343 Industries had to pull off some rather impressive technical wizardry to get Halo 5: Guardians, its latest first person shooter, running at 60 frames per second. According to a recent public statement, it seems that Havok Technology – recently purchased by Microsoft – helped to achieve that goal.

As the statement says, “343 Industries worked closely with the team at Havok to integrate Havok AI to help bring to life the game characters. The Havok Physics effects are used throughout the environment to lend the title an immersive physicality that helps draw players deeper into the compelling Halo universe.”

According to 343 Industries director of engineering David Berger though, “In creating Halo 5: Guardians, the team pushed the Xbox One hardware to maintain a steady 60 frames per second for lightning-quick reaction times and visceral gameplay, and Havok’s efficient toolset helped us to reach that goal. Every element of this game had to be truly epic. The graphics, sound, music, story, AI and multiplayer features were each a massive undertaking, and our collaboration with Havok gave us a robust toolset to round out the features to create something that gamers won’t forget.”

There are plenty of other factors though – enemy frame rates were kept at 30 FPS, the resolution supported dynamic scaling when the action got too heavy and other compromises were made. Nonetheless, Halo 5: Guardians is in 60 FPS. What do you think of the game thus far? Let us know in the comments.

Havok, whose development tools are used in over 600 games, has been acquired by Microsoft from Intel for an undisclosed amount. The physics technology is extremely popular and has been used in games like Call of Duty, Destiny, The Elder Scrolls and much more.

The company said on the Microsoft blog though that, “We will continue to work with developers to create great gaming experiences, and continue to license Havok’s development tools to partners. Havok is a fantastic addition to Microsoft’s existing tools and platform components for developers. [And] we will continue to innovate for the benefit of development partners.

“Part of this innovation will include building the most complete cloud service, which we’ve just started to show through games like Crackdown 3.”

Thoughts on Microsoft acquiring Havok? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and stay tuned for more information in the coming months, particularly about how much Microsoft paid for the deal.

Havok remains this industry’s premier provider of technology for providing a framework of realistic physics- it has been used in so many games consistently over the years, and if you thought that age would lead to developers looking for better replacements, you were wrong. A list of upcoming games that are using Havok Tech was just shared by the company, and basically, pretty much every single major AAA game that you can think of will be using it.

“We were so happy to see all the amazing work of our development partners and the industry in general at E3,” said Havok VP of Sales and Marketing Brian Waddle. “Their hard work and innovation is being rewarded by the sheer excitement of gamers around the world. We’re proud that developers behind some of the biggest AAA titles in the world are turning to Havok to realize the true potential of the new console platforms. We’re beginning to see the future of gaming come to fruition, and that future is spectacular.”

The list of games is:

• Star Wars Battlefront – Electronic Arts
• Dark Souls III – BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment
• Fallout 4 – Bethesda Softworks
• Halo 5: Guardians – Microsoft Studios
• Horizon: Zero Dawn – Sony Computer Entertainment
• Just Cause 3 – Square Enix
• Need for Speed – Electronic Arts
• No Man’s Sky – Hello Games
• The Last Guardian – Sony Computer Entertainment
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege – Ubisoft
• Tom Clancy’s The Division – Ubisoft
• Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End – Sony Computer Entertainment
• DOOM – Bethesda Softworks

So basically, yeah, Havok is the secret king of the gaming industry.

This year, the highly respected and extremely popular physics engine  brought to you by Havok, turns 15 years old. Havok appears in many different games stretching across not only multiple generations of hardware, but it also spans a wide variety of genres,

Havok has been put to use in some of the most respected video games of all time, Half Life 2’s Gravity Gun, and even the heart wrenching survival story, The Last of Us.

The Havok team started out in my homeland of Ireland, in a place known as the Trinity College which is situated in Dublin. Having walked past it many times, it’s interesting to me, on a persoanl level, to think of how something that would influence the gaming industry so much was created just down the street from me.

If you’ve been playing Sunset Overdrive, Destiny, Dragon Age Inquisition, then you already owe thanks to Havok.

To help demonstrate their dedication to bringing the games we all love to life in their own way, they have released a rather beautiful, historical timeline of their work. Check it out by clicking on the image!

Activision and Sledgehammer Games has finally provided information on the Zombies mode for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Dubbed Exo Zombies, this extra mode will be arriving in 2015 with the first DLC pack “Havok”. Check out the trailer for the same above – which is essentially the same cut-scene that’s been circulating since before the game’s launch.

