Havok Game engine is behind the success of many blockbusters of gaming world like Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Halo 3, MotorStorm; MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and many more. Developed by famous Irish software company Havok, Havok Physics is a physics engine. It is designed for video games and computer. Havok’ basic function is to allow interaction between characters and objects in real time and giving objects physics like qualities in three dimensions. Havok allows for more natural animation and worlds, like ragdoll physics or intelligence in massive falling thing. For doing so Havok uses dynamic simulation. Havok also released a promotional animation for the game engine. Havok Software Company is now owned by memory chip giants Intel.

First version of the Havok SDK the Havok 1.0 was disclosed at Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2000. Since then it has evolved into a number of products. Most famous of them all is Havok version 5, released in September 2007. Source code of the game engine is distributed after licensing. It currently works on every known gaming platform of the world, starting from Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, PlayStation portable, Microsoft Windows, and Nintendo’s Gamecube. Reason for the compatibility of Havok with most of the consoles and platforms is that its code is written in C/C++. It is portable with any system with a compatible C or C++ compiler.

Since after the release of first version of in 2000, it has been used by over 150 games. Most of these games are of first person shooter genre. Even the physics engine in Valve Corporation’s Source engine uses a modified version of Havok. However, many games from genres other then first person shooter. Few of them are Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Halo 3, MotorStorm; MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Saints Row, Saints Row 2, Age of Empires III, StarCraft II and Diablo III. In most recent time, it has been used in Fallout 3, an RPG developed by Bethesda Softworks. One of the most awaited game F.E.A.R 2 is also registered to Havok .you can also found Havok as a bundled plug-in called reactor for Autodesk Media & Entertainment’s 3ds max. Havok is also used in the Second Life virtual world.

Now company is developing a specialized version of Havok Physics called as Havok FX. It will use ATI and NVIDIA GPUs for physics simulation. A release date is however still not announced by the company. From day of its release, Havok is providing us with great graphics enhanced games and promise to provide in the future.

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