Nvidia shows off game physics GPU software

FABLESS FIRM Nvidia (tick: NVDA) said it and middleware firm Havok will show off a "physics effect" demo at the Game Developer's Conference in San Jose (tick: Dullsville) this week.

The software product is called Havok FX and simulates physical phenomena in PC games using Nvidia graphics chips.

Developers are already playing with the software and it's expected to be released in the summer, said Nvidia.

So what does it do? This is the scary part. It simulates "the interactions of thousands of colliding rigid bodies" and computes friction, collisions, gravity mass and velocity, which Nvidia says "form the basis of rigid body physics". It supports shader model 3.0, and so Geforce 6s and 7s will work with it.

Nvidia said that developers will be able to include debris, smoke and fluids to games, an evocative phrase which we suspect means buckets of blood, bombs and splattered gore. µ