NVIDIA shows amazing GameWorks DX12 fire & smoke effects

NVIDIA has released a new video, showcasing some fire and smoke effects that are powered by its GameWorks Flow tech in DX12. According to the green team, the simulation is based on an adaptive sparse voxel grid, allowing the simulation to focus compute and memory resources around regions of interest, and track shifts in the region of interest over time.

As NVIDIA noted, with the fire, the combustion process is simulated per voxel, generating elevated temperatures and smoke, which influences the visual appearance and produces buoyancy and expansion effects on the fluid simulation.

An adaptive sparse voxel grid is also used to compute self-shadowing on the smoke, increasing both the realism and visualizing the structure of the smoke.

The fluid simulation supports real time collision with objects in the environment, along with fuel emitters than can be modified in real time, making the simulation fully interactive.

Enjoy!

NVIDIA GameWorks Flow - in DX12

100 thoughts on “NVIDIA shows amazing GameWorks DX12 fire & smoke effects”

  1. Unless they open source this like they did with HBAO+, I’m not looking forward to seeing it in games. And I say this as an owner of a GTX 1080 and GSync monitor.

    1. smoke effect, was presented i think for the gtx 7800,7950 and still this day its barely used ,or tessellation its rare to see it in games,this kind features ,will be concept only unless someone takes them, or stops with “parity” bullshit

      1. This. It’s sad how underused the smoke effects are. Not only are they exclusive to Gameworks titles, but also, because of that exclusivity, they’re also only used in an infernally superfluous manner, because otherwise, the sh*t breaks!

        Thanks, Nvidia >.>

        Tessellation isn’t an Nvidia technology, though, for the record.

        1. Smoke effects are not at all exclusive to gameworks, NVIDIA has just done a crap ton of leg work to make it easier to integrate than coding custom solutions.

          Cryengine 5 has it’s own wavicle particle system that is much faster than NVIDIA’s solution and has similar quality. Other engines have extensions/Plugins that allow this fidelity as well.

          1. Good points, well said.

            However, so long as Gameworks remains a proprietary technology, I expect adoption of Nvidia “Smokeworks” will continue to remain exclusive to Nvidia Gameworks titles, rather than it becoming an industry-standard thing. It’s like PhysX, all over again; great tech that doesn’t become an industry-standard “because Nvidia.”

    2. Thank God,Radeon Crimson have a Tessellation level switch.
      Just in case for GW games. (like used in ultra-tessellated The Witcher 3 Hairworks)

        1. But it’s not just Gameworks. Many complex features are taking much more performance than its their visual benefit. You can have visual interesting effects which are prepared and just animated, but without interaction. And they take only small performance piece. Or you can have real time computed complex features for the same effects which can interact with environment and react on actual events. For example see difference between static precomputed shadows or dynamic shadows. I prefer dynamic real time rendered features. They take much more performance, but they make environment much more interesting. People were never complaining about new and better graphics features until now. And all of this is just because a sort of people hate company which is behind them. Even when they have an option to not used these features and turn them off. Sorry, but it doesn’t make any sense.

          1. People are complaining in general because PCs are still getting the second-rate treatment. It’s just that sometimes, in the grand scheme of it all, they end up complaining about the wrong things.

            Take Crysis, for example. Everyone calls it an extremely intensive game, & with good reason, absolutely, but most people still fail to realise that it was also a very under-optimised game. This problem persists, even today. People misidentify problems & use their limited knowledge to “figure out” what’s going on.

            Then, of course, there’s the actually real issues which do get correctly identified, even if the cause of them is never quite understood, like the standing lack of file compression that keeps plaguing AAAs right now, which is a standing irritation for a lot of people, etc. etc. etc.

            So, yeah, some of these issues are real, others are not, but since it’s the Internet, they very often end up getting lobbed together, “because.”

            Besides, it’s not about getting to use them or not, it’s about how they’re part of the Nvidia Gameworks eco-system, which is proprietary, rather than open-source, which prevents it from becoming an industry-standard tool across the board.

          2. pc’s are more 3rd rate…lol.cant wait for 4k/60fps games for xbox scorpio.

            time to go in to hideing like when the 360 launched pc…lol

          3. Yeah, yeah, yeah, f*ck off, troll.

            We’re trying to have a serious conversation here, go flaimbait somewhere else.

