GDC: Nvidia Unveils Developer Toolkit

Officials from graphics card firm Nvidia have announced a new platform for game development designed specifically to assist developers in working with Microsoft's DirectX 10. The core of this latest Nvidia platform is a new development suite to help developers create and optimize PC games for DirectX 10. The new Nvidia Developer Toolkit is designed to “save developers time and money in creating games that deliver almost lifelike graphics and physics realism.” The new platform integrates the company's GeForce 8 series of video cards, nForce 680 motherboards, and DirectX10. In addition, the suite of tools also offers developers instructive DirectX 10, OpenGL, and CUDA code samples, as well as advanced GPU shaders and tools for performance tuning. PerfKit 5, a collection of tools for debugging and profiling GPU applications for Windows Vista and DirectX 10, is also bundled with the platform. Cevat Yerli, president of Crytek, commented: "The Nvidia developer tools have saved us a significant amount of time and money in the course of our work on Crysis. The exceptional debugging, visualization and profiling capabilities in these tools make them a 'must' for any development group. It actually amazes me that Nvidia provides them for free." "Nvidia's developer tools are some of the best in the industry," said Mark Robinson, technical director at Rockstar San Diego. "I use FX Composer regularly to quickly prototype shaders, the SDK for inspiring new techniques, and PerfKit for detailed performance analysis and debugging."