Havok re-joins the competition

[rand0m]

Havok Gets Cracking, Fluttering (http://kotaku.com/358266/havok-gets-cracking-fluttering)

The Havok engine just got a much-needed kick in the fluttering cloth pants with the unveiling of Havok Cloth and Havok Destruction at GDC, two products that will provide developers unprecedented control over cloth and destruction in their games. Havok Cloth, as seen in the video above, allows for scalable clothing that will stretch and flow as a character moves, while Havok Destruction is all about breaking stuff - dynamic fracturing, shattering, and deformation of objects. While just a nifty video clip to the layman, this is exactly the sort of thing that gives game developers - male and female alike - intense, uncomfortable erections. Hit the jump for the full press release.

Kick ass. Now I just gotta wait for games that utilise this ...

[trippanator]

Seems Logical Captian

[Cee]

Thrusters 100%

[potatopaper]

I don't see what's so great about it.

[Zero-Man]

the cape movement is pretty damn good

[rand0m]

I don't see what's so great about it.

Well think universally supported DDM. Current tech like Physx requires cards to do the complex physical calculations, the lack of physx enabled pc's has stemed the flow of fully Physx enabled games.

Havok been a broader and more popular middleware, been purely software based allows any game developer to use this technology without worrying about any extra hardware attachments.

Gaming wise, we'll see characters with physically enabled clothing that flows and moves with the character. We'll see fully destructable, deformable and fracturing materials within the gaming world, pushing immersion to new levels.

[SheBear]

Sweet! Now I just need a menacing type robe in a game and I'll look even more badass.

[dysphunktion]

Being as how Nvidia is the leader currently and has more 8 series cards in consumers PC's than I have hair, I think it's safe to say that Havok may not be a s strong a runner as PX. Especially since there will be no hardware required for 8 series owners.

[rand0m]

Being as how Nvidia is the leader currently and has more 8 series cards in consumers PC's than I have hair, I think it's safe to say that Havok may not be a s strong a runner as PX. Especially since there will be no hardware required for 8 series owners.

Urm what?

There are a few 8800's out there, however there are more consoles, there are more <7 series cards and there are also ATi cards.

Oh btw Intel own Havok, so expect optimised Intel drivers and optimised Havok engines for Intel processors.
.

[dysphunktion]

A few 8800's? Hrm. I don't have numbers but I do know that when the various 8800's came out, they -all- sold out within hours. This was at every retailer around. It wasn't due to a shortage of the cards either, but insane demand for bleeding edge. But, consoles will most likely help tilt the scales in favor of Havok. But I really believe PX will be the leader on PCs..

[usefulidiot316]

A few 8800's? Hrm. I don't have numbers but I do know that when the various 8800's came out, they -all- sold out within hours. This was at every retailer around. It wasn't due to a shortage of the cards either, but insane demand for bleeding edge. But, consoles will most likely help tilt the scales in favor of Havok. But I really believe PX will be the leader on PCs..

I think you're right. There are a ton of 8800s out there, and the GeForce 8 series have been around for almost as long as the Core architecture, and anyone who would use physics like that would use them in games, and are more likely to buy a new video card than a new processor. Therefore, it's more likely a person would own a GeForce 8600gt with a Pentium 4 or Athlon X2 than they would own a Core2 with a 7900.

I don't really see PhysX being used for too much longer, though, unless Nvidia plans on dumping a ton of money into R&D for it while continuing to give it away for free to developers and continue to give it away to any GeForce owners and then give it to Radeon owners, too. Havok still has a strong game support, and being owned by Intel won't keep it from running on AMD processors at all. All Intel does is prevent Havok from running on GPUs, which sucks since GPUs would be able to do 10x(and doubles every year) the number of physics a CPU could do and free up the CPU to do stuff like AI. I hope Microsoft finishes Direct Physics sometime soon.

[MelL]

Havok Gets Cracking, Fluttering (http://kotaku.com/358266/havok-gets-cracking-fluttering)



Kick ass. Now I just gotta wait for games that utilise this ...

Didn't Lucas Arts develop an engine for enabling more realistic destruction of things a while back? I seem to recall a demo video by the developers where they tossed little R2-D2s at boards and the boards broke and fragmented according to the angle at which the droid hit it.

Does anyone else remember that or was it another dream of flying droids of mine?

[SheBear]

Didn't Lucas Arts develop an engine for enabling more realistic destruction of things a while back? I seem to recall a demo video by the developers where they tossed little R2-D2s at boards and the boards broke and fragmented according to the angle at which the droid hit it.

Does anyone else remember that or was it another dream of flying droids of mine?

Yeah, they developed that for their new game 'The Force Unleashed.' I don't know if they had realistic cloth, but they did have quite impressive breaking physics.

[jakhavok]

It may come as a surprise to you but I did some programming and helped name the Havok engine...

[Edgecrusher]

Could this be for some Batman game?

Assasssin's Creed Gameplay + These Physics + Dark Knight Batman Theme = OMFG