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Why do developers continue to use havok?

I

imzjustplayin

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Messages
1,171
I don't get it, why are developers continuing with the usage of Havok physics when ageia's engine is free? I mean if they could use the ageia engine, then I don't think we'd have this issue of engines not taking advantage of hardware people have.

Have people found a way to port physics calls directly to the ageia physics card instead of going to the processor? Kind of a rough hack or what not? I don't care if it's inefficient/not as efficient as recoding/coding the game specifically around the physics card but I would like to see a performance improvement with the usage of a physics card.
 
That would be something akin to only allowing people who have EAX4 and audigy cards to hear any sound. They are using a universal physics platform that all can benefit from instead of a proprietary one that only a few can actually use well...any time you attempt to require a new piece of hardware in a computer you alienate thousands of OEM users who can't/won't ever open their computer and add a part.
 
That's not true, the PhysX SDK also comes with a highly optimized multithreaded CPU implementation.
PhysX is also used for various XBox360, PS3 and Wii titles (all software-only ofcourse)... Havok just seems to be what most developers have always been using, and continue to use.
At any rate, you can't just switch from one API to the next. You'll have to make the decision at an early stage of engine development, so most developers that actually did choose to go PhysX probably don't have any finished products yet (such as UnrealEngine3).
 
From experience and having integrated both I can tell you that it is because they have different specialties and aims in the market.

Havoc has much better support for mixing animation and physics together right out of the box. Sure you could do this with Aegia but you have to realize there is not an infinite timespace, especially in games, and if you can get something with functionality you need already implemented then you are going to go with that. Aegia is not aiming at that level of integration either, they are aiming their time elsewhere.

Aegia is all about very large physics and gameplay altering physics. Things such as fully physical oceans and driving boats, etc through them, and other things that really are impossible without dedicated vector physics hardware. They aim at having the physics drive a lot of the gameplay and really become part of the interactive simulation. But there is also the flipside of this, being that unless everybody has a PhysX card this is only a dream and not reality.

They are both really great physics engines and APIs and depending on what you need either one could be best at the time. I actually prefer using the PhysX SDK myself, but Havoc is nice to work with as well.
 
imzjustplayin said:
I don't get it, why are developers continuing with the usage of Havok physics when ageia's engine is free? I mean if they could use the ageia engine, then I don't think we'd have this issue of engines not taking advantage of hardware people have.

Have people found a way to port physics calls directly to the ageia physics card instead of going to the processor? Kind of a rough hack or what not? I don't care if it's inefficient/not as efficient as recoding/coding the game specifically around the physics card but I would like to see a performance improvement with the usage of a physics card.
Click to expand...

Why didn't everyone use Glide while voodoo cards were still around?

Linux is free, why do people still use Windows?

Because it is not the optimal solution.
 
i said this a while ago but it deserves to be said again..

IMHO ageia went the wrong route..

they should have first became a middleware physics solution (like havoc), and then became a hardware solution that could boost their middleware..


instead ageia decided to wait for hte hardware, to go with the middlware..

first get your software integrated and in the dev houses, and then the hardware will naturally follow and be more successful..
 
H-street said:
i said this a while ago but it deserves to be said again..

IMHO ageia went the wrong route..

they should have first became a middleware physics solution (like havoc), and then became a hardware solution that could boost their middleware..


instead ageia decided to wait for hte hardware, to go with the middlware..

first get your software integrated and in the dev houses, and then the hardware will naturally follow and be more successful..
Click to expand...

Probably woulda helped them if they had a reasonable price point as well...
 
personally i probably would have done the whole free middleware thing..

and then go for making money off the hardware..

the hardware would only make money if you had your middleware in everything..

i mean look at DirectX, its all free for developers to use (as far as i know), yet Nvidia/ATI/Creative/Almost every hardware manufacturer makes money off of DirectX and building their hardware for it..

infact the best thing Ageia could have done is tried to get it integrated into DirectX , and then the hardware would only naturally follow ...
 
H-street said:
i said this a while ago but it deserves to be said again..

IMHO ageia went the wrong route..

they should have first became a middleware physics solution (like havoc), and then became a hardware solution that could boost their middleware..


instead ageia decided to wait for hte hardware, to go with the middlware..

first get your software integrated and in the dev houses, and then the hardware will naturally follow and be more successful..
Click to expand...

The problem with that is that they were hardware engineers, not engine coders, if they'd built the software themselves it would have sucked.

