Posts in category: nVidia AI

Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology improves creative workflows. We’re also deep-diving on new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU features, technologies and resources and how they dramatically accelerate content creation.

As beautiful and extraordinary as art forms can be, it can be easy to forget the simple joy and comforting escapism that content creation can provide for artists across creative fields.

Janice K. Lee, a.k.a Janice.Journal — the subject of this week’s In the NVIDIA Studio installment — is a TikTok sensation using AI to accelerate her creative process, find inspiration and automate repetitive tasks.

Also this week, NVIDIA Studio technology is powering some of the most popular mobile and desktop apps — driving creative workflows of both aspiring artists and creative professionals.

TikTok and CapCut, Powered by NVIDIA and the Cloud

Week by week, AI becomes more ubiquitous within content creation.

Take the popular social media app TikTok. All of its mobile app features, including AI Green Screen, are accelerated by GeForce RTX GPUs in the cloud. Other parts of TikTok creator workflows are also accelerated — Descript AI, a popular generative AI-powered video editing app, runs 50% faster on the latest NVIDIA L4 Tensor Core GPUs versus T4 Tensor Core GPUs.

CapCut, the most widely used video editor by TikTok users, enables Simultaneous Scene Encoding, a functionality that sends independent groups of scenes to an NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC), contributing to shorter video export times without affecting image quality. This technology performs over 2x faster on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards versus on Apple’s M2 Ultra.

Advanced users can move footage to their preferred desktop video editing app using native GPU-acceleration and RTX technology. This includes AV1 dual encoders (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics cards or higher required) for 40% better video quality for livestreamers, while video editors can slash export times nearly in half.

Janice.Journal Gets AI Art Blanche

Janice.Journal, a self-taught 3D creator, was motivated to learn new art skills as a way to cope with her busy schedule.

“I was going through a tough time during my junior year of college with classes and clubs,” she said. “With no time to hang out with friends or decompress, my only source of comfort was learning something new every night for 20 minutes.”

Her passion for 3D creation quickly became evident. While Janice.Journal does consulting work during the day, she deep-dives into 3D creation at night, creating stunning scenes and tutorials to help other artists get started.

One of her recent projects involved using the free NVIDIA Canvas beta app, which uses AI to interpret basic lines and shapes, translating them into realistic landscape images and textures.

In the above video, Janice.Journal aimed to create the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” a giant arch inspired by the natural sandstone formations in Arches National Park in Utah.

“I wanted to create something that looked familiar enough where you could conceive to see it on ‘National Geographic’ but would still seem fantastical, awe-inspiring and simultaneously make the viewer question if it was real or fake,” said Janice.Journal.

Using Canvas’s 20 material brushes and nine style images, each with 10 variations, Janice.Journal got to work.

She said she “got a bit carried away” on Canvas, resulting in an incredible masterpiece.

Janice.Journal then had the option to export her painting into either a PNG or layered PSD file format to import into graphic design apps like Adobe Photoshop.

Canvas is especially useful for concept artists looking to rapidly explore new ideas and for architects aiming to quickly draft backdrops and environments for buildings. With Canvas, Janice.Journal could rapidly paint a landscape without having to search for hours for the perfect stock photo, saving her valuable time to hone her 3D skills instead.

“I’m still blown away trying it out for myself,” said Janice.Journal. “Seeing my simple drawings turn into fully HD images is wild — it really reminds me that the future is now.”

Download NVIDIA Canvas, free for NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards owners.

A Better Blender Render With AI

Janice.Journal’s portfolio features bright, vibrant visuals with a soft touch. Her 3D scene “Gameboy” features two levels — no, not gaming levels, but living quarters built into a Gameboy, bringing to life every child’s dream.

Most artists start with a rough physical sketch to get concepts on paper, then move to Blender to block out basic shapes and sculpt models in finer detail.

AI shines at this point in the workflow. Janice.Journal’s GeForce RTX 3090 GPU-powered system unlocks Blender’s Cycles RTX-accelerated OptiX ray tracing in the viewport, reducing noise and improving interactivity in the viewport for fluid movement with photorealistic visuals.

“Simply put, GPU acceleration and AI allow me to see renders in real time as they process modeling, lighting and the entire environment, enabling a preview as if I were to hit ‘render’ right away,” said Janice.Journal. “It makes life 10 times easier for me.”

Janice.Journal has also been experimenting with AI-generated images as a way to brainstorm concepts and push creative boundaries — in her opinion, the most optimal use of AI.

Once everything has been modeled, Janice.Journal adds textures by playing around in Blender, applying clay shaders or displacement modifiers for “bumpier” textures. Then, she adds lighting and finishing touches to complete the ambience of the scene.

Check out Janice.Journal on TikTok.

Follow NVIDIA Studio on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Access tutorials on the Studio YouTube channel and get updates directly in your inbox by subscribing to the Studio newsletter. 

Companies are discovering how accelerated computing can boost their bottom lines while making a positive impact on the planet.

The NVIDIA RAPIDS Accelerator for Apache Spark, software that speeds data analytics, not only raises performance and lowers costs, it increases energy efficiency, too. That means it can help companies meet goals for net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

A new benchmark shows that the RAPIDS Accelerator can reduce a company’s carbon footprint by as much as 80% while delivering 5x average speedups and 4x reductions in computing costs.

