AMD releases FEMFX deformable physics library

The more work a developer has to do making the underlying engine beneath their game work, the less time they'll have to work on making the game itself. Firmware libraries and plugins can go a long way toward making games more interactive without making the developers buckle under the stress of making a game work. AMD's FEMFX library, which the company has published on GPUOpen, is a new step in that direction that could make for some deeply interactive games.

FEMFX is a multi-threaded CPU library for deformable material physics built specifically with multi-core CPUs in mind.

TheAMD FEMFX library will allow game physics engines to more easily implement more dynamic functionality into games. Objects made of wood or plastic, for example, can bend and break with more realistic stress, and this makes it easier to make the materials look more realistic. Non-rigid objects can bend and warp and push back on other objects. Materials can even be changed on the fly so that an object can go from solid to gelatinous or even melt. Objects can crack and break within realistic restraints.

It's not hard to imagine how a combination of FEMFX and good raytracing implementation could make for some very believable materials in games.

Physics is at the core of many of the most interesting games. When Half-Life 2 came out, its physics-based puzzles set it apart. Players had the freedom to be creative with solutions, and playing in a responsive world felt good. With new gaming consoles making use of Zen 2 multi-core processors, they'll better match modern gaming PCs, and that makes it easier for developers to integrate libraries like this into their games since the integration is no longer platform-specific. This should lead to more interesting gameplay scenarios across the board.

Interestingly, AMD has licensed this under the MIT/X11 license, which is one of the most permissive licenses in software right now. In short, all a developer has to do to use it is put the name of the library in the game credits. It's open to use and modify with no licensing fee, and is already available as part of an Unreal Engine plugin over on GitHub (thanks Overclock3D!). If AMD's FEMFX library starts to see frequent use in upcoming games, it could be the beginning of something big - maybe.

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