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PhysX

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PhysX
Information
Type Physics engine
Industry Video game development, robotics and simulation
Developer NVIDIA (originally NovodeX AG, then Ageia Technologies)
Written In C++, CUDA
Operating System Windows, Linux (PhysX SDK 5.x)
License BSD 3-Clause; Apache License 2.0 from PhysX SDK 5.11.0
Supported Devices CPUs; NVIDIA GPUs (Volta or newer) for GPU acceleration in PhysX 5.x
Website https://developer.nvidia.com/physx-sdk


PhysX is a real-time physics simulation engine and software development kit (SDK) developed by NVIDIA. NVIDIA describes it as "a powerful, open-source multi-physics SDK", with rigid body dynamics, joints, articulations, vehicles, character controllers, finite element soft bodies and position-based dynamics, plus the Blast fracture library and the Flow smoke and fire library.[1] The engine grew out of NovodeX, a rigid body engine from the ETH Zurich spin-off NovodeX AG, which Ageia Technologies acquired in 2004; NVIDIA acquired Ageia in February 2008.[2][3][4]

PhysX has been the physics engine behind built-in 3D physics in Unity, and it was the default physics engine of Unreal Engine until Unreal Engine 5 switched to Epic's own Chaos Physics.[5][6] Both engines are used for virtual reality and augmented reality development; in Unity, the Rigidbody physics that the XR Interaction Toolkit's physics-based grab modes rely on is part of the PhysX integration. NVIDIA released the CPU source code under the 3-clause BSD license in December 2018 and the GPU source code in 2025.[7][8]

NVIDIA's SDK page now presents PhysX as providing simulation "for robotics and autonomous vehicle applications". It is the primary physics engine of NVIDIA Omniverse and the default physics backend of the Isaac Sim robotics simulator.[1][9]

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Checked origins, Ageia and NVIDIA acquisition, licensing and release history, 2026 GitHub releases and changelog, RTX 50 driver change, Unity/Unreal/O3DE/Isaac Sim use, XR Interaction Toolkit, VR Funhouse, Hoell et al. 2018 and Isaac Lab CloudXR text against the cited sources. About review dates.

History

NovodeX and Ageia (2002-2008)

Matthias Müller writes that he co-founded NovodeX AG in 2002 and that the company "developed a rigid body engine for games called NovodeX".[3] ETH Zurich lists NovodeX as one of its spin-offs. The company was bought "with all its software developments and personnel" by the fabless semiconductor company Ageia in 2004 for an undisclosed amount, and the software development kit created by NovodeX was used as the basis for the Ageia PhysX PPU card.[2]

Ageia paired the software with dedicated hardware, a physics processing unit (PPU) sold on an add-in card. In a May 2006 review roundup, Engadget described a US$300 PPU board for which only Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter offered support at launch. The roundup reported that the extra effects in that game were "not only not fully realized, but cause a decent hit to frame rates", and saw few reasons to buy the card until more software made real use of it.[10]

NVIDIA acquisition and GPU acceleration

NVIDIA announced its agreement to acquire Ageia in early February 2008, without disclosing the price. NVIDIA chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang said that combining the companies would "bring GeForce-accelerated PhysX to hundreds of millions of gamers around the world".[11] NVIDIA's quarterly filing records that it acquired Ageia on 10 February 2008 for an aggregate purchase price of about US$29.7 million.[4] The completion announcement said that more than 140 PhysX-based games were shipping or in development for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PCs, and that the PhysX SDK had more than 10,000 registered users.[12]

NVIDIA then moved PhysX acceleration from the PPU to its graphics cards. PhysX System Software 8.09.04, released on 16 September 2008, supported PhysX acceleration through CUDA 2.0 on GeForce 8, 9 and 200 series GPUs with at least 256 MB of graphics memory, and kept support for existing Ageia PPUs.[13]

Source availability and open source

In March 2015 NVIDIA made the source code of PhysX SDK 3.3 available free on GitHub to members of its developer program who accepted a click-through EULA, covering Windows, Linux, macOS and Android. Before this, according to CG Channel, only binary distributions existed and the only one free for commercial use was for Windows. NVIDIA noted at the time that the SDK was integrated into Unreal Engine 3 and 4 and Unity, among other engines, and that PhysX Clothing and Destruction were part of Unreal Engine 4.[14][15]

In early December 2018 NVIDIA announced that PhysX would become open source under the 3-clause BSD license, starting with SDK 3.4, and that PhysX SDK 4.0 would follow on 20 December 2018.[16] The BSD license covered iOS, macOS, Android, Linux and Windows, while the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch versions stayed under NVIDIA's existing EULA. PhysX 4.0 added a Temporal Gauss-Seidel (TGS) solver for more robust jointed and articulated bodies, reduced-coordinate articulations, an automatic multi-broad phase and a CMake build system.[7]

