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The Game Creators and NVIDIA are giving you budding game developers a chance to show off your skills while playing around with PhysX, the hottest game technology to hit the streets in years. Winners will not only walk away with the fastest graphic card technology on the planet, but will see their showpieces distributed to millions of NVIDIA users. The creators of the best submissions will also be considered for potential contractual work with NVIDIA later in the year.

We have provided a fully functional trial version of DBPro and DarkPHYSICS, which you can use to produce your masterpieces. Full version users of DarkPHYSICS can get the latest update from their Order History which includes a number of new features such as a great new fluid renderer, complete with emitters and drains! Full version users should still download the trial as there are some great sample demos and media to get you going.

New drivers have been released for NVIDIA PhysX. The drivers include a collection of demos made using DB Pro and Dark Physics. These are the demos you will be aiming to beat!

Get the latest PhysX driver now at: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx_downloads.html#System

Visit the official competition to get started at: http://physxcomp.thegamecreators.com/index.html

Use this forum to post your ideas, show your progress and ask questions about DarkPHYSICS. The TGC and NVIDIA team will frequent the forum and provide advice and feedback on the progress of your demos. Good luck and have fun!

The trial version contains the full source code to the demos currently being used in the NVIDIA PhysX driver download. If you can do better than these, you have a great chance of winning. We have also provided an additional 100MB of free media so you can focus on coding rather than modelling.



My advice is to put your current project on hold, and give yourself a few weeks to create the best demo you can. You have a great chance of walking away with some amazing hardware, not to mention having your demo distributed to millions of users and getting a contract from NVIDIA to make more! If you ever wanted the chance to break into the games industry, believe me, this is it!

NOTE: ATI USERS

If you are using an ATI graphics card, do not use the latest PhysX driver (80.06.12) as it requires a special file (NVCUDA) which is only available on NVIDIA graphics cards.

Instead, use the previous PhysX driver (8.04.25) which is not dependent on this special file. You may have to uninstall the latest driver before you can install the older 8.04.25 version.

NOTE: Remember, you don't need a PPU or GPU to use the DarkPHYSICS trial version. PhysX will simulate the physics on your CPU cores if no GPU or PPU are detected!

NOTE: A GPU would not accelerate rigid bodies, force fields and other mechanisms based on rigid bodies as much as fluids, cloth and soft bodies, so be aware that using rigid bodies is not the best example of GPU scaling. To get the best GPU deltas, go for cloth, fluid and soft bodies. High GPU deltas when scaling up will earn you extra kudos!

The NVIDIA PhysX competition 2008 is now over. Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry, and good luck throughout the final judging. The winners will be announced in a few weeks time, and you can read about the lucky coders and their prizes in the next newsletter.