PhysX is the world’s most pervasive physics solution for highly realistic and real-time simulation based effects for games, film and more. Version 3.0 of PhysX has been over three years in the making and features a new modular architecture and a completely rewritten PhysX engine. It provides a significant boost in overall performance, as well as efficient, reliable simulations across a broad spectrum of multi-core gaming devices – such as PCs, notebooks and gaming consoles, as well as emerging gaming platforms like handheld game devices, tablets, and smartphones.

Let’s take a look at some of the key features and capabilities of PhysX 3.0 SDK:

• Larger Levels: Game levels are getting larger these days. That means they require more actors. In PhysX 3.0, developers can combine multiple actors into a single “aggregate”, which is managed as a single bounding-box entity in the broadphase stage of the collision pipeline. This reduces the computing load required to predict collisions between actors, and helps improve overall performance and memory efficiency of PhysX-3 relative to earlier versions.

• Streaming: PhysX 3.0 enables efficient streaming of asset data into a simulation through a new feature,binary in-place serialization, which allows quick and memory-efficient insertion of actors into a scene. In addition, out-of-scene actor creation, which allows actors to be created outside the scene and stored rather than being created and destroyed on demand, provides developers with better asset management while minimizing troublesome compute load spikes.

• More Effective Multithreading: The new Task Manager with managed thread pool allows games to take advantage of multi-core processors on all platforms, resulting in greatly increased performance and a much improved gaming experience.

• Flexible and Powerful Tools: In addition to a highly optimized physics runtime, NVIDIA is  releasing improved tools for artists that have been tailored to work within the developer’s asset production pipeline.  A new release of PhysX Visual Debugger allows superior performance profiling, detailed memory analysis and improved visualization of all PhysX content across all major platforms.

PhysX 3.0 is available for all major gaming platforms, including PC, Xbox360™, PLAYSTATION®3, OSX, Linux and Android. PhysX 3.0 is designed to run on a variety of CPU architectures. Performance can be accelerated by any CUDA™-enabled NVIDIA GPU – including any GeForce 8-series or higher graphics card.

Like its predecessor, PhysX 2.8, the new PhysX 3.0 SDK binary version is available without charge to all registered and platform-authorized developers for both commercial and non-commercial applications.

For more information on NVIDIA PhysX and APEX technologies, please visit: www.nvidia.com/physx.

Microsoft has teamed up with Tritton to produce a series of cobranded headsets, which will offer unparalleled integration with the Xbox 360, including on-screen battery status and 100-percent wire-free functionality with both game audio and chat.

Devastator with Base Station

The range is broken down into two premium wireless headsets, the Warhead 7.1 and Devastator, and an entry-level wired solution, the Detonator.

All three headsets utilize stereo 50mm drivers, though only the Warhead 7.1 supports Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro Logic II, and Dolby Headphone decoding for simulated surround sound. The Devastator and Detonator only produce stereo audio.

Both the Warhead 7.1 and Devastator utilize 5.8GHz wireless technology, for stronger, clearer connectivity, and come with a specialized wireless base station that uses only two cables connected to the Xbox 360 — USB for power and optical digital or stereo RCA for audio. Additionally, the base stations accept auxiliary input from iPods or smartphones.

Watch our Tritton Headset Preview

For those who want to share the experience, the base stations bundled with the Warhead 7.1 and Devastator can feed audio to four headsets simultaneously. Both also support three different listening modes for either gaming, movies, or music.

All three headsets feature active voice monitoring, so you’ll never find yourself shouting unnecessarily, as well as removable boom microphones with easy-to-reach mute buttons, and an LED lights located at the end to indicate when the microphone is active.

Detonator, Devastator, Warhead 7.1

For power, the Detonator is powered by wired USB, while the Devastator uses AA battery, and the Warhead 7.1 uses a specialized rechargeable battery pack system. The wireless transmitter base station features an integrated battery charger, allowing users to seamlessly swap between two included battery packs for uninterrupted gameplay. Since the base station is powered by the Xbox 360, if you power down the console before the battery is fully recharged, it will continue charging through standby power until complete.

In terms of design, all three headsets feature earcups that turn inward for easy shoulder resting, as well as streamlined headband padding, and isolating around the ear padding. The Devastator and Warhead 7.1 sport easily accessible volume, preset, power, voice monitoring, and syncing controls built into the headsets themselves, while the Detonator has an inline cable controller.

Warhad 7.1 Headband

Though official pricing and release information has yet to be revealed, Tritton assures us that all three models will be available before Holiday 2011 and none of the headsets will exceed $300.