NVIDIA releasing source code to devs on GitHub for select GameWorks libraries

[Anult]

Source: http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/nvidia-gameworks-sdk-3-1-released.html

 

Earlier today, NVIDIA announced that their new GameWorks SDK (Version 3.1) is now available to developers.

 

The update added new techniques for lighting and shadows:

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• 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 update also added two new PhysX physical simulations in beta form:

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• 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.

But the big news is the following:

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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.

It looks like NVIDIA is allowing developers to finally access the dreaded "black box" portion of GameWorks libraries, albeit only select ones as of now.

 

Even so, this is still fantastic news because it allows developers to optimise their games better with NVIDIA's lighting and physics effects.

 

It also allows AMD to finally be able to optimise their drivers before a game that includes NVIDIA's GameWorks is released.

 

My take on this is the following: I personally feel that NVIDIA has done this to combat AMD's GPUOpen intiative and further wants to improve the image of GameWorks within the gaming and game developer communities. Whilst this is a good first step, I believe NVIDIA should start to open up all of their GameWorks libraries as soon as possible and stop with these constant controversies regarding GameWorks and it's performance related issues on both AMD and NVIDIA cards.

[Ashaira]

16 is not the number of months it will take nvidia to release all the libs for gameworks but it is the number of games that will continue to have gimpworks problems until this all settles down.

[Prysin]

the major question is.

 

Are any of these libraries the cause of the insane performance hits we see in SOME Nvidia titles?

[Anult]

3 minutes ago, Prysin said:

the major question is.

 

Are any of these libraries the cause of the insane performance hits we see in SOME Nvidia titles?

I know off the top of my head both HairWorks and Volumetric lighting were the cause of issues with nvidia titles.

 

HairWorks was used in the witcher 3 and is generally considered the point were a large amount of people went "screw gameworks!" due to the large amount of issues the game had due to HairWorks.

 

Volumetric lighting was used in Fallout 4 and caused issues with both AMD and NVIDIA cards too as far as I recall.

[samcool55]

When the source code is released, and AMD can do some more optimization work, which they should be able to do if gameworks is really a black box and amd has to know how it works to get some extra performance.

Wouldn't it be hilarious if they manage to get gameworks better working on their cards compared to nvidia?

 

Anyway, i'm happy to see this, finally the BS can come to an end.

[grayperview]

PhysX is what needs to be opened up, as soon as AMD can leverage some of the workload onto the GPU rather than CPU they will see the biggest benefits. Which i am sure they could.

 

I'm not talking advanced PhysX I'm talking the basic PhysX that Nvidia embeds into Gameworks games, they can keep their advanced physX and shove it where the sun don't shine.

 

 

[Beskamir]

Looks like OpenGPU has an effect on the industry after all.

[Notional]

They are releasing source code access to SOME of the effects.

The real question though, is what limitations the devs get with this? Are they allowed to change the source code? Optimize it for AMD? Work with AMD for optimization?

 

IF this means that something like GameWorks becomes similar to OpenFX, then I'm all for it.

[Big-G]

5 hours ago, Prysin said:

Are any of these libraries the cause of the insane performance hits we see in SOME Nvidia titles?

Never knew Nvidia was a games developer...

[AlexGoesHigh]

9 minutes ago, GidonsClaw said:

Never knew Nvidia was a games developer...

Well there so invested with the big games and engines, i wouldn't be surprised if half the render pipeline of a Nvidia powered titles was programed by their engineers. 

[Fulgrim]

Finally, it seems Nvidia have decided to be less of a knobhead than before.

[LAwLz]

On 3/16/2016 at 3:41 AM, Notional said:

The real question though, is what limitations the devs get with this? Are they allowed to change the source code? Optimize it for AMD? Work with AMD for optimization?

The license is right there on the GitHub page. Developers are allowed to do whatever they want, including the things you mentioned as long as you give credit and don't misuse any trademarks or copyrighted materials.

 

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Source Code: Developer shall have the right to modify and create derivative works with the Source Code. Developer shall own any derivative works ("Derivatives") it creates to the Source Code, provided that Developer uses the Materials in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. Developer may distribute the Derivatives, provided that all NVIDIA copyright notices and trademarks are used properly and the Derivatives include the following statement: "This software contains source code provided by NVIDIA Corporation."

 

 

Very good news and I hope they continue to release the source code for more libraries.

[dalekphalm]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

The license is right there on the GitHub page. Developers are allowed to do whatever they want, including the things you mentioned as long as you give credit and don't misuse any trademarks or copyrighted materials.

 

 

 

Very good news and I hope they continue to release the source code for more libraries.

My biggest issue with GamesWorks is that AMD could essentially only optimize at the Driver Level, with very little (or no) access to the guts of how the software works. Whether NVIDIA intentionally cripples AMD is a totally different (non-related) story though.

 

But this is good. AMD can finally see how the code works, and, this should hopefully mean they can get Game Drivers out sooner, since they'll be able to see the code as the devs work on it.