|
Originally published on 08/05/2002
I spent the better part of a recent across-the-Atlantic tour talking with people in aerospace and defense, and frankly, it was unsettling. There's spectacular innovation and really sharp businesspeople in defense, but quite obviously, much of this amazing technology kills people, and furthermore it's funded reluctantly by taxpayers. While these products and this business model are often justified, personally I like it better when people on both sides of the equipment in question manage to stay alive.
Fast Facts:
Havok
www.havok.com |
| CEO |
Hugh Reynolds. Prior job: professor of computer graphics at Trinity College, Dublin
|
| HQ |
Dublin, Ireland
|
| Employees |
50
|
| Founded |
1999
|
| Market |
Physics engines for game developers
|
| Funding |
$5M (U.S.) in 2 rounds; currently raising third round
|
| Profitable? |
Projected for Q4 2002
|
But in Dublin, Ireland, I met with Paul Hayes of Havok, who claimed that games technology is "more aggressive than defense." It's not hard to see why. The computer game market is large, healthy, and competitive; there is an insatiable demand for escapism (as the movie and television business further proves); and the excess computer power of today's PCs and game consoles leaves game engineers a lot of raw material to build upon.
Havok makes game "middleware" that programmers can use to model physical objects. The system has algorithms that cover the movement and reaction of hard objects like pool balls as well as "soft body dynamics" for the characters in games like the upcoming Lara Croft adventure. The algorithms, properly used, make games more realistic, consistent, and complex.
Most gamers are already familiar with the graphics "engines" that allow characters and environments to be rendered in glorious color and photo-realism on-screen. The next step is making characters and objects react in a more life-like fashion, with a physics engine like Havok's. After that, designers may look to companies for artificial intelligence engines, to make their characters smart.
It's ironic that the best games for escapism are the most true-to-life, but clearly it is better to experience a million fake deaths than one real one.
- Rafe Needleman
email: rafe-needleman@catchoday.com
|