Exo Zombies is very much like the original Zombies modes but features the undead in exoskeletons which gives them added movement abilities (and perhaps Exo Abilities, if Sledgehammer wants it to be extra frightening). On the one hand, you can only pick up the Havok DLC pack in order to access it. On the other hand, it won’t be free for the majority of players – which is something that players were probably counting on, especially with the number of issues the game has been facing.

Are you looking forward to Exo Zombies in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare? Let us know in the comments.

So listen here, I’m not a huge fan of Destiny. It’s just not my jam. But even I have to admit that it is one hell of a pretty looking game. It’s large sprawling world, really rather impressive online mechanics and awesome game-feel are truly something to be admired, whether one likes the game or not.

This hugely impressive new world that was crafted by the fine folks over at Bungie was partially brought to life, but wholly made possible through the use of Havok technology. Havok technology has been used in a vast library of games and to varying degrees.

Bungie seem to be using the Physics, Cloth and Scripting technology offered to them by Havok to make Destiny look just that little bit more gorgeous. “Havok technology has been a perfect fit for a game as ambitious and epic as Destiny, because it helps streamline the development process and lets the artists at Bungie focus on realizing their vision,” says  Brian Waddle, Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Havok.

Gameplay Enginer Justin Truman has said, “Bungie games have always been about robust, complex simulations creating exciting new gameplay experiences.  Destiny’s living world could not have been realized without Havok’s Physics, Cloth, and Script technology. Havok technology has been a perfect fit for a game as ambitious and epic as Destiny, because it helps streamline the development process and lets the artists at Bungie focus on realizing their vision.”

Ever wondered what helped Sucker Punch Productions’ inFamous: Second Son maintain a strong physical fidelity without compromising on performance? Havok has announced today that the game has made use of their Havok Physics engine alongside Sucker Punch’s own in-house engine in order to bring the virtual world of Seattle in Second Son to life.

Havok Physics was used for simulation of objects and debris but also helped in delivering reliable collision detection. As President & Managing Director David Coghlan, states, “Havok’s newest and latest physics technology delivers significant technical innovations in performance and memory utilization allowing developers to leverage the incredible capabilities of platforms like the PlayStation 4 to take simulation to the next level

“Havok’s advanced physics technology and Sony’s robust hardware open up the possibilities for impressive titles like inFamous: Second Son.”

What did you make of the physics and overall visuals within inFamous: Second Son? Let us know in the comments below.

Havok has announced that its various technologies – namely Havok Physics, Havok Animation Studio and Havok AI – will be used in the upcoming MMO Iron Knight. Published by Tencent Games and developed by Aurora Studios, Iron Knight was showcased this week’s GDC.

Tencent executive producer and Chief Consultant Steve Gray stated that, “The presence of Iron Knight at GDC is an important part of a larger strategy for Tencent as it looks to court a more international audience of gamers with its quality titles.

“Integration of Havok technology was an essential piece of the internationalization plans for Project Knight. The development team designed the game from the ground up with an international audience in mind and we believe this international effort is a bold, new direction that holds great promise for fans of battlefield action everywhere.”

Brian Waddle, VP of Sales and Marketing at Havok, stated that, “We are excited to be a part of such an innovative title being developed in a growing market like China. Our dedicated team in China is working closely with the talented developers at Aurora Studios to ensure they get the most out of Havok’s robust technology capabilities in order to deliver the most vibrant and immersive gaming experience possible.”

As of now, there are no definitive details on when Iron Knight will release in the West. Stay tuned for more updates.

GamingBolt recently had a chance to speak to Havok’s head of product management Andrew Bowell about their next-generation focus, various aspects of Havok Physics 2013 and much more.

"Havok has a long history of multi-core support. When the early devkits for Xbox 360 and PS3 were being circulated in 2005 it was clear that the shift to multi-core was fully underway and would be a major feature of the console hardware landscape."

Rashid Sayed: Havok has already made the jump to next generation when it announced the next iteration of Havok Physics. How are you making sure that the latest iteration will effectively utilize CPU cores on next gen consoles?

Andrew Bowell: Havok has a long history of multi-core support. When the early devkits for Xbox 360 and PS3 were being circulated in 2005 it was clear that the shift to multi-core was fully underway and would be a major feature of the console hardware landscape. Since the previous console era, Havok has had the advantage of targeting two console generations and numerous major revisions of our technologies.

