Havok Acquired By Microsoft

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According to this press release, Microsoft has purchased Havok from Intel. Thanks to Mike Lafser for the link.

Today, we are proud to announce that Microsoft has acquired Havok, the leading provider of 3D physics, from Intel. As we welcome Havok to the Microsoft family, we will continue to work with developers to create great games experiences, and continue to license Havok’s development tools to third party partners. We believe that Havok is a fantastic addition to Microsoft’s existing tools and platform components for developers, including DirectX 12, Visual Studio, and Microsoft Azure.
 
doug_7506 said:
One word. Exclusives.
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Exclusives to what ... if they integrate it with Direct X then any machine that can run Windows and Direct X will be able to use it ... it would have been more exclusive if either NVidia or AMD had bought Havok
 
Multithreaded CPU and Async Compute Physics.

Physics with a much lighter performance hit.

Oh yes...!
 
First order of business, kill the Linux version, so Steam OS cannot use it.
 
Microsoft Windows now plays major Havok with your computer!

The headlines write themselves.
 
grtitan said:
First order of business, kill the Linux version, so Steam OS cannot use it.
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Linux is in no way a threat to Windows on the desktop or as a gaming platform (outside of Android). Havok Physics is a commercial product, and if someone is buying, I don't see why MS won't be selling.

The irony is that it'll more likely be Linux purists boycotting games which use "Microsoft Havok".
 
Intel bought Havok as a way to steer people to buy more powerful CPU's that could be leveraged by Havok.

HOWEVER, given the MIMD SIMD instruction parallelism (linear algebra) is weak compared to dedicated MIMD SIMD on GPU's Intel had to pretty much give up that fight.

So it makes sense the Microsoft bought it.
 
Honestly, Intel didn't do anything with HAVOK for what, close to a decade now? Maybe MS will "fix it" by making it part of windows :/

PRIME1 said:
Havok is currently CPU only, so no.

Physx is still the industry standard and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Hell it even works on the iPhone.
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giphy.gif
 
kbrickley said:
Exclusives to what ... if they integrate it with Direct X then any machine that can run Windows and Direct X will be able to use it ... it would have been more exclusive if either NVidia or AMD had bought Havok
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One would think that's the goal.
 
PRIME1 said:
Havok is currently CPU only, so no.

Physx is still the industry standard and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Hell it even works on the iPhone.
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I think you mean the "funded by Nvidia" standard.
 
H-street said:
Havok - 500+ titles
PhysX - 68+ titles

*shrug*
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The list of hardware accelerated PhysX games is only a few dozen, but that's not anywhere near the total count. PhysX is used in many other games, both large and small.

Back in late 2012, there were around 200 PhysX games between the PC, console and a couple of handheld games. PhysX is also included in Unreal Engine.

By sheer numbers, PhysX probably has at least a similar number of games to what Havok Physics has. Limited only to non-indie games, Havok Physics probably has the lead.
 
PRIME1 said:
Havok is currently CPU only, so no.

Physx is still the industry standard and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Hell it even works on the iPhone.
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Physx has been functionally abandoned when it comes to new features ever since Nvidia bought it. If Microsoft includes Havok in Direct X as say... DirectPhysics no one will have any reason to pay for Physx anymore. Nvidia will have to pay to have companies use it in their games, actually we're pretty much there already.
 
pxc said:
Linux is in no way a threat to Windows on the desktop or as a gaming platform (outside of Android). Havok Physics is a commercial product, and if someone is buying, I don't see why MS won't be selling.

The irony is that it'll more likely be Linux purists boycotting games which use "Microsoft Havok".
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Purists don't use Steam anyways.
 
Havok? I've never heard of that company. Whatever it makes must be obscure junk that doesn't matter to the world. Have fun with your new toy Microsoft.
 
Quix said:
Physx has been functionally abandoned when it comes to new features ever since Nvidia bought it. If Microsoft includes Havok in Direct X as say... DirectPhysics no one will have any reason to pay for Physx anymore. Nvidia will have to pay to have companies use it in their games, actually we're pretty much there already.
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NVIDIA just added Hairworks and Flex to Physx. It's also part of gameworks.