    1. Yeah, and who’s running this factory any way, and what are they making? Jesus, it’s almost like those things doesn’t have anything to do with what Nvidia wants to present, and are thus left out.

  2. Another technology literally almost noone will use since nVidia made them “exclusive” only for their cards. BTW: Gameworks guarantee worse performance for both gtx and radeon cards.

    1. “Gameworks guarantee worse performance for both gtx and radeon cards”

      What does it mean? Are you surprised that better visual techniques take some performance?
      And these effects are not exlclusive for NVIDIA GPUs. They will run on any DX11 or DX12 capable GPUs.

      1. Most of newer AAA titles colaborated with nVidia since 2011 have some performance issues(especialy on amd cards), and it’s even before you enable certain effects to drop your
        framerate even more.

        1. So how Gameworks libraries influence perfomance of games when these features are not enabled? So their source code is not used? I would like to now answer to this question.
          Game developers are responsible for game performance. Many games have issues (not only these which are connected to NVIDIA).

          1. You know why you don’t need to restart your game every time while you change settings?
            Even if you disable effect/shader, it is still loaded but it intensity has value of 0. Some of them like PhysX for example require you to restart your game, because even at 0 it cost quite performance.
            And here is AMD who can’t optimize their drivers because librares are still loaded and they have huge problem becuse of it while optimizing their titles.

          2. How loaded and not used libraries cost performance? As I know, they just take some space in memory, but if their code is not executed, there should not be any problem with it….
            And restarts because of PhysX need to be done because of reinitialization of some resources. Not for “unload” loaded libraries. Or I missed something?

          3. “Even if you disable effect/shader, it is still loaded but it intensity has value of 0. Some of them like PhysX for example require you to restart your game, because even at 0 it cost quite performance. ”

            OK, now I know 100% you have no idea what you’re talking about.

          1. No they wrote the unoptimized tech under a black box, which developers cannot optimize for.

            The solution has always been driver-level optimization which NVidia could do since it’s their tech but AMD could not.

            NVidia dig their own grave by being anti-competitive, whatever they do now it’s to late, only a blind fanboy can defend them now.

          2. Said by obviously AMD fanboy. 🙂 You just learned some fancy terms like “unoptimized” or “black box” without understanding what they mean. Great. But you should stop replacing your imagination with reality.

      1. Gameworks are not open source. just because nvidia giving free access to the source code then the said software/codes are open source.

      2. Gameworks is not open source, selected Gameworks features are. This is huge difference. And nvidia orginal press note nowhere mention that Gx dx12 is open source.

    2. lol when you push you graphic option from low or medium to high/ultra did you expect zero performance hit?

    3. BREAKING NEWS – HIGHLY COMPUTATIONAL VISUAL EFFECTS REDUCE FPS.

      Are you really that dumb to think these kind of effects are “free”? OF COURSE THEY REDUCE PERFORMANCE! The same as MSAA, AO, TXAA and all other image quality effect do! You don’t complain about those though do you, it’s just anything Nvidia. Well I for one thank them for pushing the envelope when it comes to what he GPU can do, and if you can’t afford a system to run this at a decent framerate (which is not as high as you think it is), then that’s your problem. Jesus.

  3. So much negativity here. Everyone does realize this fire/smoke is exactly why CDPR said Witcher 3 would need to be built in DX12 to look like the E3 presentation? PC master race that wants Pixar graphics running on a 486 with a Trident 1MB gfx card. Wonder why I upgraded from a 680 to a 1080 that I heavily OC’d. I do get it’s gameworks and that is not the best optimization, but have to wait and see this implemented.

    1. I think Gamesworks is amazing. It shows us the future but now. These are the effects that will become commonplace in future as technology develops.

      Right now though, they are definitely very taxing, and it’s not optimisation issues, it’s just that these effects are demanding and high tech.

      1. True, optimization was not the right word, but it will become more common place and will be further optimized if that makes sense.

    2. “fire/smoke is exactly why CDPR said Witcher 3 would need to be built in DX12 to look like the E3 presentation?”