That’s a big win many can enjoy. Thousands of companies, including 80% of the Fortune 500, use Apache Spark to analyze their growing mountains of data.

In fact, if every Apache Spark user adopted the RAPIDS Accelerator, they could collectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions by a whopping 7.8 metric tons a year — or the amount of emissions a car produces on 878 gallons of gas. It’s a great example of how green computing can advance the fight against climate change.

A Challenge for Humankind

More than 70 countries have set a net-zero target for greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations. It describes the transition to net-zero as “one of the greatest challenges humankind has faced.”

Companies are getting on board, too.

For example, NVIDIA is working with a large financial services company to test Apache Spark for real-time fraud protection. The company hopes to lower its carbon footprint with accelerated computing so it can align with groups like the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.

One of the world’s largest AI supercomputers validated the energy efficiency of accelerated computing in May.

Across four popular scientific applications, the Perlmutter system at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) reported energy efficiency gains of 5x on average, thanks to NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. An application for weather forecasting logged speed-ups of 9.8x compared to CPUs.

AT&T Dials Up RAPIDS Accelerator

Organizations like AT&T, Adobe and the Internal Revenue Service have already discovered the performance and cost benefits of the RAPIDS Accelerator.

In a test last year, AT&T processed a month’s worth of mobile data — 2.8 trillion rows of information — in just five hours. That’s 3.3x faster at 60% lower cost than any prior test.

“It was a ‘wow’ moment because on CPU clusters, it takes more than 48 hours to process just seven days of data — in the past, we had the data but couldn’t use it because it took such a long time to process it,” said Abhay Dabholkar, an AI architect at AT&T, in a blog.

“We recommend that if a job is taking too long and you have a lot of data, turn on GPUs — with Spark, the same code that runs on CPUs runs on GPUs,” he added.

Adobe Speeds Services

Adobe used accelerated computing on its Intelligent Services platform, which helps marketing teams speed analytics with AI.

It found that, using the RAPIDS Accelerator, a single NVIDIA GPU node could outperform a 16-node CPU cluster by 33% while slashing computing costs by 70%.

In a separate test, GPU-accelerated RAPIDS libraries trained an AI model 7x faster, saving 90% of the cost of running the same job on CPUs.

“This is an amazing cost savings and speed-up,” said Lei Zhang, a machine learning engineer at Adobe in a talk at GTC (free with registration).

20x Gains on Spark

CPUs weren’t powerful enough to ingest the 3+ terabyte dataset it needed to analyze, so the IRS turned to the RAPIDS Accelerator.

A Spark cluster of GPU-powered servers processed the load and opened the door to tackling even bigger datasets.

“We’re currently implementing this integration and already seeing over 20x speed improvements at half the cost for our data engineering and data science workflows,” said Joe Ansaldi, technical branch chief of the research and applied analytics and statistics division at the IRS, in a blog.

How to Get Started

Performance speedups and cost savings vary across workloads. That’s why NVIDIA offers an accelerated Spark analysis tool.

The tool shows users what the RAPIDS Accelerator can deliver on their applications without any code changes. It also helps users tune GPU acceleration to get the best results on their workloads.

Once the RAPIDS Accelerator is boosting the bottom line, companies can calculate their energy savings and report their progress in protecting the planet.

Learn more in this solution brief. And watch the video below to see how the Cloudera Data Platform delivered a 44x speedup with the RAPIDS Accelerator for Apache Spark.

As part of NVIDIA and Microsoft’s collaboration to bring more choice to gamers, new Microsoft Store integration has been added to GeForce NOW that lets gamers stream select titles from the Xbox PC Game Pass catalog on GeForce NOW, starting today.

With the Microsoft Store integration, members will see a brand-new Xbox button on supported PC games and can seamlessly launch these titles across their devices, provided they either purchased the standalone games through the Microsoft Store or have an active Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscription.

Hot off our recent Gamescom announcement, four blockbuster titles are coming to GeForce NOW this fall: Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty expansion, Party Animals and PAYDAY 3.

Plus, head to the cloud and stream the 25 new titles joining the cloud this week, including DOOM 2016 from Bethesda.

Members have also been playing the GeForce NOW Ultimate KovaaK’s challenge, raising the bar with 240 frames per second streaming using an Ultimate membership. Check out the leaderboard to see how Ultimate members are stacking up against other GeForce NOW members — top scorers have a chance to win some ultimate prizes through Thursday, Sept. 21, including a six-month Xbox PC Game Pass.

Select PC Game Pass Titles Now Available

Give a warm welcome to the Microsoft Store on GeForce NOW. It joins digital platforms Steam, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect and others in the cloud. Experience it today with hit Xbox PC games from Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda and other top publishers recently added to GeForce NOW,  like Fatshark, Paradox and TaleWorld Entertainment.

With a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership, stream popular shooters Gears 5 and Deathloop with the highest graphical fidelity. Embark on a mini-adventure on the big screen by shrinking to the size of an ant in Grounded. Or enjoy the historical narrative Pentiment while on the go with a mobile device.

Take a deep dive into history with titles from the Age of Empires series on a Chromebook and a comfy throne of your own or experience an alternative version of history in the newly added Wolfenstein II: New Colossus and Wolfenstein: Youngblood titles with the power of 4K streaming on NVIDIA SHIELD.

