One in Two Havok Customers Now Opting for Havok Complete™ San Francisco, Calif., Nov. 14, 2006 – Havok, the premier provider of interactive software and services for digital media creators in the games and movie industries, announced today that Havok Complete™ technology was utilized in the development of Tony Hawk’s Project 8™, the latest title in the #1 action sports franchise. Neversoft Entertainment used the technology to deliver realistic physics and lifelike animations that will allow gamers to feel a heightened sense of realism.
Havok Complete™ is a powerful solution for game developers which combines the power and flexibility of Havok Physics™ and Havok Animation into one integrated solution. With a character context system driven by Havok's powerful asynchronous collision detection system, Tony Hawk’s Project 8 sets itself up well to take advantage of all that Xbox 360 and PS3 have to offer. Said Clive Burdon, senior producer at Neversoft Entertainment, “In Tony Hawk’s Project 8, we wanted to produce the most realistic virtual skate experience ever – we needed to create a great sense of momentum and gravity. We wanted responsive controls and to give the gamer the ability to do advanced grinds and bails, allowing players to control falls and to minimize or maximize damage for fun. Havok Complete™ helped us to achieve that.” Delivering continuous skating action in a free-roaming living environment, Tony Hawk’s Project 8 was re-engineered from the ground up for Sony and Microsoft’s next generation consoles. Using ultra-realistic graphics, enhanced physics and extremely responsive controls that simulate the feeling of skating with every trick and bail, Tony Hawk’s Project 8 will give virtual skaters a real thrill. According to David O’Meara, chief executive of Havok, Tony Hawk’s Project 8 is the first major cross platform game to ship using Havok Complete™, a run-time motion-pipeline which provides continuous blending of game-physics with a broad range of powerful animation capabilities. “We’re really pleased that the first major franchise to showcase Havok Complete is a classic like Tony Hawk’s Project 8. The team at Neversoft have made the most of the potential offered by next gen hardware, blending physics and animation to produce the most realistic and exciting skate game ever. Neversoft takes a very innovative approach to game development. They saw the potential of Havok Complete straight away 18 months ago. Today one in two Havok customers opt for Havok Complete, which speaks to the value of an integrated physics and animation solution.” Adds Burdon, “The features of Havok Complete™ provided a big advantage to our development team, in terms of set-up time and tool chain management. We had a creative vision for what we wanted to produce and Havok Complete™ made it quicker, easier and safer for us to turn it into a technical reality.” - Ends- About Activision, Inc. Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision, Inc. is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and leisure products. Founded in 1979, Activision posted net revenues of $1.47 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006. Activision maintains operations in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands and South Korea. More information about Activision and its products can be found on the company's World Wide Web site, which is located at www.activision.com.
About Havok
Havok is the premier provider of interactive software and services for digital media creators in the games and movie industries. With world leading expertise in physics, animation and tools, Havok’s business is to turn our customers’ creative aspirations into technical realities. Havok’s modular suite of tools gives power to the creator, making sure that our clients can reach new standards of realism and interactivity, while mitigating the overall cost and risks associated with creating today’s leading video games and movies. Havok works in partnership with the world’s best known game developers - including Sony, THQ, Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft and Activision. Havok’s cross-platform, professionally supported technology is available for the PLAYSTATION®2, PLAYSTATION®3, PSP™, Xbox®, Xbox360™, Wii™, GameCube™ and the PC. Havok’s combination of superior technology and dedication to delivering for our customers every time has led to our technology being used in more than 160 of the world’s best known game titles, including Halo 2, Half Life 2, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Age of Empires III, Saints Row and Cars.
Havok products have been used to drive special effects in movies such as Poseidon, The Matrix, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Havok provides the dynamics driving 3ds Max from Autodesk Media and Entertainment. Havok was founded in 1998 in Dublin, Ireland and has offices in San Francisco, San Antonio, Stockholm, Calcutta, Munich, and Tokyo.
About Havok Complete Havok Complete™ combines the power of Havok's next-generation game physics SDK (Havok Physics), with a full-featured, integrated animation system (Havok Animation), enabling cutting edge physical game play and dynamic character animation, optimized for current and next-generation platforms. Havok Complete extends the capabilities of Havok Physics and Havok Animation by providing continuous blending of game-physics with a broad range of powerful animation capabilities in the game. This unique run-time motion pipeline allows developers to enhance game-play by creating game characters that respond to each other and to their physical world, while maintaining the integrity of their underlying animation assets. This unique combination yields powerfully convincing animation that sets a new standard for the believability of game characters. |
