Unreal Engine 4 developers gain access to Nvidia PhysX source code

Epic Games and Nvidia have announced that developers using Unreal Engine 4 will have full access to the source code of Nvidia’s physics engine PhysX 3.3.3. Nvidia also plans to review contributed code and possibly include it in future versions of PhysX.

Access to the source code of PhysX 3.3.3, which is written in C++, includes the so-called clothing and destruction libraries. Developers can request the source code of the Nvidia-developed PhysX engine from Epic’s Unreal Engine repository on GitHub and modify it to their heart’s content, according to Epic.

Epic, which has worked closely with Nvidia for a number of years, encourages developers to share changes to the PhysX code, with Nvidia committing to review those contributions. Should they spot any interesting innovations, they may be included in future PhysX releases.

Nvidia does not share all PhysX code with the public: it is the part of the physics engine that uses the CPU. The GPU part remains proprietary for the time being. However, the source code that has been made public runs on four platforms: Windows, Linux, OS X and Android.