Borderlands 2 PhysX and TXAA

In unveiling its new GeForce GTX 680, NVIDIA invited Gearbox Software to demonstrate the new hardware with Borderlands 2. Check out what the press had to say:

The PC version of Gearbox Software’s upcoming Borderlands 2 is set to support many PhysX enhancements. These include water that reacts accurately to a player’s movements, rippling and splashing around the environment as you walk through it. Borderlands 2 also makes use of PhysX to render destruction. For example, fire a rocket launcher into the ground, and huge chunks of earth and gravel fly into the air. The resulting debris settles on the floor, where you can kick it around by walking through it. – GameSpot

TXAA is a combination of hardware anti-aliasing, higher (“film style”) quality AA resolve and optional temporal components for increased quality (in TXAA2) …Not every game will support TXAA right off the bat this coming year, (Borderlands 2 and MechWarrior Online are among a few that already will)… – PC Gamer

At NVIDIA’s Editor’s Day, Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford showed off Borderlands 2 and how it implemented PhysX. Fluids pooled and flowed in complete real-time, and even reacted to explosions — splashing about into numerous smaller puddles. Cloth materials reacted accordingly to foreign objects, and could even be torn and shredded when fired at. It was quite incredible how these effects could be handled with such relative ease in real-time, when just five years ago it took me several hours to render them for 3D animations on a high-end PC. – Destructoid