Skip to main content
If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Havok 5 Launches Integrated Character & Physics Solution

Significant Enhancements for Havok Physics™, Havok Animation™ and Havok Behavior™

Dublin, Wednesday, 5th September 2007; Havok, the premier provider of interactive software and services to digital creators in the games and movie industries, has officially released Havok 5, offering major new features across its acclaimed modular suite of run-time technology and artists tools which dramatically accelerate the development of cross platform, cutting edge electronic games and special effects for film, in line with the requirements of the world's top developers and producers.

Havok 5 offers major enhancements in its core products, Havok Physics and Havok Animation, as well as introducing significant new features for Havok Behavior, the system for developing event-driven character behaviors in a game.

Havok Physics 5 provides significant memory and CPU performance improvements that can dramatically accelerate interactive destruction sequences in games. This release also provides enhanced memory limiting and reporting across all platforms, and adds Wii support for Havok's innovative Visual Debugger, strengthening Havok's comprehensive offering of cross-platform performance diagnostic tools.

Havok Animation 5 establishes an industry-first with its new run-time mirroring feature, allowing character animations to be reflected interactively from left to right - cutting content creation and memory requirements in half for directional animation assets. This release also provides compression enhancements that reduce the memory required to store arbitrary character animations by as much as 25% over previous releases.

Havok Behavior 5 takes interactive character behavior authoring to a new level, by establishing the first unified authoring environment and SDK that intuitively combines the power of physics with procedural animation and traditional animation assets. The power and utility of this unique system empowers game developers and artists alike, accelerating production 10-fold, and opening the door to hybrid character performances that have never been seen before.

"With our commitment to aiding developers to create more fun and realistic games, more economically, Havok 5 is creating great excitement amongst our customer base and is currently being used in the development of dozens of "Triple A" game titles. Havok has become a one stop shop for cross-platform, professionally supported first class technology solutions for the industry. "said David O'Meara, CEO of Havok. " Our technology is available for the largest range of platforms, including Wii, PlayStation®2, PLAYSTATION®3, PSP, Xbox, Xbox360,GameCube, and the PC." he added.

Havok, acclaimed for its ground breaking physics product employed by the world's best known game developers - including Sony Computer Entertainment, Nintendo, Microsoft, Midway, Lucas Arts, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Activision, offers an integrated solution incorporating physics, animation and behavior, that helps game developers achieve new standards of interactivity and realism, while mitigating the overall costs and risks associated with creating today's leading video games and movies.

Customers using Havok 5 for the development of their games include:

Midway - Stranglehold

"Stranglehold's proprietary Massive Destruction without Havok would be like a first-person-shooter without guns," said Michael Weilbacher, Chief Technology Officer, Midway. "Havok has exceeded our expectations with performance and memory utilization in the physics and animation system on all platforms. Their superior onsite support service allows us to focus on creating triple-A products such as Stranglehold, BlackSite: Area 51® and more."

Lucas Arts - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

"Using the Havok Physics system allows us to amp up the Force in new and unexpected ways in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - it's an important part of our focus on simulation-based gameplay rather than relying solely on hand-animated reactions," said Haden Blackman, project lead for the game at LucasArts.

Blue Fang Games, LLC

Bruce Blumberg, Senior Scientist at Blue Fang Games said "Havok Behavior is an integral part of our next generation animal AI system. We have been extremely impressed with the functionality and design of Havok Behavior and its associated tool. By building our system on top of Havok Behavior, we have been able to save man-years of effort, and it has allowed our engineers to focus on the technology that will allow Blue Fang to create the most compelling animal behavior ever seen in games - or anywhere else, for that matter. We have been especially impressed with the quality of support provided by the folks at Havok. Thanks Havok!!!"

Ends.

For further information contact:

Suzanne O'Brien

Suzanne.obrien@havok.com

Tel: +353 1 472 4300

Havok is the premier provider of interactive software and services for digital media creators in the games and movie industries. With world leading expertise in physics, animation and tools, Havok's business is to turn our customers' creative aspirations into technical realities. Havok's modular suite of tools gives power to the creator, making sure that our clients can reach new standards of realism and interactivity, while mitigating the overall cost and risks associated with creating today's leading video games and movies.

Havok works in partnership with the world's best known game developers - including Sony, THQ, Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft and Activision. Havok's cross-platform, professionally supported technology is available for the Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. PlayStation®2 and PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment systems, PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system, Xbox® and Xbox 360 video game and entertainment systems from Microsoft, Nintendo GameCube, Wii and the PC.

Havok's combination of superior technology and dedication to delivering for our customers every time has led to our technology being used in more than 150 of the world's best known game titles, including Stranglehold, BioShock, Halo 2, Halo 3, Half Life 2, MotorStorm, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Age of Empires III and Cars.

Havok products have been used to drive special effects in movies such as Poseidon, The Matrix, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Havok provides the dynamics driving 3ds max from Autodesk Media and Entertainment.

Havok was founded in 1998 in Dublin, Ireland and has offices in San Francisco, San Antonio, Calcutta, Munich, and Tokyo.

Author
GamesIndustry International avatar

GamesIndustry International

Contributor

GamesIndustry International is the world's leading games industry website, incorporating GamesIndustry.biz and IndustryGamers.com.