Chalice Yao

techPowerUp! News :: Havok Offers Core Physics Free for PC Game Developers

I think this might interest some of you opensim devs out there :3

P.s. this probably also partially solves one of the biggest licensing issues LL'd have when opensourcing their own sim soft.

CaleVinson

Thanks for the info Chalice - will be a lot of fun to play around with this when its released in May.

I wonder how interested the OpenSim guys will be? Will they care about the non-commercial restriction, and the (as far as I can see at least) lack of support for Apples and Linux?

Chalice Yao

The LL servers all run on Debian Linux, so, no, Havok should work well with that one. Actually I don't see any mentioning of 'Windows' in the article? I assume it's mostly OS independent, tho PC != mac. We'll see. Considering it runs on Linux, it's not too far away from the OS X unix :>

Walker

I'm under the impression Havok runs on pretty much everything. Unix, Linux, Mac, Windows and all the major gaming consoles. Open Sim would benefit enormously because even the most advanced physics engine available for it right now (Open Dynamics Engine) is fairly simplistic compared to Havok. You can't even step into a hollow prim. As for the non-commercial restriction, I don't see that affecting Open Sim at all, but it might be a problem for third party grids making revenue from sim setup & rental (like OLG).

Edit: I forgot to add that Open Sim's physics implementation is modular so you can already choose from a number of available engines. Havok, I imagine, will become another option and commercial grids will have to use a lesser physics engine unless they're prepared to pay for a license.

CaleVinson

Ah, my fault then.

I checked the Havok web site and couldn't find a tech-specs sheet. And the "about this product" blurb didn't mention Macs or Linux (that I could see), but of course such blurbs are hardly definitive.

Joshua Nightshade

Good edit. I don't know how they would implement for this, if at all. They might make it an option but I think the lack of openness is an impediment to the whole spirit of the project. However I'm willing to bet that their implementation of it would be better and faster than LL's.

/sighs wistfully.

Walker

Nooo, you're right. They've only announced plans to release Havok Complete for the PC, so hopefully that will include Windows *and* Linux (PC) binaries.

Hopefully versions for other operating systems will follow. Havok is available for the Mac, gaming consoles, etc. (just check out the huge number of titles that use it) -- but it's a shame the Mac version isn't being made available for free in May too.

Walker

They'd basically use the Havok API, and have to distribute precompiled (closed source) binaries with the software. Much like they're already doing with the Open Dynamics Engine and others*, except of course those physics engines are open source.

* You drop the dll for your physics engine of choice in the root Open Sim directory, then configure the OpenSim.ini file accordingly.

Jarod Godel

I guess I should learn C++...again...and try playing with this.

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