edweird
03-24-2007, 10:44 AM
So.. at some stage, many years ago, there were three main companies competing to develop a physics engine that AAA game developers would want to incorporate into their products. There were of course more than three, but these three were the best and drew the most attention. They were Ipion, Mathengine, and Havoc.
The Mathengine physics SDK was first released in 1998, and was improved and further developed over the next few years. In that time a lot of cool physics demonstrations and works-in-progress turned up. Mathengine's engine eventually became "Karma", which was first used in Unreal Tournament 2003. Mathengine also launched CM-Labs in 2001 ( www.cm-labs.com ) which provides physics development kits for more serious simulation\engineering applications, though I haven't had the opportunity of seeing any of that in action.
Ipion was at one point my favourite engine out of the three. They had a lot of demos which were, for the time, very impressive, handling some situations (like very large \ heavy objects on top of small ones) very well that the other engines had trouble with. At the same time, though, some things the other engines handled quite simply, Ipion wasn't stable with. Ipion was eventually bought by Havoc, who gradually incorporated Ipion technology into the Havoc physics engine. The Havoc engine improved a lot over the years and is now the highly successful physics engine found in Half-Life 2 and a whole lot of other games.
The question is, though, does anyone still have any of those oooold SDK demos or examples? Ipion demos? Havoc demos from before they bought Ipion? Mathengine demos from the same era? Back then, I was heavily into that stuff, and have fond memories of playing with all sorts of fantastic physics demos, many of which impressed me far more than a lot of demos I've seen lately, even for good engines. The Ipion demos are probably the ones I most fondly remember. Someone posted about 'Really' in another thread, and it reminded me of all the old physics stuff I used to mess around with. If anyone still has any of this stuff, or knows where it can be found, let us know! I'm sure a lot of people here would appreciate it.
The Mathengine physics SDK was first released in 1998, and was improved and further developed over the next few years. In that time a lot of cool physics demonstrations and works-in-progress turned up. Mathengine's engine eventually became "Karma", which was first used in Unreal Tournament 2003. Mathengine also launched CM-Labs in 2001 ( www.cm-labs.com ) which provides physics development kits for more serious simulation\engineering applications, though I haven't had the opportunity of seeing any of that in action.
Ipion was at one point my favourite engine out of the three. They had a lot of demos which were, for the time, very impressive, handling some situations (like very large \ heavy objects on top of small ones) very well that the other engines had trouble with. At the same time, though, some things the other engines handled quite simply, Ipion wasn't stable with. Ipion was eventually bought by Havoc, who gradually incorporated Ipion technology into the Havoc physics engine. The Havoc engine improved a lot over the years and is now the highly successful physics engine found in Half-Life 2 and a whole lot of other games.
The question is, though, does anyone still have any of those oooold SDK demos or examples? Ipion demos? Havoc demos from before they bought Ipion? Mathengine demos from the same era? Back then, I was heavily into that stuff, and have fond memories of playing with all sorts of fantastic physics demos, many of which impressed me far more than a lot of demos I've seen lately, even for good engines. The Ipion demos are probably the ones I most fondly remember. Someone posted about 'Really' in another thread, and it reminded me of all the old physics stuff I used to mess around with. If anyone still has any of this stuff, or knows where it can be found, let us know! I'm sure a lot of people here would appreciate it.