Microsoft buys Havok from Intel

Andrew LB

2015-10-03 13:03

Game physics being calculated in an MS cloud doesn't sound like a plausible solution unless you live right next to an MS data center.

i take it you havent seen Crackdown 3?

#5167723

FerCam™

2015-10-03 14:19

Oh this could wreck havok on cloud servers...

#5167724

flashmozzg

2015-10-03 14:25

So now AMD can finally make it's own open-source havok-based PhysX rival? Cool. They had really cool advances in that area until havok was bought by intel.

#5167728

Fox2232

2015-10-03 14:39

I do not see this as bad for us in any way. Intel did not advance Havok much considering their resources. Microsoft's has no reason to limit implementation to CPU. Why would they? Their best chance on getting back this investment is DirectCompute. To show that platform does a lot, and to have Havok which every game developer which ever considered PhysX implementation asks for instead. (since multi GPU vendor, multi platform, ...)

#5167799

H83

2015-10-03 18:22

Is there anything that Microsoft bought and made it better?

Of course not! MS doesn´t buy companies and products to make them better, they buy them so they don´t have any competition... It´s almost like EA and all their companies and games they´ve bought, EA doesn´t make them better, they just milk them to death and then destroy them completly...

#5167868

KissSh0t

2015-10-03 21:09

Hmmm lets take a look at that. Skype; NOPE Nokia; NOPE Rare; NOPE Mojang; Arguably Lionhead Studios; NOPE Hotmail; Arguably

I cry ever time for Rare.... Ery Tiem.. dude... I have like all their Nintendo games... my childhood..

#5167906

Dch48

2015-10-03 23:30

Is there anything that Microsoft bought and made it better?

Hmmm lets take a look at that. Skype; NOPE Nokia; NOPE Rare; NOPE Mojang; Arguably Lionhead Studios; NOPE Hotmail; Arguably

Since the only one of those things I have ever used is Hotmail (and I didn't know it was ever anything but MS's), I couldn't say. You could however argue that they acquired DOS and made it MUCH better by morphing it into Windows.

#5167938

NAMEk

2015-10-04 01:02

Of course not! MS doesn´t buy companies and products to make them better, they buy them so they don´t have any competition... It´s almost like EA and all their companies and games they´ve bought, EA doesn´t make them better, they just milk them to death and then destroy them completly...

Yes, i think that too. These things with Microsoft are happening since earliest versions of windows. Death touch.

#5168173

Bladeforce

2015-10-04 22:11

Since the only one of those things I have ever used is Hotmail (and I didn't know it was ever anything but MS's), I couldn't say. You could however argue that they acquired DOS and made it MUCH better by morphing it into Windows.

"Aquired" being very questionable

#5168206

sykozis

2015-10-05 00:38

Since the only one of those things I have ever used is Hotmail (and I didn't know it was ever anything but MS's), I couldn't say. You could however argue that they acquired DOS and made it MUCH better by morphing it into Windows.

MS didn't turn Dos into Windows. Windows is a completely different OS from DOS. Windows1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 95, 98 and ME weren't even operating systems.

#5168212

blahsaysblah

2015-10-05 00:56

How does this impact Project Anarchy? (their version of UE4/Unity)

#5168362

schmidtbag

2015-10-05 16:26

Everyone here is saying MS will have killed Havok, but Intel didn't really do anything with it either. Even though Havok, to my knowledge, was easier to license and more readily cross-platform than PhysX, devs still chose PhysX anyway. If Intel tried getting Havok to work with their IGPs, it'd have likely been a lot more popular.

#5168407

Fox2232

2015-10-05 18:34

Everyone here is saying MS will have killed Havok, but Intel didn't really do anything with it either. Even though Havok, to my knowledge, was easier to license and more readily cross-platform than PhysX, devs still chose PhysX anyway. If Intel tried getting Havok to work with their IGPs, it'd have likely been a lot more popular.

Good that I am not 'Everyone here'. Actually if intel enabled OpenCL/DirectCompute offloading to their iGPUs, maybe people would leave them enabled. On desktop intel's IGPUs are useless transistors for most of us. (For me since intel killed QuickSync in 2500k/2600k/...)

#5168410

schmidtbag

2015-10-05 18:42

Good that I am not 'Everyone here'. Actually if intel enabled OpenCL/DirectCompute offloading to their iGPUs, maybe people would leave them enabled. On desktop intel's IGPUs are useless transistors for most of us. (For me since intel killed QuickSync in 2500k/2600k/...)

I agree. I honestly don't understand why Intel releases i7s with an IGP (for desktops). However, on Linux you can put some use to intel IGPs. There's software that allows you to do stuff similar to Nvidia Optimus but with any GPU combination. I personally don't use it though, since none of my 4 computers have both an IGP and a discrete GPU. Also, Linux allows you to easily do multi-monitor setups involving multiple GPUs of varying brands. You can do this in Windows too, but it can get messy sometimes. But anyway, Intel has been putting so much focus on their IGP lately and they put so little effort into promoting the use of them.