Havok 4.0 released, optimized for PS3

[VG Aficionado]

Havok 4.0 Launches Expanded Suite of Tools for Top Developers

San Francisco, CA, July 11, 2006 - Havok, the premier provider of interactive software and services to digital creators in the games and movie industries, announces today the official release of Havok 4.0, a modular suite of artist tools and run-time technology that dramatically accelerates the development of cross-platform, cutting edge electronic games and special effects for films, meeting the needs of the world's top developers and producers.

Havok 4.0 enhances Havok's industry-leading game-play physics and animation products (Havok Physics™ and Havok Animation™). It also introduces two new products - Havok Behavior™ and Havok FX™ - to accelerate development of sophisticated interactive character behaviors, and to deliver an unprecedented level of physically-based "special effects" phenomena. The combined 4.0 solution represents a best-of-class SDK and tool set that puts power and flexibility in the hands of today's leading game developers and film effects wizards.

With Havok 4.0, game developers can select from a modular suite of technologies and tools spanning game-play physics, character animation, behaviors and special effects, optimized for the widest range of platforms, including Sony Computer Entertainment Inc
(SCEI) much-anticipated “PLAYSTATION®3” computer entertainment system, and Microsoft’s 64bit Windows operating system.

“Havok is committed to developing a suite of products that allow developers to create games that take realism to new levels, that take less time to develop and can be built more economically,” says David O’Meara, CEO of Havok. “Havok 4.0, Havok Behavior, and Havok FX are evidence of this focus and our commitment to continue to introduce groundbreaking solutions. We expect broad adoption of Havok 4.0 in our customer base.”

Havok 4.0’s tools and SDK are designed to be modular and open – so they can be integrated easily into existing production pipelines, reducing the overall iteration time needed to create immersive game-play experiences and special effects. The Havok 4.0 suite is backed by expert support and professional services, leveraging the experience of over 160 commercially released Havok-powered game SKUs.

In the 4.0 release, Havok’s HydraCore™ technology has been optimized to distribute physics and animation even more broadly across specialized cell and multi-core processing units in today’s most advanced game and PC hardware configurations. This maximizes game-play responsiveness and overall performance, enabling literally thousands of game-critical, game-play objects and characters to interact in real-time.

Havok Behavior™ introduces an SDK and stand-alone composition tool that works seamlessly with Havok’s plug-in tools for 3ds Max, Maya, and XSI, enabling rapid creation of real-time blending and character performances that respond intelligently to other characters and the physical world around them.

Havok FX™ adds an unprecedented level of hardware-accelerated physical phenomena, by utilizing graphics processing (GPU) technology from industry giants like NVIDIA and ATI to simulate tens of thousands of objects that collide in real-time, to add eye-popping effects to games.

The first games making use of Havok 4.0 are due out in Fall/Winter this year.Havok.com (http://www.havok.com/content/view/341/53/)

[Leedogg]

thats definitely good news....

*alittle offtopic* Can the Xbox 360 utlize Havok 4.0 since Windows Vista can?? I didn't see Xbox 360 in the report.

[Epix]

Good find, although the title MAY be a little misleading. It's like saying the new type of gasoline is optimized for MY Camry.

[VG Aficionado]

Good find, although the title MAY be a little misleading. It's like saying the new type of gasoline is optimized for my Camry.optimized for the widest range of platforms, including Sony Computer Entertainment Inc
(SCEI) much-anticipated “PLAYSTATION®3” computer entertainment systemWell, I think the title is not that misleading taking this into account.

[Epix]

optimized for the widest range of platforms, including Sony Computer Entertainment Inc (SCEI) much-anticipated “PLAYSTATION®3” computer entertainment system

**cough**cough**

[VG Aficionado]

**cough**cough**C'mon, are we going to argue about that now? :laugh: This is just good news, focus your energy in that!

[satriales]

optimized for the widest range of platforms, including Sony Computer Entertainment Inc
(SCEI) much-anticipated “PLAYSTATION®3” computer entertainment system, and Microsoft’s 64bit Windows operating system.

In the 4.0 release, Havok’s HydraCore™ technology has been optimized to distribute physics and animation even more broadly across specialized cell and multi-core processing units in today’s most advanced game and PC hardware configurations.

I don't think it's optimized for PS3 any more than it is for PC and xbox360, but it's still good news.

[Fazares]

i cant wait for a next gen we using that engine.... that behaviour thing,particularly(euphoria clone?)....