As it is they simply bought an existing physics middleware provider, Novodex, and then reshaped it to work with their hardware, not an unreasonable plan, where they fell down is that Havok is a more developer friendly solution, with a more powerful api/sdk and it isn't reliant on extra hardware that no-body has to get good results, so Havok has a much more favourable risk to reward ratio for developers. What they really should have tried to do (maybe they did and failed) was partner up with Havok to accelerate their engine, then they would have had a bigger potential market and could have sold individual units cheaper, resulting in more sales, increasing the userbase and making it viable for developers to utilise it...

Ageias only real hope now is if Xbox720 and/or PS4 has a discreet physics processor and that they get the contract. For the forseeable future game development is going to be about multicore/threading, because that's what everyone will have, on PC and console.
 
Aegia was doomed from the beginning. PC gamers don't want anymore specialized cards for gaming. That is what I think the PC gaming genre should try to avoid. As it makes PC gaming more enthuisiasts and least common, which isn't necessarily good or bad within itself.
 
Nomikal said:
Aegia was doomed from the beginning. PC gamers don't want anymore specialized cards for gaming. That is what I think the PC gaming genre should try to avoid. As it makes PC gaming more enthuisiasts and least common, which isn't necessarily good or bad within itself.
Click to expand...
Well then we shouldn't have bothered with video cards in the first place, cause you know, to make things more "accessible". If there was a choice of which innovation to have come first, I would've chosen the physics card. Graphics are nice but do little to gameplay except make it look pretty. Sure it can help with immersion but I'd much rather have physics cards first because seeing games where characters and objects and explosions doing very UNrealistic things takes away from the game far more than lower quality textures. I hate seeing how launching an RPG at a building does nothing but create a burn hole pattern or whatnot. A physics card is the thing that would allow for this to be possible.

IMO the physics card should've came first, THEN the graphics card. Game play and interactivity (the groundwork) is so much more important than pretty graphics or overly done HDR lighting which I personally don't like at all.
 
imzjustplayin said:
Well then we shouldn't have bothered with video cards in the first place, cause you know, to make things more "accessible". If there was a choice of which innovation to have come first, I would've chosen the physics card. Graphics are nice but do little to gameplay except make it look pretty. Sure it can help with immersion but I'd much rather have physics cards first because seeing games where characters and objects and explosions doing very UNrealistic things takes away from the game far more than lower quality textures. I hate seeing how launching an RPG at a building does nothing but create a burn hole pattern or whatnot. A physics card is the thing that would allow for this to be possible.

IMO the physics card should've came first, THEN the graphics card. Game play and interactivity (the groundwork) is so much more important than pretty graphics or overly done HDR lighting which I personally don't like at all.
Click to expand...


Without a graphics card, shooting things at buildings and drawing the building itself would be impossible. Seriously, you can't draw realistic animations that mimic the real world without the power of a decent graphics card. This has been the case since day one of gaming... and it has worked great with a graphics card and CPU until now when some company comes out of the blue expecting a few more pieces of debris to have to cost us gamers a few hundred bucks more.
 
InternalStorm said:
Without a graphics card, shooting things at buildings and drawing the building itself would be impossible. Seriously, you can't draw realistic animations that mimic the real world without the power of a decent graphics card. This has been the case since day one of gaming... and it has worked great with a graphics card and CPU until now when some company comes out of the blue expecting a few more pieces of debris to have to cost us gamers a few hundred bucks more.
Click to expand...
Pieces flying off of buildings (texture wise) has been around for quite some time, and yes this was SOFTWARE RENDERING. The problem with the consumer such as yourself is the fact you can't see the potential in improved physics rendering.

If they could properly implement hardware physics rendering, we could have very very realistic crash scenes where the chasis twists and buckles in different ways affecting the car in different ways each time. There is no preset "crash" where if you hit something, you get the same "damage" effect each time, instead you get different looks and types of damage each time. You cannot simulate a building collapsing in a realistic fashion in real time with out a dedicated piece of hardware. The only thing you can do is have preset collapses which takes away from the realism. I'd much prefer Deus ex (Unreal engine) graphics with a hardware physics acceleration making for some awesome effects than having Oblivion level of graphics with the type of physics it currently has now.
 
imzjustplayin said:
Pieces flying off of buildings (texture wise) has been around for quite some time, and yes this was SOFTWARE RENDERING. The problem with the consumer such as yourself is the fact you can't see the potential in improved physics rendering.

