APEX physX? huh?

[Reticula]

ok, this is rather different then previous answers I got... anyone got further input?

APEX is physics effects toolbox, that is setting on top of PhysX SDK.

It is consisting of several variations of physical content, like clothing, or destructible geometry (this is called - APEX Assets), DCC tools used to author this assets (APEX Modules) and other supplementary logic handling LOD, resource destribution, etc (APEX Framework). APEX is highly specialized on specific physics content - you can create nice character clothing with it, but can't use it for ragdolls, for example. Thus, APEX is needed to be linked with main physics engine, used in the game (most naturally it fits with PhysX SDK)

In general, APEX has three main features:
1) Easy physics content creation for artists (level designers, for example) - all necessary tools are already complete, tweaked, etc. Programmer is needed only for APEX Framework integration.

2) Scalability.
Each modules has set of scalable parameters (like number of particles or cloth vertices), so content can be authored once, but than easily tweaked for different platforms.

3) Performance.
APEX is providing rendering shortcuts - when needed, all necessary data can go directly for render, bypassing other game logic (AI, sound system, etc)
Also, it was made with multi-threading in mind - it is running in separate thread, each module simulation can be calculated in asynchronous mode, etc

So, APEX saves time - that is a benefit for developers. Content can be easily scaled for GPU execution - that is benefit for Nvidia.
That's how it will working in ideal case, however, it is in development yet, and thus used mostly by nvidia.

Seems all
Zogrim, PhysXInfo.com

 

[Scali]

ok, this is rather different then previous answers I got... anyone got further input?

It's not really different.
As said before: it's a toolset for making scalable PhysX effects.

Tessellation allows you to easily make scalable geometry, by adding extra triangles on the fly, Apex does something similar for physics objects.

The obvious advantage here is that scalability makes it relatively easy for developers/artists to brigde the various performance gaps...
Such as from low-end CPUs to high-end ones... from CPUs to GPUs, and perhaps go all-out on high-end SLI-setups as well (and don't forget the consoles).

So far, the only game I've seen with properly scalable physics is Crysis. The handful of PhysX games with support for acceleration would just have a CPU-mode and accelerated mode... where the CPU-mode simply lacked many particle/cloth effects altogether...
In Crysis, the actual destruction of objects scales as well.
Hopefully we'll see more properly scaling physics in the future, with Apex.