      Source?

      Don’t be ridiculous, the biggest downgrade in TW3 is the lighting and geometry. CDPR could have used 2D fire textures and the game could have looked just as good.

      GameWorks is trash, it’s just there so NVIDIA can sell their terrible value high end GPUs. We know how HairWorks tanked the framerate, the worst part is that the hair looked worse than PureHair in RoTTR, an effect that costs 3-5fps max.

    3. Even so, but what’s the point if they can only be used so much because they’re exclusive to Nvidia’s Gameworks titles?

      1. I’d rather have the option than not at all. Of course I’d much rather it was not exclusive. Plus I don’t think every game requires more realistic fire and smoke. Some plain don’t use either at all.

        1. I agree, the option is nice, but take Gameworks’ inclusion into the Arkham series, for example; Nvidia’s proprietary smoke, wind, etc. effects are limited to superfluous things like ground clutter, because if they go too in-depth, they’ll run into major issues with AMD cards.

          They’re great technologies, but they could also be so much more if they weren’t proprietary technologies (this in regards to both Nvidia & AMD).

      2. Why shouldn’t it be? NVidia spends resources developing top notch, cinematic quality effects for the architecture they themselves created – so why should they share it with the competition? They are a business, AMD is a business. Plus Gameworks work on Radeons too, it’s just that it’s up to AMD to do optimization for obvious reasons. It’s not like it’s a stupid console exclusivity race where you can’t play whole lines of games unless you buy a specific hardware

        1. Because Nvidia spends considerable resources developing these technologies, & then they end up overwhelmingly going to waste, because they’re proprietary technologies which AMD refuses to license.

          Yes, they work on AMD cards, but AMD needs access, & unless Nvidia chooses to give them access for free, they need to pay to gain access – granted, we’re assuming that, since we don’t know much about what goes on behind the scenes between them, but let’s assume that is the case, as it seems the most reasonable assumption to make, in my opinion.

          Take PhysX; it’s a great physics technology, that didn’t become industry standard years ago exactly, specifically because Nvidia refuses to allow it to, but it’s supposed to be okay, because instead, we have HairWorks competing with TressFX, for some reason? I mean, how does this service us, as consumers, in any way, what-so-ever?

          Simple; it doesn’t. Every single time Nvidia & AMD swing their c*cks at each other with these technologies, we the consumers are the ones that get to pay for it all. Always.

      3. “exclusive to Nvidia’s Gameworks titles”
        What is exclusive NVIDIA GW title? If some game use GW libraries, it’s automatically NVIDIA GW title. Or do you suggest, that only developers cooperating with NVIDIA can use their libraries?

        1. Well, as far as I’m aware, you do have to license Nvidia’s proprietary technologies, so, yeah, I’m pretty sure that only developers that have an agreement with Nvidia can use their libraries, unless they actually want to get sued.

          Unless that happens to not be the case, of course, though that would surprise me very much.

  4. Played with it in ue4 and it looks amazing! As a user of fumefx, I find it hard to believe this runs realtime on my gtx 660ti.Nvidia is the best. People hating this are just stupid.

    1. The most of people just don’t understand what they are talking about. That’s all. They are AMD fans or just don’t like NVIDIA.

      1. one thing is to place an FX-emitter entity in a empty scene in unreal editor and watch “how cool is” and other thing to have that crap running in realtime in a game with full loaded scene. nvidia crapworks does not have nothing to doo with games. they are good just only for marketing and fanboy propaganda.

        1. This can be said for every performance hungry complex feature in any game. So every such feature is crap aimed for marketing? Thanks for explaining. 🙂 Don’t get me wrong. I understand the first part of your comment well. But the other one about crapworks and marketing is right only partially. The fact is, that Gameworks get graphics in games better. And it takes performance for that. If you have idea how performance hungry are some lighting and shadow features, you would understand. Of course you still have to do compromises in game implementation, but it is still good. I doubt that you would say that these features are crap and only marketing, if they would be implemented by developers with the same results, only without NVIDIA cooperation. And you really can’t blame NVIDIA for marketing about these features, if it is their work.
          And important part of all of this is, that GW features can be turned off. So I don’t understand why people are complaining about them, if they don’t have to use them. I think it’s only about their feelings to NVIDIA. That’s all.

