Is PhysX free for commercial use?

[123iamking]

I come up with this question because NxOgre (even its development maybe dead now) is supported Physicx . But I wonder, why develop a add-on for Ogre if it's not free

According to this article

If you're using the binary PhysX SDK on Windows or Linux, yes.

Quote:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx.html
What Does It Cost?

The NVIDIA PhysX SDK (binary) is 100% free and available right now for download by developers. In addition to the free software offering, NVIDIA offers a support plan and a paid license program which enables developers to modify the SDK to suit their needs.

The binary version of the PC SDK is offered at no charge as outlined below. Source code (for integration purposes) is available for a fee as provided below...


The paid license program is for developers who want access to and permission to modify the source code to PhysX. So long as that's not you, yes, PhysX is free.

But that answer is from year 2009. Today, Physx give us the access to its source code, awesome, right? .
But I can't find any license note on PhysX website, thus I can't make it clear if PhysX is free for commercial use or not

Thanks for reading.

[insider]

Yes Physx is free for commercial use, the license says modifying the source code is not allowed but if you want to do something eccentric with it you will have to pay the so called fee, so yes it is free is you are planning to use it and are not modifying the source code, well that is what I can make out from what you posted, unless Nvidia has changed terms to mint more money.

[hyyou]

Besides that, I recently found two posts. They imply that it is not so free.
1. You can't practically integrate it into a game engine.

The PhysX license disallows integration in the engine and a special negotiation with them is necessary (which means it's probabily pricey)

Reference: www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/6mdhm ... ved_games/

2. You have to pay money if your program release onto some platforms.

It would appear that for every other platform, including iOS, you DO still need a license for it

Reference: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topi ... e-license/

I believe Nvidia can edit the source of PhysX to fix some serious bugs and change the "free" license to something evil later.
If a bug is known and I intend to fix it myself. It means I must edit PhysX's source, thus I have to pay Nvidia.

IMHO, it looks like Nvidia tries to make everyone thinks that PhysX is totally free, while there are some booby traps.
Please correct me if I am wrong. I am not very confident.

[Herb]

According to their website (https://developer.nvidia.com/physx-source-github)

The PhysX software development kit (SDK) is free on Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS and Android

According to their ELA (http://developer.download.nvidia.com/as ... EULA_3.pdf)

Any Source
Code Modifications will be owned by NVIDIA and you assign to NVIDIA all right, title,
and interest in and to same. If you have developed an interesting modification, you may
send such Source Code Modification as an attachment via an email addressed to
physxlicensing@nvidia.com; otherwise, upon NVIDIA’s reasonable request, you agree to
promptly deliver any Source Code Modifications to NVIDIA

So, appearing like you could make modification for bugs....but would have to inform them of it...? Yeah, agree with on some fuzziness here....

The ELA references your "licensed" platform, so there should be more details on the "free license" for the PC platform in the source code distribution itself (I would assume anyways). You have to make an account to get access to the "open source" repo on GitHub. A little funny to make things open but you need to "register" for permission to access something free....but there you go...

[Kojack]

A little funny to make things open but you need to "register" for permission to access something free....but there you go...

It's better than it used to be. Back in the earlier days of PhysX at Nvidia, you needed a Nvidia account to download the free binary sdk. But if you didn't log in for 1 month they would delete the account, and it took up to 3 days to register a new one (they manually approved people). So many times I went to grab the latest sdk when updating my components only to find they'd deleted me yet again and I'd have to wait to get back in.