[liver_kick]

I don't think it's optimized for PS3 any more than it is for PC and xbox360, but it's still good news.

AFAIK Havok has indeed been in collaboration with SCE's tech group to help with the important task of optimizing for SPU usage. All middleware like this has to be optimized at some level to leverage the varying platforms (its not exactly "set it and forget it" across the board). But with Cell I imagine a some extra leg work has been required due to its unique nature. So I wouldn't consider the title misleading in that regard. Although the article isnt very informative either. ;)

[chrismt]

Well this is being included is dev kits right? I don't see any reason why Havok wouldn't tailor their engine to the PS3, as many developers would likely be pissed if it wasn't suited particularly well for the PS3 and they paid money for the middleware (although it is a likelihood that a majority of developers wouldn't use middleware since they still have to work with it a lot).

[Crossbar]

AFAIK Havok has indeed been in collaboration with SCE's tech group to help with the important task of optimizing for SPU usage. All middleware like this has to be optimized at some level to leverage the varying platforms (its not exactly "set it and forget it" across the board). But with Cell I imagine a some extra leg work has been required due to its unique nature. So I wouldn't consider the title misleading in that regard.
I totally agree, a software library can be optimised for a lot of platforms, there is nothing contradictory about that, you just have different implementations of the library for each platform that take advantage of the features provided by each platform.

These differences in the implementation are mostly hidden by the API (Application Programming Interface), so the developer usually can write a quite generic application software (game) that can be reused on the different platforms.

The drawback of generic multiplatform software like that is that it has to be adapted to fit the weakest platform, but you can often quite easy have software parameters that are different for platforms, like you can have more detailed textures, more particle effects, etc. etc. so in the end the difference in appearence of the games may be quite large anyway.

It will be interesting to see how COD3 will look on the different platforms, but I think I learned somewhere they are having completely different teams for each platform, so it may not be representative for the average multiplatform game.

[Jubal]

odd that they specifically mentioned the PS3 though, no mention of the 360 in there

[Beenie Man]

Maybe the 360 has weak physics.:shrug:

[jaxmkii]

Good find, although the title MAY be a little misleading. It's like saying the new type of gasoline is optimized for MY Camry.

:spit: you admit to driving a camery!?...

j/k thay're good cars

boring but never the less good:grouphug:

[Infernal]

Maybe the 360 has weak physics.:shrug:
I wouldn't say weak, however Havok (or was it Ageia?) has directly come out and said that PS3 excels at physics compared to the 360 because the Cell processor acts almost like a PPU in most cases.

[Epix]

:spit: you admit to driving a camery!?...

j/k thay're good cars

boring but never the less good:grouphug:

I thought Ferrari would make everyone jealous.:drool:

[cpiasminc]

odd that they specifically mentioned the PS3 though, no mention of the 360 in there
Not really. Sony has sublicensing rights for Havok on the PS3, whereas Microsoft has no such contract for the 360. So it's pretty likely that Sony expressly requested mention when the work was announced. It also wasn't that long ago that Havok was massively ramping up hiring for PS3 development because that's effectively a bigger challenge than the 360. If they can get a multithreaded version working on multicore PC processors, 360 isn't that much different (only a lot faster and a lot easier to cross-communicate between threads).

Making a solver multithreaded is hard enough, but making a solver multithreaded and SIMD-friendly takes a lot of work, and that's pretty much what is demanded of CELL. On top of which, Havok's constraints are normally very branch-heavy to cover for loads and loads of corner cases -- not very nice for SPEs.

[Beenie Man]

On top of which, Havok's constraints are normally very branch-heavy to cover for loads and loads of corner cases -- not very nice for SPEs.

Does that mean PS3 games will have average physics(not that great)?

[cpiasminc]

Does that mean PS3 games will have average physics(not that great)?
No... Havok has no connection to every PS3 game that will ever exist.

Havok is not the only physics engine on the PS3, and it's really not that rare for people never to use physics middleware. I'm just saying that I've seen the code for past versions of Havok more than a few times, and that's how it's always been. This is what makes Havok very numerically stable (though hardly fast). You can run Havok's simulation updates at 10 Hz, and it won't get out of hand. Doing that with NovodeX or ODE is nowhere near possible, because it demands small step sizes to remain stable.

I can't say I've seen anything of this version so who knows what they've done to it? I don't know if they partition away the branches to the PPE (since these are more or less "fudge factor" things which don't require any real computational power) or they've taken some liberties with it in their move towards convex sweep methodologies that solve response on a non-penetration assumption.