NVIDIA PhysX and Flow are now fully open-source for game developers

NVIDIA's PhysX and Flow technologies are fully open-source. The source code for PhysX V5.6.0 and Flow V2.2.0 is now available via GitHub under the BSD-3 license. This is good news because the last time PhysX made headlines was back in February when it was reported that NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 50 Series no longer supports 32-bit CUDA applications.

This means 32-bit PhysX games like Batman: Arkham Asylum, Arkham City (seen above), and Borderlands 2 run extremely poorly on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs with PhysX enabled. As the name suggests, PhysX is all about simulating real-world physics using your GeForce GPU - with everything from body dynamics to deformable objects to fluid simulation and more. NVIDIA Flow is all about large-scale fluid simulation.

With the complete source code, developers and modders will not only be able to leverage GPUs and CUDA to implement, tinker, and experiment with real-time physics, but they could also use the code to mod or update older 32-bit PhysX games so that they can run on modern GeForce RTX 50 Series hardware via a 32-bit ti 64-bit compatibility layer.

• Read more: NVIDIA's RTX 50 series slows down classic games after dropping PhysX support

PhysX and Flow SDKs have been open-source since 2018; however, adding the complete source code for the key GPU simulation of all physics effects is a big deal. The source code also means that PhysX could be ported to run on AMD and Intel graphics hardware or consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Even though Unreal Engine 5's Chaos Physics has made PhysX less relevant to gaming in recent years, the source code isn't limited to gaming; it can be used for animation, design, engineering, and more. Still, it's a shame that NVIDIA hasn't released an update to its drivers that would make 32-bit PhysX games run on its modern hardware.