This has allowed us to be heavily optimized across the board for many core CPUs. With the very latest iteration of Havok Physics 2013, we have been able to push the envelope even further. The goal for software targeting multi-core CPUs is two-fold: firstly you want to remove or minimize any single-threaded only bottlenecks and secondly you want to smoothly and evenly utilize all available CPU cores. With Havok Physics 2013 we have been able to reach both these milestones allowing us to fully multi-thread our engine in all areas and also scale utilization linearly across all available CPU cores

Rashid Sayed: What kind of improvements have you made to physics simulation, the constraints, and plugin support for the next gen Havok physics?

Andrew Bowell: Havok Physics 2013 was an opportunity for Havok to go back to the drawing board and look at what we had learnt from many years in the Physics business. Interestingly after speaking to customers and listening to their plans for next-gen, the design goals boiled down a few key areas.

Havok Physics for next-gen simply had to be: faster, use less memory, be easier to use and be higher quality. With the release of Havok Physics 2013 we are happy to say we have hit each of these goals. With titles like Killzone: Shadowfall, which is using Havok Physics 2013, you can see how they have been able to achieve their own awesome ambition to create an incredibly rich and immersive world. Under the hood of Killzone: Shadowfall, Havok Physics is helping them realize those goals.

"Each new console cycle provides an opportunity for developers to take stock of their technology stack and assess how they plan to make games for the next-generation."

Rashid Sayed: Let us go back 7 years. Sony launched the PlayStation 3 along with a ton of architectural level issues making life difficult for several game developers. Given that the PlayStation 4 now features unified memory along with an x86 architecture, how much of a ‘technical’ relief is it when compared to the early PlayStation 3 days?

Andrew Bowell: With each new console cycle the platform holders are looking at ways to enable game developers to make great games. The latest console cycle is no different, the decisions made by the platform holders in this cycle have been brilliant and should really help to foster and enable the next generation of games both big and small.

Rashid Sayed: Can you talk about the different difficulties that developers are facing while transitioning to these next gen consoles and how are you helping them to achieve their goals?

Andrew Bowell: Each new console cycle provides an opportunity for developers to take stock of their technology stack and assess how they plan to make games for the next-generation. With each console cycle the trend has been similar – developers want to make more awesome games, but with a smaller or the same budget in the same or less time.

Havok really helps developers when they come to assess how they can achieve more with less. As developers look through their technology stack they may focus on specific areas they want to improve, for example – higher fidelity physics, next generation character technology, more realistic AI, supporting more platforms. In each of these areas, and more, they have an opportunity to leverage technology from Havok. This allows them to focus on their own game design ambitions, as opposed to having to build technology and in some cases re-invent the wheel.

Rashid Sayed: Given that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One feature massive amounts of RAM, I am sure developers will be willing to do more. Given that you work with game developers closely, how do you make sure that you fulfill that ‘all of a sudden’ and  ‘not in the box’ type of requirement?

Andrew Bowell: Developers have long dreamed about more RAM. RAM has been so scarce over the last 20 years in console hardware that I feel many prayers have been answered this time around. However it will take absolutely no time for artists to use all available RAM, even 8 GB, you can be sure of that. In terms of Havok technology, it has always been our goal to enable developers to do more with less.

Even with the large amounts of RAM available, the developers will still find ways to use even last byte. To that end, it is always a requirement for middleware to have the smallest possible memory footprint. This is also becoming even more of a requirement as console developers look at ways to bring their title to mobile platforms.

"With regard to environmental effects, that is definitely going to be a feature of next generation games. The first step was simply getting real-time clothing onto characters, this was starting to become a feature of games at the end of the last generation."

Rashid Sayed: As most next gen games will have wide and open worlds, having dynamic destruction will no doubt put the new systems to test. Last generation, some games had decent static destruction effects but that was somewhat balanced by the drop in frame rate. How are you planning to correct this?

Andrew Bowell: Interestingly the biggest bottleneck with destruction performance is your underlying physics and rendering engines. Destruction is just about breaking things apart, that part can be relatively well streamlined and optimized from a simulation performance standpoint. The real simulation cost comes from the thousands of new dynamic objects that have come from that massive explosion for example.