Havok has pretty much sat on the shelf collecting mold since Intel bought it.

Physx will continue to be the industry standard as it is open source and multi platform.
 
PRIME1 said:
NVIDIA just added Hairworks and Flex to Physx. It's also part of gameworks.

Havok has pretty much sat on the shelf collecting mold since Intel bought it.

Physx will continue to be the industry standard as it is open source and multi platform.
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SyphilX is not multiplatform; it doesn't support GPU acceleration on non-nVidia cards.
 
If this just becomes part of Direct X that would be awesome. I never thought I would be such a fan of MS buying up a smaller company. I'm not popping my popcorn until somebody says "should level the playing field." The usual 4 members will jump out of their adjacent alleyways and battle over video cards and operating systems. The thread already has misused catch phrases and one guy refuses to believe Havok is a real thing. Ok, I'm just going to go ahead and get the popcorn ready. Popcorn Buckets to 11.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Havok? I've never heard of that company. Whatever it makes must be obscure junk that doesn't matter to the world. Have fun with your new toy Microsoft.
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Havok has been around for a long time in many video games. You just haven't heard of it because it's not something worth advertising about. It does physics in video games, using CPU so nothing ground breaking that would have caught your attention. But that doesn't make it any less important, as it allows dev to implement physics simulation in video games.
 
Just wanted to add that, since it's been widely used in video games for a long time, I don't see what exciting new stuff can come out of including Havok in DX, unless Microsoft can evolve it into something that utilizes GPU for physics simulation. Otherwise, it's just business as usual IMO.
 
The only reason I would see MS wanting to move Havok to a GPU is for the unused discrete graphics on Intel chips and people on AMD APU's. Other than that, there is no benefit I could imagine because it would take away from rendering power. Unused CPU cores could take advantage of this.
 
Hornet said:
Havok has been around for a long time in many video games. You just haven't heard of it because it's not something worth advertising about. It does physics in video games, using CPU so nothing ground breaking that would have caught your attention. But that doesn't make it any less important, as it allows dev to implement physics simulation in video games.
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He trolled you.
 
atom said:
The only reason I would see MS wanting to move Havok to a GPU is for the unused discrete graphics on Intel chips and people on AMD APU's. Other than that, there is no benefit I could imagine because it would take away from rendering power. Unused CPU cores could take advantage of this.
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If you would have read a bit you would have noticed that CPU cores are at a massive disadvantage vs GPUs in the type of problems solved by physics models, which is exactly the reason why Intel ended up selling the company.

AI is better served for the "unused" cpu cores if anything at all.
 
PRIME1 said:
NVIDIA just added Hairworks and Flex to Physx. It's also part of gameworks.

Havok has pretty much sat on the shelf collecting mold since Intel bought it.

Physx will continue to be the industry standard as it is open source and multi platform.
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How exactly do you consider PhysX to be open source ?
 
IIRC Havok was the first engine that was going to be GPU powered way before Physx. I think nvidia had a demo of it.

After nvidia bought Ageia, AMD was going to do Havok GPU physics too, but then Intel bought Havok and it all went down.
 
physicx is used as dynamic cloth amd does not have dynamic cloth despite a dozen attempts and hardware that should be able to do it. So my guess is that nvidia added physicx to a varitaion of dx12 and microsoft is going to use havok as the base code path so that their is fall back path for games using dx with physicx imbeded into the dx api.
 
Revdarian said:
If you would have read a bit you would have noticed that CPU cores are at a massive disadvantage vs GPUs in the type of problems solved by physics models, which is exactly the reason why Intel ended up selling the company.

AI is better served for the "unused" cpu cores if anything at all.
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:rolleyes: There's plenty of CPU time in a game loop to make a cape flap in the wind. Probably be faster overall then taking away from GPU time. Of course I am talking out my ass like everyone else.
 
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