Lead armies in TaleWorld Entertainment’s action role-playing game Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, take on hordes of enemies in Fatshark’s action shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide or explore infinite worlds in Hello Game’s No Man’s Sky. 

Keep an eye out for more games from Xbox’s PC Game Pass library to be added to GeForce NOW. Check out this article for more details on how Xbox PC Game Pass will work on GeForce NOW.

And this week only, on top of being able to win a six-month Ultimate membership and $100 Steam gift card for making it into the top three on the weekly leaderboard of the Ultimate KovaaK’s challenge, those who make it into the top 10 will get a six-month Xbox PC Game Pass. Keep an eye out on GeForce NOW’s Twitter and Facebook accounts for more details.

Straight Out of Gamescom

Top publishers Epic Games Publishing, CD Projekt Red and Deep Silver are all bringing their blockbuster titles to GeForce NOW at launch in the fall.

Uncover the newest mystery in the upcoming survival horror game Alan Wake 2, sequel to the award-winning game Alan Wake, from Remedy Entertainment and Epic Games Publishing. Survive as the best-selling horror writer Alan Wake — who’s trapped in a dark dimension and trying to write his way out — or as FBI agent Saga Anderson in a life-or-death race to solve a small-town murder that quickly spirals into a nightmare.

Play through two distinct stories set in two beautiful yet terrifying worlds and see events unfold from different perspectives. The characters must take on powerful supernatural enemies and use more than just a gun to survive: light is the ultimate weapon in the fight against darkness. Members can stream the game from the cloud when it launches on Tuesday, Oct. 27.

Return as cyber-enhanced mercenary V in the upcoming spy-thriller expansion for the hit open-world action adventure Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red. Phantom Liberty features the all-new district of Dogtown, infinitely replayable open-world activities, an exclusive skill tree and much more — including  new weapons, cyberware, vehicles and gigs for players to discover. Embark on a high-stakes mission of espionage and intrigue to save the NUS President when the expansion launches in the cloud on Tuesday, Sept. 26.

Join the Payday Gang in the upcoming third installment of the PAYDAY franchise from Starbeeze Studios, Overkill Software and Deep Silver. In PAYDAY 3, play as notorious criminals who must face off against new enemies and challenges in an action-packed, high-octane experience. Invite your friends to the four-player online co-op mode to pull off the ultimate heist when the title launches on GeForce NOW on Thursday, Sept. 21.

These games are all headed to the cloud this fall. Upgrade to an Ultimate membership today to skip the waiting lines over free members and get access to powerful NVIDIA technology, including RTX ON and DLSS 3.5 technology for AI-powered graphics and peak-performance gaming.

Welcome to the Cloud

The next Bethesda game to heat up the cloud is DOOM 2016. Fight through hordes of demonic forces on Mars after waking up on a Union Aerospace Corporation energy-mining facility. Play as the Doom Slayer, an unnamed space marine from the DOOM franchise, and use a variety of weapons, gadgets and melee attacks in this fast-paced, first-person shooter. Plus, several online multiplayer modes are available, so members can grab some buddies to stream with.

Catch the full list of games joining the cloud this week:

• WrestleQuest (New release on Steam, Aug. 21)
• Jumplight Odyssey (New release on Steam, Aug. 21)
• Blasphemous 2 (New release on Steam, Aug. 24)
• RIDE 5 (New release on Steam, Aug. 24)
• Age of Empires: Definitive Edition (Xbox)
• Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition (Xbox)
• Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition (Xbox)
• Crusader Kings III (Xbox)
• Dead Cells (Xbox)
• Deathloop (Xbox)
• Doom 2016 (Steam)
• Gears 5 (Xbox)
• Grounded (Xbox)
• Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord (Xbox)
• No Man’s Sky (Xbox)
• Pentiment (Xbox)
• Quake (Xbox)
• Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director’s Cut (Xbox)
• Stellaris (Xbox)
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Xbox)
• Trackmania (Steam)
• Valheim (Xbox)
• Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (Xbox)
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Xbox)
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Xbox)

This week’s Game On giveaway with SteelSeries includes Destiny 2 and three-day Priority membership codes. Check the giveaway page for details on how to enter.

What games are you looking forward to? Let us know on Twitter or in the comments below.

#Gamescom2023 announcements… amirite?

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) August 23, 2023

Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks, and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology improves creative workflows. We’re also deep diving on new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU features, technologies and resources, and how they dramatically accelerate content creation.

Gamescom, the biggest gaming event of the year, kicks off tomorrow in Cologne, Germany, but gamers and content creators can find some of the latest innovations, tools and AI-powered tech this week In the NVIDIA Studio.

On the eve of the show’s official opening, NVIDIA announced NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 featuring Ray Reconstruction — a new neural rendering AI model that creates more beautiful and realistic ray-traced visuals than traditional rendering methods — for real-time 3D creative apps and games.

NVIDIA RTX Remix, a free modding platform built on NVIDIA Omniverse and available now, gives people the tools to create and share #RTXON mods for classic games. We also announced Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, a community remaster project of Valve’s Half-Life 2, one of the highest-rated games of all time.

This week’s In the NVIDIA Studio installment also features digital artist Diyor Makhmudov’s 3D work, inspired by the extraordinary gaming franchise The Witcher.

