SAN FRANCISCO, CA — (Marketwired) — 03/14/16 — NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today announced worldwide availability of the (SDK) 3.1, which introduces three groundbreaking graphics techniques for shadows and lighting as well as two new physical simulation algorithms released as betas.
“It–s our passion for gaming that drives us to tackle the technical problems presented by real-time rendering and simulation,” said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of content and technology at NVIDIA. “Our GameWorks technologies push the boundaries of what–s possible in real time, enabling developers to ship their games with state of the art special effects and simulations.”
The three new GameWorks rendering techniques for lighting and shadows include:
NVIDIA Volumetric Lighting – an advanced lighting technique that simulates how light behaves as it scatters through the air and atmosphere. NVIDIA Volumetric Lighting was first introduced in the hit video game Fallout 4.
NVIDIA Hybrid Frustum Traced Shadows (HFTS) – an algorithm for drawing high-fidelity shadows that transition smoothly from hard shadows near the occluding object, to proper soft shadows in regions farther away. HFTS debuted in the hit video game Tom Clancy–s The Division.
NVIDIA Voxel Accelerated Ambient Occlusion (VXAO) – NVIDIA–s highest quality algorithm for real-time ambient occlusion, VXAO is a shading technique that adds depth and realism to any scene. It surpasses older techniques by calculating shadows in world-space using all scene geometry, as opposed to screen space techniques that can only shadow from geometry visible to the camera. VXAO debuted in the hit video game Rise of the Tomb Raider.
The pair of extensions to the include:
NVIDIA PhysX-GRB – a new implementation of NVIDIA–s popular PhysX rigid body dynamics SDK, which has been used in hundreds of games. This hybrid CPU/GPU physics pipeline improves performance by a factor of up to 6X for moderate to heavy simulation loads.
NVIDIA Flow – a computational fluid dynamics algorithm that simulates and renders combustible fluids such as fire and smoke. Unlike previous methods, Flow isn–t limited to simulation of the fluids inside a bounding box.
NVIDIA makes source code for select GameWorks libraries available to developers via GitHub. Source code for NVIDIA Volumetric Lighting and NVIDIA–s FaceWorks demo is available today. Source code for NVIDIA HairWorks, NVIDIA HBAO+ and NVIDIA WaveWorks will be available soon.
More information on NVIDIA GameWorks is available at .
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Since 1993, (NASDAQ: NVDA) has pioneered the art and science of . With a singular focus on this field, the company offers specialized platforms for the gaming, automotive, data center and professional visualization markets. Its products, services and software power amazing new experiences in virtual reality, artificial intelligence and autonomous cars. More information at .
Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: the impact, performance, benefits and availability of the NVIDIA GameWorks software development kit are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: global economic conditions; our reliance on third parties to manufacture, assemble, package and test our products; the impact of technological development and competition; development of new products and technologies or enhancements to our existing product and technologies; market acceptance of our products or our partners– products; design, manufacturing or software defects; changes in consumer preferences or demands; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems; as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, including its Form 10-Q for the fiscal period ended October 25, 2015. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on the company–s website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.
© 2016 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, NVIDIA GameWorks and PhysX are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability and specifications are subject to change without notice.
Brian Burke
Senior PR Manager
NVIDIA Corporation
(512) 401-4385
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