Havok 4.5. Enjoy ALL your SPUs in FULL, PS3

Havok announces that its flagship middleware engine, used on many a PS3 (e.g., MotorStorm), Wii, and Xbox 360 game (not to mention PC, of course) is now at v4.5. “Havok 4.5 allows game developers to scale game content to thousands of dynamically-driven game objects and characters, harnessing the full power and speed of next generation architectures.”

Now for what puts the .5 in 4.5, so to speak: Havok also revealed that this version is fully optimized for the PS3, capable of harnessing the FULL power of ALL the SPUs. “Havok architecture now scales strongly across all SPUs and runs between 5 and 10 times faster than Havok 4.0 for a typical game scene on the PS3.”

If you’re trying to get the vague idea of what Havok 4.0 on the PS3 looks like, we invite you to click on this backlink, to be whisked away to last year’s article about Havok 4.0 at CEDEC. The highlight there was that, according to a presentation slide, Havok 4.0 on a PS3 Cell ran comparable to a triple-core PC. Now, if Havok’s PR is to be believed, multiply that by 5 to 10.

Now if we only had a video, that would make our day.

Havok announces that its flagship middleware engine, used on many a PS3 (e.g., MotorStorm), Wii, and Xbox 360 game (not to mention PC, of course) is now at v4.5. “Havok 4.5 allows game developers to scale game content to thousands of dynamically-driven game objects and characters, harnessing the full power and speed of next generation architectures.”

Now for what puts the .5 in 4.5, so to speak: Havok also revealed that this version is fully optimized for the PS3, capable of harnessing the FULL power of ALL the SPUs. “Havok architecture now scales strongly across all SPUs and runs between 5 and 10 times faster than Havok 4.0 for a typical game scene on the PS3.”

If you’re trying to get the vague idea of what Havok 4.0 on the PS3 looks like, we invite you to click on this backlink, to be whisked away to last year’s article about Havok 4.0 at CEDEC. The highlight there was that, according to a presentation slide, Havok 4.0 on a PS3 Cell ran comparable to a triple-core PC. Now, if Havok’s PR is to be believed, multiply that by 5 to 10.

Now if we only had a video, that would make our day.