Reallusion software released an update to the iClone Omniverse Connector, including real-time synchronization of projects and enhanced import functionality for OpenUSD, enabling quicker, more efficient workflows. Learn more in the latest edition of the Into the Omniverse series.

Finally, calling all video editors to sign up for the premiere DaVinci Resolve event — ResolveCon — in Portland, Oregon, from Aug. 25-27. In-person attendees can win giveaways, including new GeForce RTX GPUs, while virtual attendees can view tutorials livestreamed by In the NVIDIA Studio artist Casey Faris.

Next-Level Graphical Fidelity With DLSS 3.5 

NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 adds Ray Reconstruction, which improves ray-traced image quality for all GeForce RTX GPUs by replacing hand-tuned denoisers with an NVIDIA supercomputer-trained AI network that generates higher-quality pixels in between sampled rays.

Seeing is believing — watch the Tech Talk with NVIDIA Vice President of Applied Deep Learning Research Bryan Catanzaro to learn how DLSS 3.5 works.

Creative apps with ray-traced renderers face a wide variety of content that is difficult for traditional denoisers to handle, as they require hand-tuning for every scene. As a result, content previews return suboptimal image quality. With DLSS 3.5, the AI neural network recognizes a wide variety of scenes, producing high-quality images during preview and before committing hours to a final render.

D5 Render and Chaos Vantage, two popular professional-grade 3D apps for architects and designers, feature real-time preview modes with ray tracing. With DLSS 3.5, the AI neural network replaces the denoisers, inferring and producing higher-quality previews while building and iterating.

Popular creative apps Chaos Vantage, D5 Render and NVIDIA Omniverse, as well as popular gaming titles Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Portal with RTX, are all adding support for NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 this fall.

Developers will be able to seamlessly integrate DLSS 3.5 with the new Streamline SDK coming soon. Learn more about DLSS 3.5.

Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project

Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is being developed by four of Half-Life 2’s top mod teams, now known as Orbifold Studios.

Using the latest version of RTX Remix, Orbifold Studios is rebuilding materials with physically based rendering properties, adding extra geometric detail with Valve’s Hammer editor and using the full range of NVIDIA technologies, including NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA RTX IO and NVIDIA Reflex, to breathe new life into the critically acclaimed title.

As with Portal with RTX, a high-fidelity reimagining of Valve’s timeless classic, and Portal: Prelude RTX, built by community modders, nearly every asset in Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is being reconstructed in high fidelity and with full ray tracing (otherwise known as path tracing, enabling advanced rendering techniques. Compared to the original, some assets feature 20x the geometric detail.

Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is early in development and is a community effort looking to galvanize talented modders and artists everywhere. To join the project, apply via the Orbifold Studios website.

Eat. Sleep. Game. Create. Repeat.

Already building 3D scenes in immaculate detail, 19-year-old digital creator and 3D lighting artist Diyorbek Makhmudov has the savvy skills of an industry veteran and a bright future ahead.

Makhmudov has always had a deep-rooted passion for gaming, gaining inspiration from the 3D worlds of his favorite games. Most notably, The Witcher franchise has fueled him to create 3D worlds that showcase his own signature look and feel.

Unlike many content creators featured In the NVIDIA Studio, Makhmudov doesn’t like to bring his own life experience into the creative process, enjoying the escapism offered by world-building.

“I like to immerse myself in another universe,” said Makhmudov. “I don’t like to express my feelings, thoughts or emotions in my creations.”

Makhmudov follows standard 3D creative workflow practices: gathering reference material, prepping materials, shaping environments and tinkering with materials, textures and colors. But it’s in 3D creation where he really shines.

Makhmudov uses his preferred 3D app — Cinema 4D — to achieve smooth interactivity while working with complex 3D models thanks to the NVIDIA GPU-accelerated viewport. It’s powered by a GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, which offers considerable increases in efficiency while fueling creativity.

In the video above, Makhmudov is able to move within the scene, tinkering while the scene renders in real time.

Cinema 4D also supports several popular GPU-accelerated renderers such as Chaos V-Ray, OTOY OctaneRender and Maxon’s Redshift. This flexibility allows Makhmudov to use whichever best suits his needs.

“Redshift is fast, has a good light-linking system and I have almost full control over everything,” said Makhmudov. He prefers OctaneRender for exporting ultra-realistic renders quickly. The built-in Cinema 4D render is also a speedy option. The only thing he can’t do is work on a CPU alone because, to quote Makhmudov, “It’s very slow.”

“When you do personal work, it pushes you more to achieve a good result,” said Makhmudov. “As a bonus, that big portfolio will be a major advantage in your job search.”

Check out Makhmudov on ArtStation.

Follow NVIDIA Studio on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Access tutorials on the Studio YouTube channel and get updates directly in your inbox by subscribing to the Studio newsletter. 

Get started with NVIDIA Omniverse by downloading the standard license free, or learn how Omniverse Enterprise can connect your team. Developers can get started with Omniverse resources. Stay up to date on the platform by subscribing to the newsletter, and follow NVIDIA Omniverse on Instagram, Medium and Twitter. 

For more, join the Omniverse community and check out the Omniverse forums, Discord server, Twitch and YouTube channels.