NVIDIA released PhysX 5 as open source in November 2022. The release added finite element soft bodies, position-based dynamics for liquids and cloth, and GPU signed distance field (SDF) collision, and brought the Flow and Blast libraries into the PhysX family. All CPU source code was BSD-licensed, while GPU support shipped as free binaries. NVIDIA stopped providing video game console ports with this release, though the license allowed others to make them.[17]

PhysX SDK 5.6.0, tagged on GitHub on 25 March 2025, released the GPU source code of PhysX and of Flow 2.2.0.[18] NVIDIA's announcement, quoted by GamingOnLinux in April 2025, said the code was "fully licensed under BSD-3" and contained more than 500 CUDA kernels for features such as rigid body dynamics, fluid simulation and deformable objects.[8] CG Channel noted that, with the GPU code public, developers could in principle add GPU acceleration on AMD or Intel hardware.[19]

Legacy GPU PhysX on GeForce RTX 50

The GeForce RTX 50 series, launched in early 2025, dropped support for 32-bit CUDA applications. Older 32-bit games that used GPU-accelerated PhysX therefore ran their physics on the CPU at reduced performance.[20] In December 2025 the GeForce Game Ready driver 591.44 added "custom support" profiles that restored GPU PhysX on RTX 50 cards for nine titles: Alice: Madness Returns, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Batman: Arkham City, Batman: Arkham Origins, Borderlands 2, Mafia II, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light and Mirror's Edge. According to PCWorld, NVIDIA said at the time that support for Batman: Arkham Asylum would follow in the first half of 2026.[20][21]

Current status

As of October 2026, PhysX is published in the public NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX repository on GitHub, which also contains the Blast and Flow SDKs, the Omniverse PhysX extensions and ovphysx, a C API with Python bindings for simulating USD scenes.[22] The latest standalone tagged SDK release is PhysX SDK 5.9.0, published together with Omniverse PhysX 110.1 in July 2026.[23] The changelog continues with versions 5.10.0 and 5.11.0. For 5.11.0 it states that "PhysX SDK public source code is now licensed under the Apache License 2.0", and it lists 64-bit Windows 10 or later and Linux as runtime platforms, with GPU acceleration requiring a driver that supports CUDA 12.8 and a Volta-generation or newer GPU.[24] ovphysx 0.6.3, released on 16 September 2026, bundles PhysX 5.11.[25]

NVIDIA's PhysX page also promotes Newton, a separate open-source, GPU-accelerated physics engine for robotics that the page describes as co-developed by Google DeepMind and Disney Research, managed by the Linux Foundation and built on NVIDIA Warp and OpenUSD; a beta is available.[1]

Release history

Version Date Notes Source
8.09.04 (PhysX System Software) 16 September 2008 GPU acceleration on GeForce 8, 9 and 200 series via CUDA 2.0; runtimes 2.3.x to 2.8.1 [13]
3.3 March 2015 Source code free on GitHub under an EULA [15]
3.4.2 update December 2018 GitHub distribution moved to the BSD license [24]
4.0 20 December 2018 TGS solver, reduced-coordinate articulations, BSD 3-clause [7]
4.1 March 2019 GPU acceleration and immediate mode for reduced-coordinate articulations [24]
5.1.0 November 2022 First open-source PhysX 5 release: FEM soft bodies, position-based dynamics, GPU SDF collisions; GPU code as binaries [17][24]
5.6.0 25 March 2025 GPU source code released [18]
5.9.0 July 2026 Latest standalone tagged SDK release, with Omniverse PhysX 110.1 [23]
5.11.0 September 2026 (in ovphysx 0.6.3) SDK source relicensed under Apache License 2.0 [24][25]

Features

NVIDIA's SDK page lists these capabilities: rigid body dynamics, scene queries, joints, reduced-coordinate articulations, vehicle dynamics, character controllers, finite element soft body dynamics, SDF colliders, position-based dynamics, custom geometry, fracture and destruction through Blast, and smoke and fire simulation through Flow. The SDK runs on both CPUs and GPUs, and its GPU API supports end-to-end reinforcement learning through NVIDIA Isaac Lab.[1]

The repository's code is mostly C++, with CUDA code for the GPU simulation, and GPU acceleration requires an NVIDIA GPU of the Volta generation or newer.[22][24] The TGS solver introduced in PhysX 4.0 recomputes constraints at each iteration from the bodies' relative motion, which NVIDIA said made machinery, ragdolls and other jointed objects more robust.[7]

