 2018)
- Source
- github.com/NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX
NVIDIA's physics engine — it started as a dedicated hardware card from Ageia, went GPU-accelerated, and finally turned open source in 2018.
Ageia (formerly NovodeX) launched PhysX around 2004 alongside a PPU, an expansion card that did nothing but physics. The card didn't survive, but the software did: NVIDIA bought Ageia in 2008 and moved the maths onto the graphics card via CUDA.
For years it was the default physics in Unreal Engine 3 and 4 and in Unity. The source was released under a BSD license in 2018. It handles rigid bodies, cloth, particles and fluids.