The latest advancements in AI for gaming are in the spotlight today at Gamescom, the world’s largest gaming conference, as NVIDIA introduced a host of technologies, starting with DLSS 3.5, the next step forward of its breakthrough AI neural rendering technology.

DLSS 3.5, NVIDIA’s latest innovation in AI-powered graphics is an image quality upgrade incorporated into the fall’s hottest ray-traced titles, from Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty to Alan Wake 2 to Portal with RTX.

But NVIDIA didn’t stop there. DLSS is coming to more AAA blockbusters; emotion is being added to AI-powered non-playable characters (NPCs); Xbox Game Pass titles are coming to the GeForce NOW cloud-gaming service; and upgrades to GeForce NOW servers are underway.

DLSS 3.5 Introduces Ray Reconstruction

The biggest news? The introduction of Ray Reconstruction in DLSS 3.5, a groundbreaking feature that elevates ray-traced image quality for all GeForce RTX GPUs, outclassing traditional hand-tuned denoisers with an AI network trained by an NVIDIA supercomputer.

The result improves lighting effects like reflections, global illumination, and shadows to create a more immersive, realistic gaming experience.

Denoising is used in ray-traced computer graphics to fill in missing pixels to more efficiently composite a final image. NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 is trained on 5x more training data than DLSS 3, so it can recognize different ray-traced effects and make smarter decisions about when to use temporal and spatial data.

DLSS, first released in February 2019, has gotten a number of major upgrades improving both image quality and performance.

Ray Reconstruction is now included as part of DLSS 3.5, which offers a suite of AI rendering technologies powered by Tensor Cores on GeForce RTX GPUs for faster frame rates, better image quality, and great responsiveness.

DLSS 3.5 includes Ray Reconstruction, Super Resolution, Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing and Frame Generation.

NVIDIA announced that upcoming blockbusters Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Portal with RTX will use NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 this fall.

DLSS 3.5 also improves image quality in real-time 3D creator applications and allows 3D creator professionals to showcase a higher-quality image without spending minutes or hours for the final render.

Ray Reconstruction will be included in upcoming releases of D5 Render, Chaos Vantage and NVIDIA Omniverse, a development platform for connecting and building 3D tools and applications.

DLSS is now featured in over 330 games and apps. And this fall’s biggest blockbusters will launch with DLSS 3, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, PAYDAY 3 and Fortnite.

NVIDIA Reflex Comes to More Games

In addition, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, PAYDAY 3, Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and more will launch with NVIDIA Reflex, which reduces system latency so gamers’ actions occur quicker, providing a competitive edge in multiplayer matches and making single-player titles more responsive and enjoyable.

And Reflex is already increasing gamers’ competitiveness in the latest editions of wildly popular franchises, with APEX Legends Season 18 and Overwatch 2 Invasion.

NVIDIA Reflex is now used by over 50 million players each month. It’s available in 9 of the top 10 competitive shooters, including the Counter-Strike 2 beta, and is activated by 90% of GeForce gamers in over 70 supported titles.

Half-Life 2 RTX, An RTX Remix Community Project

Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is an in-development community remaster of one of the highest-rated games of all time, Valve’s Half-Life 2.  Being developed by four of Half-Life 2’s top mod teams using RTX Remix, Half-Life 2 RTX will feature full ray tracing, DLSS 3, Reflex and RTX IO.

AI-Powered NPCs Get More Emotion With NeMo SteerLM

Bringing more AI to gaming, NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) introduces NeMo SteerLM. This new training technique enables developers to customize the personality of NPCs for more emotive, realistic, and memorable interactions.

ACE is a custom AI model foundry that aims to bring intelligence to NPCs through AI-powered natural language interactions.

New Games, New SuperPODS Come to GeForce NOW

GeForce NOW also gets new games as Ultimate members connect to more powerful servers.

NVIDIA announced GeForce RTX 4080 SuperPODs are now fully deployed throughout North America and Europe, bringing exclusive access to RTX 4080-class servers to Ultimate members.

Those servers will be kept plenty busy.

Coming soon, GeForce NOW members can stream AAA titles Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty DLC, PAYDAY 3 and Party Animals at launch from the cloud gaming service.

As part of NVIDIA and Microsoft’s collaboration to bring more choice to gamers, Microsoft Store integration will be added to GeForce NOW in the coming days.

Members will soon be able to stream over ten supported Xbox PC Game Pass titles at GeForce RTX 4080 quality across devices of their choice. More games from Xbox’s PC Game Pass library will be added to GeForce NOW on a regular basis.

Head to the cloud and stream new titles joining later this week, including DOOM 2016 from Bethesda.

See DLSS 3.5 in Action at Gamescom

DLSS 3.5 is being demonstrated in NVIDIA’s booth (hall 2.1, booth A10) at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, August 23-27.

Bill Dally — one of the world’s foremost computer scientists and head of NVIDIA’s research efforts — will describe the forces driving accelerated computing and AI in his keynote address at Hot Chips, an annual gathering of leading processor and system architects.

Dally will detail advances in GPU silicon, systems and software that are delivering unprecedented performance gains for a wide range of applications. The talk will show how techniques such as mixed-precision computing, high-speed interconnects and sparsity can take the large language models driving generative AI forward to the next level.

“It’s a really exciting time to be a computer engineer,” said Dally in February, when he was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council’s Hall of Fame.