If they could properly implement hardware physics rendering, we could have very very realistic crash scenes where the chasis twists and buckles in different ways affecting the car in different ways each time. There is no preset "crash" where if you hit something, you get the same "damage" effect each time, instead you get different looks and types of damage each time. You cannot simulate a building collapsing in a realistic fashion in real time with out a dedicated piece of hardware. The only thing you can do is have preset collapses which takes away from the realism. I'd much prefer Deus ex (Unreal engine) graphics with a hardware physics acceleration making for some awesome effects than having Oblivion level of graphics with the type of physics it currently has now.
Click to expand...

I'm all for improved physics rendering (which is happening thanks to multi-core cpus), I could even support discrete PPUs, but the PhysX lock in model ain't gonna do it. Until there's an open industry standard, a Direct(Phys)X if you will, the technology will remain marginal.

Open API + Reasonable hardware licensing = Win.
 
MartinX said:
I'm all for improved physics rendering (which is happening thanks to multi-core cpus), I could even support discrete PPUs, but the PhysX lock in model ain't gonna do it. Until there's an open industry standard, a Direct(Phys)X if you will, the technology will remain marginal.

Open API + Reasonable hardware licensing = Win.
Click to expand...
Multicore CPUs are simply an evolution in CPU processing, they're not the leap in processing power we're looking for, just another evolution step much like going to 1GHZ on the Athlon. And you can't get an Open Industry standard like Direct PhysX or OpenGL for Physics until you have the demand for the hardware.

Sure I'd be perfectly open to them later adding an API and not having to specifically program for that card but that's not going to happen until people adopt this technology.
 
the problem is not anything that is mentioned

if the card was a 79 dollar add on, it would sell instantly. The programs would come out for it in open sources... linux would use it, etc etc. create the mass demand. guess they cant sell it for that cheap. shrugs.
 
I don't think so. $300 to $150 is a reasonable price. $100 would be better but that not PPU biggest problem.
The first and important thing to push PPU are the games, the lack of them using PPU at a decent level that attract gamers to play such game with a PPU.

A lower price now means maybe 5 times the sales.
More good PPU using games might yield 100 fold.
 
MartinX said:
Open API + Reasonable hardware licensing = Win.
Click to expand...

The API _IS_ open and FREE to license and use. Using the API doesnt even require the hardware to be present. The PhysX API runtime checks on startup to see if hardware is present and if so, uses it. If it's not, the API still runs but all of the PhysX processing falls to the primary CPU.
 
Yeah I was a little confused by that comment. The API for PhysX is just as open as DirectX... if the poster meant an open standard instead, then neither DirectX, Havok or PhysX are that.

To make matters more confusing, as far as hardware accelerated physics APIs are concerned, only Havok has a published driver standard (glsl or DirectX shading language).
 
SuperGee said:
I don't think so. $300 to $150 is a reasonable price. $100 would be better but that not PPU biggest problem.
The first and important thing to push PPU are the games, the lack of them using PPU at a decent level that attract gamers to play such game with a PPU.

A lower price now means maybe 5 times the sales.
More good PPU using games might yield 100 fold.
Click to expand...

300 dollars gets you a whole freakin Wii or an overclocked 8800GTS 320.

that's not worth it to anyone. if it was cheap, people would toss it in every build. like an audio card, it is the only thing that goes to the next computer that is not behind the times.
 
~El~Jefe~ said:
300 dollars gets you a whole freakin Wii or an overclocked 8800GTS 320.

that's not worth it to anyone. if it was cheap, people would toss it in every build. like an audio card, it is the only thing that goes to the next computer that is not behind the times.
Click to expand...
Yah I 've bought a Wii yesterday? and have 3 PC all with PPU's so?
Have a HD2900XT512 instead?

It's worth to any one who doesn't much care about 150 bucks. Because it's a price range for some people wich that price fall into pocket change.
There are rich and poor people and the market do produce products for them all to.
There are also enthausiast wich have freed a specific budged to buy there stuff they want.

BTW 300 to 150 is a reasonable price means I find 150 is resonable price because it getting cheaper in time.

My latest PPU is cheaper then my wii and cost the same as my eVGA8600GT

And geuss what I don't use audicard any more with commonly aviable full onboard chipsets. That's because all My PC's are in the living room and mostly can only use 2.1 or Headphones.
And Phsyics enhancement has more Priority the EAX5.0 to me or that bit fps boost in XP.
wich I exange for Vista wich now depends on openAL for audio Hardware support.

