CES 2022: Nvidia brings free Omniverse version into GA, unveils new Nvidia Studio laptops

Nvidia on Tuesday announced that a free version of Omniverse, its real-time 3D design, collaboration, and simulation platform, is now generally available to Nvidia GeForce Studio creators with RTX GPUs. This move extends the new platform to millions of individual creators as they start building new content for the virtual sphere. 

“We’ve all been hearing the ‘M word’ an awful lot,” Nvidia’s Omniverse VP Richard Kerris said to reporters this week, referring to the so-called metaverse. While the metaverse, as touted by companies like the newly-named Meta, may seem like hype, Kerris said that “virtual worlds are going to be required for the next era of innovation.”

Omniverse gives 3D designers a shared virtual world from which they can collaborate across different software applications and from different geographic locations. Since its open beta launch a year ago, Omniverse has been downloaded by nearly 100,000 creators. In November, Nvidia launched Omniverse Enterprise, a paid subscription for professional teams. 

At CES, Nvidia also announced new features on the Omniverse platform, including the early access availability of Nucleus Cloud, a “one-click-to-collaborate” feature for sharing large 3D scenes. Additionally, Omniverse Audio2Face, an AI-enabled app that animates a 3D face based on an audio track, now offers support and direct export to Epic’s MetaHuman Creator app. 

Beyond Omniverse, Nvidia on Tuesday announced other new tools for creators, including new Nvidia Studio laptops featuring GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti GPUs. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU features 16GB of the fastest GDDR6 memory ever shipped in a laptop and higher performance than the desktop TITAN RTX. 

RTX 3080 Ti laptops start at $2,499. The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is up to 70% faster than RTX 2070 SUPER laptops and start at $1,499.

ASUS, MSI, and Razer are launching new Studio laptops with these GPUs starting in February. 

All told, Nvidia said manufacturers will deliver more than 160 gaming and Studio laptops based on the Nvidia Ampere architecture, with second-gen RT cores for ray tracing and third-gen Tensor Cores for DLSS and AI.

Meanwhile, a new entry-level GPU, the GeForce RTX 3050, will be available at just $279 beginning January 27. The new GPU should make RTX features like real-time ray tracing, AI, and video acceleration more widely accessible. 

Nvidia on Tuesday also teased the release of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, which will feature 24GB of video memory. 

To further improve laptop performance, Nvidia said it has worked with CPU vendors to develop the CPU Optimizer — a new, low-level framework enabling the GPU to further optimize the performance, temperature, and power of next-gen CPUs. Additionally, Nvidia said the Rapid Core Scaling feature allows a GPU to sense the real-time demands of applications like Adobe Premiere or MatLab so it can use only the cores it needs. This frees up power that allows active cores to run at higher frequencies, delivering more performance. 

Lastly, creators are also getting upgrades to Nvidia Canvas, which uses AI to convert simple brushstrokes into realistic landscape images. The program is now available with 4x higher resolution, an upgraded AI model, and new materials.