Dally’s keynote will kick off the third day of Hot Chips at 9 a.m. PT on Aug. 29.

Registration is available online to attend the event virtually. The live event  at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, is already sold out.

In a career spanning nearly four decades, Dally has pioneered many of the fundamental technologies underlying today’s supercomputer and networking architectures. As head of NVIDIA Research, he leads a team of more than 300 around the globe who are inventing technologies for a wide variety of applications, including AI, HPC, graphics and networking.

Prior to joining NVIDIA in 2009 as chief scientist and senior vice president of research, he chaired Stanford University’s computer science department for some four years.

Dally is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery.

He’s written four textbooks, published more than 250 papers and holds over 120 patents, and has received the IEEE Seymour Cray Award, ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award and ACM Maurice Wilkes Award.

More NVIDIA Talks at Hot Chips

In a separate Hot Chips talk, Kevin Deierling, vice president of networking at NVIDIA, will describe the flexibility of NVIDIA BlueField DPUs and NVIDIA Spectrum networking switches for allocating resources based on changing network traffic and user rules.

A new benchmark result for the NVIDIA Grace CPU Superchip will be part of a talk by Arm on leadership performance and power efficiency for next-generation cloud computing.

The event begins Sunday, Aug. 27, with a full day of tutorials, including talks from NVIDIA experts on AI inference and chip-to-chip interconnects.

The verdict is in: A GeForce NOW Ultimate membership raises the bar on gaming. Members have been tackling the Ultimate KovvaK’s challenge head-on and seeing for themselves how the power of Ultimate improves their gaming with 240 frames per second streaming.

The popular training title that helps gamers improve their aim fully launches in the cloud this week alongside a limited-time discount on Steam. KovaaK’s leads over 20 new games joining the GeForce NOW library this week.

Gamers Take Their Best Shot at QuakeCon

Droves of PC gaming fans converged at the GeForce NOW Lounge at QuakeCon over the weekend to take on the Ultimate KovaaK’s challenge. Attendees were among the first to play a custom GeForce NOW KovaaK’s demo — first on a free membership and then with 240 fps streaming on an Ultimate membership.

And it was clear just how much streaming from a GeForce RTX 4080 gaming rig changes the game. Over 58,000 sessions have been completed since the start of the challenge, and participants immediately saw their gaming scores improve by 1.6x just from playing on an Ultimate membership.

Attendees played for top placement on the QuakeCon leaderboard to win both bragging rights and some ultimate prizes. The top three slots on the leaderboard on each of the three days of the show, as well as the top overall slots were dominated by those using an Ultimate membership. Here’s what a few of them they had to say about Ultimate:

“This [Ultimate Tier] is a lot smoother — the responsiveness is great.” – David G.

“… there is so much clarity [with the Ultimate tier]” – Gordan M.

Raisy, a professional Quake champion player and second on the QuakeCon leaderboard, also weighed in on the Ultimate tier: “The smoother the gameplay, the better the experience.”

And Garrett “KovaaK” Krutilla, the co-founder and director of FPS design from The Meta, the developer of KovaaK’s, said: “The Ultimate membership provides a perfect place to train up on KovaaK’s, with access to powerful GeForce RTX 4080 servers for 240 fps streaming and ultra-low latency from NVIDIA Reflex. The scores that top players are getting on Ultimate prove that NVIDIA has made cloud gaming completely viable for competitive gamers in the FPS space.”

Members can still play the challenge at home. Each week, the leaderboard will reset for members to compete for the top three slots to win a six-month GeForce NOW Ultimate membership and a $100 Steam gift card. At the end of the challenge on Thursday, Sept. 21, the top three overall scorers will win:

First place: ASUS ROG Swift 240Hz monitor

Second place: ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip

Third place: ASUS ROG Azoth and ROG Gladius III keyboard + mouse bundle

Upgrade to Ultimate today for the best performance in the cloud, up to eight-hour gaming sessions and exclusive access to RTX 4080 servers in the cloud.

Aiming for the Clouds

Members can now experience KovaaK’s in its entirety, now available for members to stream from the cloud.

Dominate every first- and third-person shooter game by training with KovaaK’s. Trusted by top pros, streamers and other gamers, the incredibly latency-sensitive aim trainer features over 175,000 player-created scenarios and shareable playlists, infinite customization options and cloned game physics. Members can even share their stats and achievements on KovaaKs.com.

The cherry on top: Members can level up with KovaaK’s at a 30% discount until Thursday, Aug. 21. Grab it today and train for more competitive gaming in the cloud. Pair it with an Ultimate membership for a 240 fps advantage and get used to being called a human aimbot.

The Cloud Is Buzzing

A new week brings more games to buzz about.

Experience the mad and macabre in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from Sumo Digital and Gun Interactive. Take on the role of a notorious Slaughter family member or one of their victims in this third-person, asymmetrical horror experience based on the iconic 1974 film. Victims must use their wits and stealth to stay out of the family’s reach while Slaughter family players must track down and stop their guests from escaping. It launches day and date in the cloud this week.

Wayfinder is a new online action role-playing game from Airship Syndicate and Digital Extremes. Harness the power of a Wayfinder to control the chaos overrunning the world of Evenor. Wield a variety of unique abilities, from ebbing arcane magic and lethal melee to mystical tech. Wayfinders are stronger together, so grab a couple of buddies and stream together.