          1. listen buddy! nvidia hardware still have serious performance issues in such situations because of architecture limitations. nvidia hardware can’t do simultaneously compute+graphics queues. its command processor releated limitation and singlethreaded driver nature since this functional its partialy emulated on CPU. now imagine all of this on top of other tasks which are normal for games. in one word you need 10ghz cpu to have all this stuff working in real games.

          2. I know that AMD has some advantage thanks to better implementation of asynchronous shaders. But it’s not that serious as you wrote. It’s not 10ths percents of difference, only in unit percents. It’s not that different. It’s like that because NVIDIA is not emulating computing on CPU. Just switching between randering and computing is different comparing to AMD solution, which have HW scheduler for that. But every rendering and compute task is executed on GPU for both AMD and NVIDIA. Claiming that you need 10Ghz CPU in NVIDIA case, is not true. From where did you get that?

    1. It’s real 3D. A massive improvement over the pathetic 2D fire/smoke sprites that games have used for decades.

      This is why fire in games always follows the camera around, always facing it, and has low frame rates too (often under 30fps), because it’s literally just a very simple animated 2D image, similar to a gif.

        1. Really? Can you show us example how fire flames in division look like? And I supposed that they can interact with environment objects too. It is different to play prepared animation and using full interactive solution.
          Becasue I just look some videos and can see only prepared animations, which quickly disappeared.

  5. I guess we wont be seeing this effects anytime soon on PC considering the downgradation going on because consoles cant handle this effects

  6. And yet we won’t be seeing what they show fof specifically on PC for years to come, even then it’s limited to DX 122 and gameworks, sow e won’t be seeing it across a vast array of games either thanks to the limits put in place.

    This is about as good as those glorified tech demos that 90% of devs hardly aim for let alone design to be exactly like.

    I may as well comment on the haters hating the people with different opinions, this is the internet, get used to it.

  7. NVidia showcases new unoptimized tech to majorly impact GPU performance and bottleneck AMD while doing it.

    That’s all NVidia can do.

    1. Evil NVidia creating new Evil visual effects just to hurt Good AMD by making better but EVIL graphics. Graphics are EVIL.

      Hey remember how Good AMD got DX11 tessellation first and had it for nearly a year before Evil NVidia got it? But Evil Nvidia wasn’t just content with Good AMD leading the pack, oh no. They decided to go and make tessellation actually work a lot faster on their hardware whereas AMD struggled with the tech they themselves pushed into DX11 for three generations of Radeon GPUs. EVIL Nvidia. We should all boycott it and go back to Voodoo GPUs when everything was simple and Good.

  8. Yeah, I’ve tried all those demos and the AMD versions as well. Fun stuff. This newer tech looks far more impressive. Now if only the devs would have more flexibility with it.

    1. And if Gameworks would be developing by AMD, what would you say? I assume you would claim how great and special it is. 🙂

      1. Definitly not!
        I’ve been criticizing the latest videos from AMD and the latest graphs that they showed from the 580, i hate missleading, and unethical behaviour, the problem is that Nvidia has been the most unethical company of the 2, so i tend to critize AMD less, but as far as i can see AMD is becoming more and more just like Nvidia so i may be just giving a big F for both…

  9. Now that i saw the video, i don’t think its amazing at all…Feels, disconected to the rest of scenario.

    1. Yeah, load of BS. Although I suspect they deliberately made the normal hair look worse in order to promote Pure Hair.

        1. With Apple’s Tim Cook having told us that we don’t need PCs when the iPad Pro exists then you’re clearly on the righteous path!

          1. F*cking Steve Jobs with this “iPads will replace PCs!” statement. Ugh. The man was a genius, sure, but I think he was smoking a little too much ganja there, at the end.

            But yeah, YE OF THE RIGHTEOUS iPAD!

  10. My lord…AMD fans are the absolute worst. Its not Nvidia’s fault that your Ryzen processors are garbage and can’t even beat a 7600K in games most of the time.

    Its also not Nvidia’s fault that you’ve been ‘waiting for Vega’ for like 10 years, and when it comes out it will have sub-1080 performance.

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