Being able to support large scale destruction in games was a big motivator for our new Physics engine. With our latest release you can simulate many thousands of dynamic objects in complex environments allowing for really impressive and wide ranging destruction effects. With rendering, this is often an area of in-house expertise for developers. With Havok Destruction, Havok provides many interesting ways to streamline and optimize the rendering challenge introduced by the many thousands of new dynamic objects.

Rashid Sayed: Havok Cloth tools is something that has always intrigued me. As character garments get more texture and polygon heavy, does it create any sort of hindrances to create the perfect simulation? Furthermore how are you planning to take environment interactivity, lightning and weather in relation to Cloth simulation to the next level?

Andrew Bowell: The most important step in introducing Havok Cloth into your title is planning. We see the best results in titles that have thought about adding cloth to their characters early on in pre-production. A technology like Havok Cloth can deal with any level of visual detail in the garments and typically what is simulated and what is rendered are two different things. The simulation typically takes place on a lower poly version of a highly detailed visual mesh.

With regard to environmental effects, that is definitely going to be a feature of next generation games. The first step was simply getting real-time clothing onto characters, this was starting to become a feature of games at the end of the last generation. As we move forward we will see the environment coming into play. Havok Cloth provides mechanisms for developers to add wind, or change the state of the cloth depending on external influences such as water.

"Gamers have always wanted the same thing in every console cycle: awesome games. The new consoles, faster PCs, new graphics APIs etc., these alone don’t make awesome games."

Rashid Sayed: I think animations as a whole have stuck and they are not moving forward for the last few years. We are still seeing several games using looped animations with scripted sequences. What exactly is the problem and do you think we will see realistic animations/behavior anytime soon? Furthermore what steps are you taking for Havok Animation studio to nullify these issues?

Andrew Bowell: Animation in games is definitely going to be an area of advancement in next-gen games. One of the challenges with animation and characters in general is that, we as humans, are incredibly good at spotting mistakes and issues with animation. Another big challenge in animation is one of content. Consider the multitude of ways that a character can vary simple animations depending on interaction with their environment, other characters etc. If you are authoring a character and want an animation for every possible situation their character can get into then you are looking at many thousands of animations per character. If your game has hundreds of characters then the content requirement becomes a major time and cost issue.

What products like Havok Animation Studio do is provide a way for developers to manage and combine their animation content to reduce the number of individual animations they require. For instance Havok Animation Studio allows you to introduce procedural elements into your animations blends such as inverse kinematics, ragdoll blending, parametric motion generation. All of these techniques allow you to take existing animations and add interesting variation without having to author new animations.

Rashid Sayed: PC gaming technology is going really strong and with more powerful GPUs and the advent of Mantle to directly access the GCN architecture.  Do you think PS4 and Xbox One [with all the driver support/updates] will be able to compete with high end PCs in the next five years? Or will it be a repeat of the current gen situation where developers will start complaining about the lack of hardware?

Andrew Bowell: Gamers have always wanted the same thing in every console cycle: awesome games. The new consoles, faster PCs, new graphics APIs etc., these alone don’t make awesome games. They are simply platforms and tools to enable developers deliver awesome games. The goal of these technologies and technologies like Havok should be allow developers focus on their primary goal: making awesome games. In some ways, the console wars, console vs. PC – these all make good media stories but ultimately they don’t concern developers.

In conversation with GamingBolt, Head of Product Management at Havok Andrew Bowell spoke about how the studio’s Havok Physics 2013 for next gen consoles will emphasize higher quality and better physics.

When asked about the improvements made to the physics simulation and plug-in support in the next generation, Bowell stated that, “Havok Physics 2013 was an opportunity for Havok to go back to the drawing board and look at what we had learnt from many years in the Physics business. Interestingly after speaking to customers and listening to their plans for next-gen, the design goals boiled down a few key areas. Havok Physics for next-gen simply had to be: faster, use less memory, be easier to use and be higher quality.

“With the release of Havok Physics 2013 we are happy to say we have hit each of these goals. With titles like Killzone: Shadowfall, which is using Havok Physics 2013, you can see how they have been able to achieve their own awesome ambition to create an incredibly rich and immersive world. Under the hood of Killzone: Shadowfall, Havok Physics is helping them realize those goals.”

The crazy thing? Killzone: Shadow Fall hasn’t even taken full advantage of the PS4’s power. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how the use of Havok Physics evolves over the coming years. What are your thoughts? Let us know below.