Posted on Wednesday, January 24 2007 @ 19:49 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Game developers using Havok Physics and Havok Animation products to develop for PS3 will be able to harness the full power of all the SPUs, while maintaining the complete flexibility of the Havok SDK. Havok architecture now scales strongly across all SPUs and runs between 5 and 10 times faster than Havok 4.0 for a typical game scene on the PS3.
“We made sure that we met our customers’ demand for a PS3 optimized version of Havok as soon as possible” says Havok CEO, David O’Meara. Comments Scott Kirkland, Technical Director at Evolution Studios and lead on PS3 exclusive title MotorStorm, “With its unparalleled environmental interaction and spectacular destruction, MotorStorm’s brutal, chaotic, off-road racing makes big demands on physics processing. Unphazed by the intense time pressures of our project, Havok rose to this next-gen challenge and provided us with an outstanding suite of professional tools, technology and support to help realize our vision. We’re now looking forward to collaborating with the Havok team on future Evolution products”.
Optimization for next generation platforms represents one of the largest development tasks ever undertaken by Havok. Havok 4.5’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 4.5 suite is backed by expert support and professional services, leveraging the experience of almost 200 commercially released Havok-powered game SKUs.
Adds Havok’s David O’Meara, “The launch of Havok 4.5 represents the culmination of many thousands of man hours for the Havok development team. We’ve worked really hard to ensure that Havok technology is optimized for the next generation console platforms, and we’ve been really excited by the results. Havok 4.5’s ability to allow developers to massively scale game content will make it possible to develop even more compelling, realistic and complex worlds that harness the full power of new generation architectures.”
Havok 4.5 enhances Havok’s industry-leading game-play physics and animation products (Havok Physics™ and Havok Animation™). It also brings to new levels Havok Behavior™, which accelerates development of sophisticated interactive character behaviors, and Havok FX™, which delivers an unprecedented level of physically-based “special effects” phenomena. The combined 4.5 solution represents a best-of-class SDK and tool set that puts power and flexibility in the hands of today’s leading game developers.
