May 6, 2008

PhysX SDK Error

I ran into a pretty silly error with the Ageia / Nvidia’s PhysX SDK recently. The PhysX documentation didn’t cover the problem (at least that I found) and searching relevant terms on Google didn’t drum up the answer either. Therefore, I will throw this up on my blog to possibly benefit others.

If you get a NXCE_PHYSX_NOT_FOUND error when trying to run PhysX examples after installing the SDK, then the problem is most likely that you don’t have the runtime drivers installed. For some reason, the runtime files aren’t included in the SDK installer (like most SDKs that I have used before).

For instance if you install PhysX_2.7.3_SDK_Core.exe, you will also need to install PhysX_7.11.13_SystemSoftware.exe. Similarly, PhysX_2.8.0_SDK_Core.msi needs PhysX_8.02.13_SystemSoftware.exe.

There may be other ways to get the above error. For instance, some people seem to experience installer problems that fail on DLL registration or registry changes. These reports led me on a wild goose chase. :)