NVIDIA release FX Composer 2 and PerfKit 5 ISV tools


Story by Rys - Tuesday 31st July 2007, 01:01:00 PM


NEW NVIDIA® SOFTWARE TOOLS HELP DEVELOPERS CREATE BREAKTHROUGH GAMES IN LESS TIME


NVIDIA FX Composerâ„¢ 2 and PerfKitâ„¢ 5 to Greatly Speed Up Next Generation Content Creation


SANTA CLARA, CA—JULY 31, 2007—Cutting-edge PC games are complex projects that require teams of programmers, artists and designers. Since development delays can have a drastic impact on a game’s budget, NVIDIA® (Nasdaq: NVDA) has developed a complete suite of applications that helps developers save time and money creating and optimizing their games.

“Today's big-budget PC games are enormously complicated to create and tune for maximum performance,” said Niklas Westberg, Technical Director at Massive Entertainment. “The NVIDIA Developer Toolkit is a lifesaver – there's a wide variety of tools that help us accomplish more with less effort. The NVIDIA tools help us spend more time focusing on gameplay in World in Conflict, so that we can deliver the best possible experience for gamers.”

Today’s release of new versions of NVIDIA FX Composer 2 and NVIDIA PerfKit 5 gives developers powerful new tools to create groundbreaking game content in less time. These two widely used tools permit rapid, low-cost development of visual effects as well as performance tuning for games and other real-time applications.

The first of these new tools, FX Composer 2, is an integrated development environment for shader authoring, enabling fast creation of real-time visual effects. It can be used to create shaders for HLSL, COLLADA™ FX Cg, and CgFX in DirectX and OpenGL. FX Composer 2 features Shader Library integration, ShaderPerf analysis, animation support, COLLADA support, scripting, effect and project wizards, customizable toolbars and layouts, Microsoft XNA support, and much more. FX Composer 2 has evolved into the de facto industry standard for shader authoring across multiple target platforms, including Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.’s PLAYSTATION®3 and Microsoft Windows®.

“FX Composer 2 facilitates and simplifies ‘look development’ for my team as we explore next-generation rendering techniques,” said George Borshukov, a CG Supervisor at Electronic Arts who received an Academy Scientific and Technical Achievement Award for the image-based rendering technology used in The Matrix. “FX Composer 2 allows us to prototype complex rendering techniques with stunning results. Nothing else out there provides the capability, scriptability, and ease of use that FX Composer gives us.”

The release also bundles mental millâ„¢ Artist Edition from mental images, which allows users to create shaders visually by connecting nodes. Users can export shaders from mental mill Artist Edition to FX Composer, where they can be applied to real-world geometry and used for more complex operations.

FX Composer 2 will be demonstrated in booth #315 at the Siggraph 2007 conference, and is available for download at: http://developer.nvidia.com/FXComposer

The other tool that NVIDIA released today is NVIDIA PerfKit 5, a complete performance toolkit for real-time games and applications that now includes support for Microsoft Windows Vista and DirectX 10.

At the core of PerfKit is NVIDIA PerfHUDâ„¢ 5, a heads-up display for Microsoft DirectX 9 and 10 applications that provides real-time interactive debugging and profiling capabilities, allowing developers to monitor GPU signals, debug frames and analyze frames automatically to find performance bottlenecks.

New features in PerfHUD 5 include:
• Microsoft DirectX 10 and Vista support
• Support for the new GeForce® 8 Series GPUs
• Shader edit-and-continue: edit shaders on the fly
• More GPU and driver counters: a greatly expanded set of GPU and driver signals to help pinpoint bottlenecks
• Improved look-and-feel: cleaner layout with user-friendly touches like tooltips; improved texture viewing for 2D, 3D, and cube map textures; and a color picker for texture examination
• More than 20 other features requested by developers

“We used PerfHUD 5 extensively for optimizing Unreal Tournament 3,” said Daniel Wright, Engine Programmer at Epic Games. “The frame debugger quickly finds rendering issues and the frame profiler is an excellent tool for rapidly identifying performance problems. PerfHUD 5’s ability to interact with our engine in real-time allows us to have short iteration times which are crucial.”

PerfKit 5 will be demonstrated in booth #315 at Siggraph, and is available for download at:
http://developer.nvidia.com/PerfKit

In addition to FX Composer 2 and PerfKit 5, the complete suite of NVIDIA developer tools includes:

• SDK 10: all-new DirectX 10, OpenGL and CUDA code samples for the latest GPUs
• Texture Tools: Powerful libraries and plug-ins for working with textures—now with DirectX 10 support and approximately 10x faster than before
• ShaderPerf 2: detailed shader performance information with support for new drivers
• Shader Library: the world’s largest collection of GPU shaders featuring more than 100 different shader effects and support for external submissions

All of these tools are available at the NVIDIA Developer Web Site:
http://developer.nvidia.com

Developers are encouraged to visit the NVIDIA Developer Tools forums:
http://developer.nvidia.com/forums

About NVIDIA


NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies. The Company creates innovative, industry-changing products for computing, consumer electronics, and mobile devices. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com.

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to the benefits, uses, performance and features of NVIDIA FX Composer2, NVIDIA PerfKit 5, NVIDIA PerfHUD 5 and other NVIDIA developer tools are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, software bugs; manufacturing defects; developments of new products and technologies by competitors; unexpected loss of performance; continued acceptance and use of new technologies and products; the impact of competitive products and pricing alternatives; changes in industry standards and interfaces; as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-Q for the fiscal period ended April 29, 2007. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on our website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

Copyright © 2007 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, GeForce, NVPerfKit, and FX Composer are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the United States and other countries. PLAYSTATION and COLLADA are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of Sony Corporation. All other company and/or product names may be trade names, trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.

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nvidia ± isv, tools, perfkit, fx, composer