Use in game engines

Engine Use of PhysX Source
Unity Unity's default built-in 3D physics system "is an integration of the Nvidia PhysX engine". Unity 2019.3 upgraded the library from PhysX 3.4 to 4.1, adding the TGS solver and automatic box pruning broad phase. [5][26]
Unreal Engine Integrated in Unreal Engine 3 and 4. Unreal Engine 5 uses Chaos Physics, "replacing PhysX as the default". [14][6]
Open 3D Engine Physics simulation through the PhysX system, with components such as PhysX Dynamic Rigid Body and PhysX Character Controller [27]
NVIDIA Omniverse and Isaac Sim Primary physics engine of Omniverse; default physics backend of Isaac Sim, with Newton as an experimental alternative [1][9]

CG Channel's 2018 report listed CryEngine and Amazon Lumberyard among the engines into which PhysX was integrated, and said the technology had been used in more than 500 commercial games by 2015.[16]

Use in VR and AR

Physics interactions in VR applications

Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit can move a held object by setting the velocity and angular velocity of its Rigidbody (the "Velocity Tracking" movement type), which keeps the object from moving through other colliders that lack a Rigidbody, or by moving a kinematic Rigidbody toward the target pose (the "Kinematic" type). A third type, "Instantaneous", sets the object's Transform directly each frame.[28] Rigidbody physics is part of Unity's built-in 3D physics system, which is the PhysX integration.[5]

NVIDIA VR Funhouse

NVIDIA used PhysX in VR Funhouse, a free carnival-themed game for the HTC Vive released on Steam on 14 July 2016 by NVIDIA's Lightspeed Studios. Its store page says "PhysX Destruction generates pervasive destruction", alongside FleX fluids and Flow fire, and recommends two GPUs "with one in dedicated PhysX mode" for maximum performance.[29] At a hands-on before release, Road to VR saw the game running on three GeForce GTX 1080 cards, one of them dedicated to physics.[30] In September 2016 NVIDIA released the game's source code on GitHub and a free Unreal Engine 4 mod kit.[31]

Research

At the 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, Markus Höll, Markus Oberweger, Clemens Arth and Vincent Lepetit of Graz University of Technology (Lepetit was also affiliated with the University of Bordeaux) presented a physics-based method for interaction between a tracked real hand and virtual objects, based on the Coulomb friction model. Hand poses came from a Leap Motion sensor. The authors implemented the method "in Unity 5 with PhysX 3" and computed contact forces for each finger segment, which they then applied to objects in the PhysX simulation. Because PhysX 3 did not support collisions between concave mesh colliders and dynamic non-kinematic rigid bodies, they approximated concave objects with small voxels. They reported total physics times of 0.6 ms with 6 phalanges in contact and 1.5 ms with 32, with test scenes running at over 60 frames per second on a 2.6 GHz Intel i7 with an NVIDIA GTX 980M graphics card.[32]

