PhysX was at the forefront of boxes flying all over the place a few years ago, then when Nvidia picked up the technology from Ageia, it further developed cloth and explosive particle effects. It was impressive stuff, but one thing that's been looking pretty naff for a long time is water. Sure it looks more acceptable in recent games, but it's still never looked quite right.
Until now.
The new video from PhysX developers shows the new Position Based Fluids system that works in a similar fashion go PhysX cloth and deformation handling, allowing it to create surface tension and give the water its own energy and momentum. This lets it flow around obstacles in a natural fashion and react to gravity in a realistic manner.
Perhaps the best looking part of it is the surf generated by colliding particles. This allows for the creation of natural looking waves when momentum is applied from one direction, or when the particles are dropped and smashed together. You can even watch the white water gradually dissipate after being forced under the surface.
The greatest aspect of this whole thing though, is that it's running on a single GTX 580, so it really won't be long before we see this sort of thing showing up in new PhysX enabled titles.
So MegaGames readers, what games do you think could benefit from something like this?
