Nvidia is flexing its graphics muscle at the 2012 GPU Technology Conference, and the trio of videos below show off Kepler's new visual tricks. The first video demonstrates Kepler's real-time raytracing — a realistic technique for simulating light as it encounters virtual objects — in concert with complex physics simulations. Watching the light realistically interact with real-time object destruction and fluid simulations is quite impressive.

Update: We've uploaded a new 1080p copy of the raytracing video. Happy viewing!

Another demonstration of Kepler's power pits the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies against one another to dramatic effect. The video shows a simulation of physical bodies — particles representing planets and stars — as they experience gravitational interactions with each other. In the past, Nvidia has been able to simulate 20,000 particles (which amounts to 400 million interactions in each frame), but with Kepler it's able to simulate 280,000 particles.

Finally, Nvidia demonstrates cloud gaming powered by its new GeForce Grid system, which is designed to use distributed graphics to stream low-latency video games from the internet to displays or computers that lack powerful GPUs. Nvidia has partnered with cloud gaming provider Gaikai to deploy the technology, and in this demonstration, Hawken is played smoothly over a remote connection.

Sean Hollister contributed to this report.