Havok acquired by Microsoft
- Thread starter Sinistar
- Start date
Rikimaru
Veteran
We do not know what exactly countless Sony titles use. I assume many PhyreEngine games (third party too) could use it.
Ike Turner
Veteran
Even this list is lacking many games like Just Cause 3, Uncharted 4, Mad Max, Halo 5, AC Unity, AC Syndicate, COD AW etc..
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
So people are still hoping for cloud computing in time-sensitive tasks like physics within this console generation?
If even pure cloud gaming where all that is sent is a few bytes per second of controller input data isn't stable enough for so many households, how can anyone ever think that selling a AAA game that is 100% dependent on a very fast internet connection speed with excellent QoS would be commercially viable?
As for the purchase, I actually like the idea.
I think Intel's acquisition of Havok actually pushed the company back a lot.
Before Intel, Havok was supposed to launch an IHV-independent GPU-accelerated physics API that would be an actual competitor to PhysX.
Of course, back in 2007/8 Intel's IGPs were a total crap (while AMD had Direct Compute /OpenCL capable IGPs in their northbridges, not to mention full-blown APUs in the pipeline) so this would mean a step away from a game's dependence on CPU performance.. so out of sheer coincidence the GPU acceleration project disappeared.
How about Microsoft integrating Havok libraries within DirectX itself? Is this possible?
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
It's also not used for time-sensitive physics interactions.
If you blow up a building 100+ meters away from you, for example, you aren't going to be directly impacted by it. So if some of the debris takes an additional 50-100 ms to resolve, it'll be 100% unnoticeable to the player. If you've ever seen the demolition of a large building in real life, you'll note there is a noticeable delay between the explosion going off and most of the building reacting to it. Heck even shooting something at long distance with a gun has a delay between the shot fired and the bullet impacting.
Anything that has a direct impact on the player or what they are shooting will be resolved on the local machine. IE - anything close to the player that requires minimal processing time.
Which is basically what Crackdown 3 is doing.
Regards,
SB
If you blow up a building 100+ meters away from you, for example, you aren't going to be directly impacted by it. So if some of the debris takes an additional 50-100 ms to resolve, it'll be 100% unnoticeable to the player. If you've ever seen the demolition of a large building in real life, you'll note there is a noticeable delay between the explosion going off and most of the building reacting to it. Heck even shooting something at long distance with a gun has a delay between the shot fired and the bullet impacting.
Anything that has a direct impact on the player or what they are shooting will be resolved on the local machine. IE - anything close to the player that requires minimal processing time.
Which is basically what Crackdown 3 is doing.
Regards,
SB
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
If it's far away and you're not going to be directly impacted by it, then why not just script it?
Imagine you are playing an action war game and have and "impact range" of 200 m.
Then, at 300 m. away there is a machine gun nest in a building, and you call for an air strike.
You can have a rigid script or a believable cloud computed attack.
What is faster or better, to calculate it locally or in the cloud and send the result, I do not know.
But I am sure that consoles are shorter of CPU than internet bandwidth.
Well, we have allready see some try on cloud computing deported for some games.. was not really concluant ( SimCity anyone ).. this said, this technology continue to be developped..
But im pretty sure we will see more about "MS Havoc" before cloud gaming computing. so let say in a standard fashion.
But im pretty sure we will see more about "MS Havoc" before cloud gaming computing. so let say in a standard fashion.
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
Scripting won't get you a believable, say, building collapse with the amount of debris that was shown with the Crackdown 3 demo. Scripting also means you either have generic scripts that don't always match what caused the script to execute or you have to model pre-script every single possible way something could explode, burst, pop, fall, rise, etc.
It's the same reason dynamic lighting looks more realistic in moving light conditions versus static lighting and precomputed shadows. Why GI and light bounces (indirect lighting) look far better and more convincing than SSAO and precomputed attempts at displaying indirect lighting.
It also means that anyone that happens to be on that building you shot, will react to the same forces (generated on locale machine) and be consistent with the physics driven destruction of said building (mainly driven by the cloud). Versus the person being shot (generated by locale machine) with the canned destruction which may not react entirely properly to the object causing the destruction or the forces involved with it since they have to be pre-computed before the game ships. You could instead do local processing for the destruction but then you're back to the extremely limited destruction physics and extremely limited amount of particles and objects that can be physically modeled.
Regards,
SB
Alessio1989
Regular
Want: D3D12 multi-engine asynchronous CS implementation + heterogeneous multi-adapter support.
Alessio1989
Regular
cloud computing for real time applications? no thank you.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Part of that because cloud compute implies gaming as a service, which will obviously end up on people having to pay monthly fees to play all their games instead of one-time purchases.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I'm not sure why that would be? I have plenty of games current that are basically "gaming as a service" which do not require a monthly fee to play. Warframe, Guild Wars 2, Heroes of the Storm, etc. 2 of those are F2P and one is a retail purchase. They have in game purchases, but none of the in game purchases impacts the basic gameplay or experience. I've been playing Warframe for about 3 years now.
The cloud compute enhancements would be welcome enhancements, IMO.
Warframe, for example, already has some impressive graphics IQ, and they are constantly updating the game with new content, updated graphics (currently upgrading everything to physically based lighting, mostly there), engine improvements, etc. One of the massive benefits of "gaming as a service." It launched as a Dx9 game. Was updated to Dx10, and then updated to Dx11. How many non-"gaming as a service" games that released as Dx9 have been completely updated to Dx11 with updated assets as well as content? Much less bothered to take advantage of new features of higher levels of Dx? I fully expect that in the next 1-2 years they'll be updating the entire engine to Dx12.
Final Fantasy 14 could REALLY use them as their canned physics animations are horrible and their realtime physics animations are fairly limited. They also released as a Dx9 game then got some enhancements with a Dx10 upgrade. It is now a Dx11 game.
And as much as I really dislike EA, I have to commend them for their EA access thingy. Rent their back catalog of games for 5 USD a month (cheaper if you go a full year), get 5 days early access to all new releases as well as a 10% discount (which basically pays for the rental fees and more) on any new games? What's not to like if that represents "gaming as a service." Granted that's an XBO only thing at the moment. And I still won't buy anything EA related until I can get their games on Steam.
IMO - "gaming as a service" type games can absolutely blow away many of your traditional buy once games.
Regards,
SB
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Persistantthug
Newcomer
Question about Havok's payment structure
,
Is Havok something that developers have to pay a royalty for as in per copies sold, or is it something more along the lines of Protools where you just pay for the hardware and software and then that's it?
,
Is Havok something that developers have to pay a royalty for as in per copies sold, or is it something more along the lines of Protools where you just pay for the hardware and software and then that's it?
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