Nvidia released the world?s first interactive Microsoft DirectX 10 application in the form of the NVIDIA Cascades demo.

Owners of an NVIDIA GeForce 8-series graphics card and Windows Vista are able to download the Cascades demo (168.6 MB) from Nvidia's nZone website and enjoy a demonstration of next-generation features enabled by DirectX 10, including the generation of content, dynamic particle systems, and high quality scene rendering.

Powered by DirectX 10, the Demo features:

Procedural Geometry Creation: Rock structures are not only rendered, but also constructed by the GeForce 8800. This permits the user to move up or down forever, with the GPU continuously streaming out colossal chunks of rock in a wide variety of random shapes.

Dynamic Particle Physics: The GeForce 8800?s geometry shaders perform all the physics calculations for the water, allowing the waterfalls to collide with the rock surface and to form rivers flowing around the features of the rock. Water particles are generated, propagated, and retired on the GPU, leaving the CPU free to perform other tasks.

Displacement Mapping: Improved displacement mapping techniques use a simple height map in a complex pixel shader to display detailed cracks and bumps that are able to occlude each other, resulting in an extremely high level of realism on the rock surface. GeForce 8 Series GPUS include:

GeForce 8800 GTX - $599-$649
GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB - $399-$449
GeForce 8880 GTS 320MB - $299-$349