And Genshin Impact’s new Version 4.0 is now available to stream. Say hello to the long-awaited Nation of Hydro region Fontaine — a whole new area for travelers to explore — as well as new characters, weapons, artifacts and more. Play it from the cloud without worrying about system specs or hard drive space.

Members can look forward to the 22 new games joining this week:

• Desynced (New release on Steam, Aug. 15)
• Hammerwatch II (New release on Steam, Aug. 15)
• Moving Out 2 (New release on Steam, Aug. 15)
• The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (New release on Steam, Aug. 16)
• Book of Hours (New release on Steam, Aug. 17)
• Gord (New release on Steam, Aug. 17)
• Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (New release on Steam, Aug. 17)
• Wayfinder (New release on Steam, Aug. 17)
• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (New release on Steam, Aug. 18)
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (New release on Steam, Aug. 18)
• Age of Wonders 4 (Epic Games Store)
• Amnesia: The Bunker (Epic Games Store)
• Darkest Dungeon II (Epic Games Store)
• F1 Manager 2023 (Epic Games Store)
• The Great War: Western Front (Epic Games Store)
• Inkbound (Steam)
• Kovaak’s FPS Trainer (Steam)
• The Outlast Trials (Epic Games Store)
• Project Highrise (Epic Games Store)
• Regiments (Steam)
• Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga (Epic Games Store)
• System Shock (Epic Games Store)

This week’s Game On giveaway with SteelSeries includes Genshin Impact in-game rewards and three-day Priority membership codes. Check the giveaway page for details on how to enter.

Where are you in the leaderboard for the Ultimate KovaaK’s challenge ? Let us know your answer on Twitter or in the comments below.

We aim to please.

Share your current #GFNUltimateChallenge high score below!

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) August 16, 2023

Editor’s note: This post is part of Into the Omniverse, a series focused on how artists, developers and enterprises can transform their workflows using the latest advances in OpenUSD and NVIDIA Omniverse.

Whether animating a single 3D character or generating a group of them for industrial digitalization, creators and developers who use the popular Reallusion software can boost their workflows with the latest update to the iClone Omniverse Connector released this month.

The upgrade enables seamless collaboration and expands creative possibilities for creators using NVIDIA Omniverse, a development platform for connecting and building OpenUSD-based tools and applications.

New features include real-time synchronization of projects, as well as enhanced import functionality for the Universal Scene Description framework, known as OpenUSD, which makes work between iClone and Omniverse quicker, smoother and more efficient. The update also comes with bug fixes and improvements.

Animating 3D Characters Better, Together

Creators across the world are using Reallusion iClone, a real-time 3D animation software, to bring their characters to life.

Solomon Jagwe — a 3D artist, animator and award-winning film director — uses Reallusion iClone and Omniverse for his work, which often focuses on environmental themes.

Jagwe, who grew up in East Africa, recalls fond childhood memories drawing the creatures he’d see when he ventured into the countryside with his brother. Even now, much of his 3D work begins with a simple sketch using pen and paper.

The artist said he always strives to create art that makes a difference.

For example, Jagwe created Adventures of Nkoza and Nankya, a video series for educating people of all ages on Ugandan culture. He modeled the sets for the series in Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya, animated in Reallusion iClone and composed in Omniverse.

“With the iClone Connector for Omniverse, I can easily render my iClone animations in Omniverse and take advantage of the iClone animation tools in combination with the Omniverse Audio2Face generative AI capabilities,” Jagwe said.

Jagwe’s entire creative pipeline is accelerated by USD, which acts as a common language between 3D applications and enables sharing full scenes across content-creation tools.

“OpenUSD makes it so much easier to transport all the textures and characters together in one place for animation,” Jagwe said. The artist added that he hopes his work inspires other indie filmmakers to bring their story ideas to life using iClone and Omniverse.

A scene from Jagwe’s educational series, “Adventures of Nkoza and Nankya.”

Another indie filmmaker, Benjamin Sokomba Dazhi, aka Benny Dee, has also mastered the art of animation. He’s landed roles as head animator for the film The Legend of Oronpoto as well as creator and director of the Cartoon Network Africa Dance Challenge.

Dazhi uses Omniverse with Reallusion’s iClone and Character Creator to supercharge his artistic workflow.

“The main challenges I faced when trying to meet deadlines were long render times and difficulties with software compatibility, but using an Omniverse Connector for Reallusion’s iClone app has been game-changing for my workflow,” he said.

A scene from one of Dhazi’s animated music videos.

Several other Omniverse community members recently joined a livestream to share their workflows using Reallusion and Omniverse. Watch the stream on demand:

Sync in Style With New Connector Updates

The updated Reallusion iClone Connector for Omniverse offers powerful integrations between the two platforms.

Users can now seamlessly synchronize their projects in real time thanks to new bidirectional live-sync capabilities. This means changes made in either iClone or Omniverse can be automatically reflected back to the other. Such bidirectional synchronization can be applied to animation-related changes for characters, such as skeletal and morph animation.

The iClone Connector also enables enhanced USD import capabilities. Users can now import static meshes, cameras and lights from Omniverse directly into iClone. This improved functionality includes a filter that allows importing assets with optimal efficiency based on their types.