XR teleoperation in robot simulation

Isaac Lab, NVIDIA's robot learning framework, can stream stereo views of a simulated robot to a headset through NVIDIA CloudXR, so that an operator can teleoperate dexterous robots with hand tracking. The setup guide is written for Apple Vision Pro and notes that Meta Quest 3 and Pico 4 Ultra are supported through the CloudXR Early Access program.[33] NVIDIA describes Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab as robotics reference applications built on Omniverse, whose primary physics engine is PhysX, and says the PhysX GPU API supports end-to-end reinforcement learning through Isaac Lab.[1]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "PhysX SDK - Latest Features and Libraries". NVIDIA Developer. NVIDIA. https://developer.nvidia.com/physx-sdk. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "NovodeX AG". ETH Entrepreneurship. ETH Zurich. https://entrepreneurship.ethz.ch/startup-stories/explore-startup-portraits-and-success-stories/spinoff/exits/novodex.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Matthias Müller. "About". matthias-research.github.io. https://matthias-research.github.io/pages/about.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "NVIDIA Corporation Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended April 27, 2008". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. NVIDIA. 2008. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001045810/000104581008000016/q109form10q.htm. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Built-in 3D physics". Unity Manual. Unity Technologies. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PhysicsOverview.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Unreal Engine 5 Migration Guide". Unreal Engine Documentation. Epic Games. https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/unreal-engine-5-migration-guide. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Nefi Alarcon (2018-12-20). "Announcing PhysX SDK 4.0, an Open-Source Physics Engine". NVIDIA Technical Blog. NVIDIA. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/announcing-physx-sdk-4-0-an-open-source-physics-engine. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Liam Squires-Hand (2025-04-07). "NVIDIA open sourced PhysX and Flow GPU code". GamingOnLinux. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/04/nvidia-open-sourced-physx-and-flow-gpu-code/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Physics". Isaac Sim Documentation. NVIDIA. https://docs.isaacsim.omniverse.nvidia.com/latest/physics/index.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  10. ↑ Paul Miller (2006-05-06). "Ageia PhysX processor review roundup". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2006-05-06-ageia-physx-processor-review-roundup.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  11. ↑ Brandon Boyer (2008-02-05). "Nvidia To Acquire PhysX Developer Ageia". Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/nvidia-to-acquire-physx-developer-ageia. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  12. ↑ "NVIDIA completes acquisition of AGEIA Technologies". HEXUS.net. 2008-02-14. https://www.hexus.net/tech/items/graphics/11805-nvidia-completes-acquisition-of-ageia-technologies/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 "NVIDIA PhysX System Software 8.09.04". NVIDIA Drivers. NVIDIA. 2008-09-16. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/physx/8_09_04/physx_8-09-04_whql/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Latest PhysX Source Code Now Available Free on GitHub". NVIDIA Developer. NVIDIA. https://developer.nvidia.com/content/latest-physx-source-code-now-available-free-github. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Jim Thacker (2015-03-05). "Nvidia releases PhysX source code on GitHub". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/2015/03/nvidia-releases-physx-source-code-on-github/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Jim Thacker (2018-12-04). "Nvidia open-sources PhysX, unveils PhysX SDK 4.0". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/2018/12/nvidia-open-sources-physx-unveils-physx-sdk-4-0/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Adam Moravanszky (2022-11-08). "Open Source Simulation Expands with NVIDIA PhysX 5 Release". NVIDIA Technical Blog. NVIDIA. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/open-source-simulation-expands-with-nvidia-physx-5-release. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 "Flow 2.2.0, and PhysX SDK 5.6.0". GitHub. NVIDIA. 2025-03-25. https://github.com/NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX/releases/tag/107.0-physx-5.6.0. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  19. ↑ Jim Thacker (2025-04-22). "NVIDIA open-sources PhysX's GPU simulation code". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/2025/04/nvidia-open-sources-physxs-gpu-simulation-code/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Viviane Osswald (2025-12-05). "Surprise! Nvidia brings PhysX back to GeForce RTX 50 GPUs, kind of". PCWorld. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3002325/surprise-nvidia-brings-physx-back-to-geforce-rtx-50-gpus-kind-of.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  21. ↑ Hassan Mujtaba (2025-12-04). "NVIDIA Enables Full PhysX Performance On RTX 50 GPUs For Select Titles In Latest GeForce Game Ready 591.44 Drivers". Wccftech. https://wccftech.com/nvidia-enables-full-physx-performance-on-rtx-50-gpus/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 "NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX: NVIDIA PhysX SDK". GitHub. NVIDIA. https://github.com/NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 "Omniverse PhysX 110.1 and PhysX SDK 5.9.0". GitHub. NVIDIA. 2026-07-14. https://github.com/NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX/releases/tag/110.1-omni-and-physx-5.9.0. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 24.5 "PhysX SDK changelog". GitHub. NVIDIA. https://github.com/NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX/blob/main/physx/CHANGELOG.md. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 "ovphysx 0.6.3". GitHub. NVIDIA. 2026-09-16. https://github.com/NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX/releases/tag/ovphysx-0.6.3. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  26. ↑ "Unity 2019.3: New programmer tools and features". Unity. Unity Technologies. https://unity.com/releases/2019-3/programmer-tools. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  27. ↑ "Simulating physics behavior with the PhysX system". Open 3D Engine Documentation. Open 3D Engine. https://docs.o3de.org/docs/user-guide/interactivity/physics/nvidia-physx/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  28. ↑ "XR Grab Interactable". XR Interaction Toolkit 3.0 documentation. Unity Technologies. https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/xr-grab-interactable.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  29. ↑ "NVIDIA VR Funhouse on Steam". Steam. Valve. https://store.steampowered.com/app/468700/NVIDIA_VR_Funhouse/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  30. ↑ Ben Lang (2016-05-07). "'VR Funhouse' Brings NVIDIA's Most Advanced Physics Into VR". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/hands-on-vr-funhouse-brings-nvidias-most-advanced-physics-into-vr/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  31. ↑ "Nvidia releases VR Funhouse source code and mod kit". MCV/DEVELOP. 2016-09-01. https://mcvuk.com/development-news/nvidia-releases-vr-funhouse-source-code-and-mod-kit/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  32. ↑ Markus Höll, Markus Oberweger, Clemens Arth, Vincent Lepetit (2018-03). "Efficient Physics-Based Implementation for Realistic Hand-Object Interaction in Virtual Reality". 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2018.8448284. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  33. ↑ "Setting up CloudXR Teleoperation". Isaac Lab Documentation. NVIDIA. https://isaac-sim.github.io/IsaacLab/main/source/how-to/cloudxr_teleoperation.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
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