It’s been around six and a half years since the NVIDIA PhysX SDK went open source under the 3-Clause BSD license. However, not all of it was actually open source. This changed only recently, with the release on GitHub of the GPU simulation kernel source code. Here’s the message shared by NVIDIA, along with the release of the shader implementation of the Flow SDK:
We’re excited to share that the latest update to the PhysX SDK now includes all the GPU source code, fully licensed under BSD-3!
With over 500 CUDA kernels powering features such as rigid body dynamics, fluid simulation, and deformable objects, GPU PhysX represents one of the most advanced real-time simulation use cases of CUDA and GPU programming. We hope this release will be a valuable resource for learning, experimentation, and development across the community.
In addition, we’re also open-sourcing the full GPU compute shader implementation of the Flow SDK, our real-time, sparse grid–based fluid simulation library.
NVIDIA PhysX is a name we haven’t used for a long while until very recently, when users found out that NVIDIA had dropped support for the new GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards. This caused users to seek unorthodox solutions, such as pairing an RTX 50 GPU with an RTX 3050 dedicated solely to PhysX.
This only really affects a few old PC games, like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Mirror’s Edge. Still, the release of the GPU simulation kernel source mode means modders could fix the problem entirely if they so choose. Needless to say, it would have been better if NVIDIA had fixed the issue themselves, but at least this open source release gives modders the chance to do something about it. Of course, we’ll keep an eye on any mod releases that take advantage of the newly available GPU simulation kernel source code.