See how designers can now preview Omniverse renders in real time while animating in iClone, as they enjoy seamless two-way USD data transfer:

Get Plugged Into the Omniverse 

Don’t miss our community livestream next week with Reallusion VP John Martin to learn all about the ways the iClone Omniverse Connector can advance your 3D character animation pipeline.

Watch NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address at SIGGRAPH on demand to learn about the latest breakthroughs in graphics, research, OpenUSD and AI.

Like Reallusion, learn how anyone can build their own Omniverse extension or Connector to enhance their 3D workflows and tools.

Share your Reallusion and Omniverse work as part of the latest community challenge, #StartToFinish. Use the hashtag to submit a screenshot of a project featuring both its beginning and ending stages for a chance to be featured on the @NVIDIAStudio and @NVIDIAOmniverse social channels.

Get started with NVIDIA Omniverse by downloading the standard license free, or learn how Omniverse Enterprise can connect your team.
Developers can check out these Omniverse resources to begin building on the platform.

Stay up to date on the platform by subscribing to the newsletter and following NVIDIA Omniverse on Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, Threads and Twitter.

For more, check out our forums, Discord server, Twitch and YouTube channels.

Featured image courtesy of Reallusion.

When it comes to preserving profit margins, data scientists for vehicle and parts manufacturers are sitting in the driver’s seat.

Viaduct, which develops models for time-series inference, is helping enterprises harvest failure insights from the data captured on today’s connected cars. It does so by tapping into sensor data and making correlations.

The four-year-old startup, based in Menlo Park, Calif., offers a platform to detect anomalous patterns, track issues, and deploy failure predictions. This enables automakers and parts suppliers to get in front of problems with real-time data to reduce warranty claims, recalls and defects, said David Hallac, the founder and CEO of Viaduct.

“Viaduct has deployed on more than 2 million vehicles, helped avoid 500,000 hours of downtime and saved hundreds of millions of dollars in warranty costs across the industry,” he said.

The company relies on NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs and the NVIDIA Time Series Prediction Platform (TSPP) framework for training, tuning and deploying time-series models, which are used to forecast data.

Viaduct has deployed with more than five major manufacturers of passenger cars and commercial trucks, according to the company.

“Customers see it as a huge savings — the things that we are affecting are big in terms of profitability,” said Hallac. “It’s downtime impact, it’s warranty impact and it’s product development inefficiency.”

Viaduct is a member of NVIDIA Inception, a program that provides companies with technology support and AI platforms guidance.

How It Started: Research Hits the Road

Hallac’s path to Viaduct began at Stanford University. While he was a Ph.D. student there, Volkswagen came to the lab he was at with sensor data collected from more than 60 drivers over the course of several months and a research grant to explore uses.

The question the researchers delved into was how to understand the patterns and trends in the sizable body of vehicle data collected over months.

The Stanford researchers in coordination with Volkswagen Electronics Research Laboratory released a paper on the work, which highlighted Drive2Vec, a deep learning method for embedding sensor data.

“We developed a bunch of algorithms focused on structural inference from high-dimensional time-series data. We were discovering useful insights, and we were able to help companies train and deploy predictive algorithms at scale,” he said.

Developing a Knowledge Graph for Insights With up to 10x Inference

Viaduct handles time-series analytics with its TSI engine, which aggregates manufacturing, telematics and service data. Its model was trained with A100 GPUs tapping into NVIDIA TSPP.

“We describe it as a knowledge graph — we’re building this knowledge graph of all the different sensors and signals and how they correlate with each other,” Hallac said.

Several key features are generated using the Drive2Vec autoencoder for embedding sensor data. Correlations are learned via a Markov random field inference process, and the time series predictions tap into the NVIDIA TSPP framework.

NVIDIA GPUs on this platform enable Viaduct to achieve as much as a 30x better inference accuracy compared with CPU systems running logistics regression and gradient boosting algorithms, Hallac said.

Protecting Profits With Proactive AI

One vehicle maker using Viaduct’s platform was able to handle some of its issues proactively, fix them and then identify which vehicles were at risk of those issues and only request owners to bring those in for service. This not only affects the warranty claims but also the service desks, which get more visibility into the types of vehicle repairs coming in.

Also, as vehicle and parts manufacturers are partnered on warranties, the results matter for both.

Viaduct reduced warranty costs for one customer by more than $50 million on five issues, according to the startup.

“Everyone wants the information, everyone feels the pain and everyone benefits when the system is optimized,” Hallac said of the potential for cost-savings.

Maintaining Vehicle Reviews Ratings

Viaduct began working with a major automaker last year to help with quality-control issues. The partnership aimed to improve its time-to-identify and time-to-fix post-production quality issues.

The automaker’s JD Power IQS (Initial Quality Study) score had been falling while its warranty costs were climbing, and the company sought to reverse the situation. So, the automaker began using Viaduct’s platform and its TSI engine.

In A/B testing Viaduct’s platform against traditional reactive approaches to quality control, the automaker was able to identify issues on average 53 days earlier during the first year of a vehicle launch. The results saved “tens of millions” in warranty costs and the vehicle’s JD Power quality and reliability score increased “multiple points” compared with the previous model year, according to Hallac.

And Viaduct is getting customer traction that reflects the value of its AI to businesses, he said.

Learn more about NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA TSPP.