Nvidia PhysX Flex will power "bile, blood and gibs" in Killing Floor 2

At the PC Gaming Show Tripwire Interactive president John Gibson touched on the new gore tech coming to Killing Floor 2. We saw footage of monstrous zombies bursting into fountains of green muck, and it was amusing. Now Nvidia has offered a bit more info about the tech behind it: GameWorks’ PhysX Flex, the newest iteration of Nvidia's PhysX physics engine.

"These features are best seen with the Bloat, a rotund vomiting enemy," the Nvidia spokesperson writes in a .gif strewn blogpost. "As the Bloat waddles towards players he’ll vomit Flex-powered bile as a ranged attack, and when gibbed his lungs, intestines and skull will spew forth, in addition to buckets of blood and smaller giblets. Blood and bile intermix, body parts and fluids are scattered by explosions and the Siren’s scream, and everything interacts realistically with geometry and objects. And should another Bloat be popped, the force of his internals exploding outward will further manipulate the disgusting Flex-powered mess that’s already been created."

Sounds beautiful, especially the part about blood and bile intermixing. Killing Floor 2 will be the first game to ship with PhysX Flex once it has exited Early Access, so it'll be the most convincingly gory game you're likely to see for a while.

Here's a little bit about how the tech works, via Nvidia:

Traditionally, GPU-accelerated PhysX effects are created using a combination of specialized techniques for rigid bodies, fluids, clothing, destruction, and other material types. NVIDIA GameWorks’ SDK includes PhysX, PhysX Cloth, PhysX Destruction, and PhysX Particle modules for this purpose. With Flex, a unified particle system is instead used for all effects, materials and objects, enabling previously-impossible interactions and effects. For example, a water balloon made of rubber can be realistically destroyed by a bullet, the water within can burst out when the bullet strikes, and it can then cause the destroyed balloon to float on its surface. Here’s a quick video to demonstrate some of the possibilities.

...and you can see some of the tech in action below.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.