Doesn't have muscle ack might be Wii sports Golf is good for a cool down. :)
BTW wii cost € 249,- That $300.
My first two PPU cost €228
 
coolxboxgamer said:
some people dont like wasting money on useless items :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
It more a large part of all consumers are very price and value aware. That your point.
While a few doesn't care that much they care only if there is some value and spend some $ on it.
Those are split into two groups
A - The rich and very rich
B - The early adopters and hardware enthausist with a decent budged.
 
if i had a $10000000000 dollars i wouldnt buy a physx card, period, it doesnt do anything for any game out there except like..... 3
 
SuperGee said:
Yah I 've bought a Wii yesterday? and have 3 PC all with PPU's so?
Have a HD2900XT512 instead?

It's worth to any one who doesn't much care about 150 bucks. Because it's a price range for some people wich that price fall into pocket change.
There are rich and poor people and the market do produce products for them all to.
There are also enthausiast wich have freed a specific budged to buy there stuff they want.

BTW 300 to 150 is a reasonable price means I find 150 is resonable price because it getting cheaper in time.

My latest PPU is cheaper then my wii and cost the same as my eVGA8600GT

And geuss what I don't use audicard any more with commonly aviable full onboard chipsets. That's because all My PC's are in the living room and mostly can only use 2.1 or Headphones.
And Phsyics enhancement has more Priority the EAX5.0 to me or that bit fps boost in XP.
wich I exange for Vista wich now depends on openAL for audio Hardware support.

Doesn't have muscle ack might be Wii sports Golf is good for a cool down. :)
BTW wii cost € 249,- That $300.
My first two PPU cost €228
Click to expand...

no one but a complete idiot spends 150 dollars on something that has no use.

rich people get truly rich by not spending 150 dollars on useless things.
 
Im thinking of buying a PPU just to see how it works from a real gamers perspective and see if it works well or not. If it doesnt off to ebay it is, if somehow it works well and has some decent gameplay ill come back and let you all know.
 
And geuss what I don't use audicard any more with commonly aviable full onboard chipsets. That's because all My PC's are in the living room and mostly can only use 2.1 or Headphones.
Click to expand...

LMFAO! You use ONBOARD AUDIO (aka shit) instead of at least a decent sound card which would provide a VERY NOTICEABLE difference in ALL audio (music, games, movies) yet you buy USLESS physX cards (unless you play nothing but GRAW2 and cellfactor, and both of them suck) for THREE computers (all of which suck)

I can't figure it out...

Try spending some money on ONE GOOD computer instead of 3 POSes with useless 150+ dollar add on cards and displays that were obsolete years ago.
 
imzjustplayin said:
I don't get it, why are developers continuing with the usage of Havok physics when ageia's engine is free? I mean if they could use the ageia engine, then I don't think we'd have this issue of engines not taking advantage of hardware people have.
Click to expand...



if you use Ageia do the people not have to have an Ageia card vs havok it works with any card..... ?
 
z3r0- said:
LMFAO! You use ONBOARD AUDIO (aka shit) instead of at least a decent sound card which would provide a VERY NOTICEABLE difference in ALL audio (music, games, movies) ....................
Click to expand...


Alot of onboard audio is more then sufficient for most people, and i am sure many people who claim onboard is crap (some is, cant deny that) wouldnt be able to tell the diff if they were switched either.
 
You would have to be deaf or very nearly deaf not to tell the difference between onboard and ANY Audigy or X-Fi card.
 
Uberbob102000 said:
You would have to be deaf or very nearly deaf not to tell the difference between onboard and ANY Audigy or X-Fi card.
Click to expand...

Or just using a typical "PC speaker". There is a reason why places like avsforum can use the term "PC speaker sound" as a grave insult for "Home Theater In-a-Box" or Bose style "mini-cube" sub/sat HT speaker setups.

No one who uses their monitor's built in speakers is going to hear a difference, even if you could convince them to spend money to even try.
 
X-Fi XtremeMusic + 5.1 home theater system w/multichannel input = win:D
BTW I have yet to find someone with better hearing than I do esp in the high range.:cool:
 
[21CW]killerofall;1031331324 said:
X-Fi XtremeMusic + 5.1 home theater system w/multichannel input = win:D
BTW I have yet to find someone with better hearing than I do esp in the high range.:cool:
Click to expand...

brag more will ya :D


anyways yes i have an xtrememusic and a pair of dt770pro/80's, i tried onboard on my newish computer, it sounds absolutely horrible compared to my x-fi
 
The real question should not be why developers continue to use havok, but really should be "Why do developers continue to use Aegia?"
 
Is there any preformance benchmark between the 2 on CPU? The phx engine market already had a far share of games using Novodex so it must be doing decently.
 
i dont really think many people would have a problem with physx as long as the card was a little cheaper at like $100 and the games were actually good. Competition in any market is mostly a good thing. O and also make sure the physx has good software cpu support.
 
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