Holy Havok, Batman!

LL has been promising to upgrade the Havok physics engine in SL for so long that it’s gone from being a sort of running joke into the realm of myth and half-remembered legends. Well, as Gwyneth Llewelyn says - Hell has Frozen Over! Havok 4 is live on the Beta Grid.

I’m downloading the new Beta client now and logging on to see what’s up with the new system. I’ll report back here if I find anything interesting.

WEEE! I am so easily amused. :)  I am having so much fun just rezzing physical spheres and watching them roll around the landscape. hehe This new physics system is definitely quicker ad more stable. I’ve rezzed hundreds of physical objects at once with barely a hiccup from the server. Even 1500 physical boxes at once and the server just twitched a bit and continued on at full speed.

Another nice thing is that the sphere prims can actually touch each other - no gap between them as with the current system. Doesn’t seem to work like that for all the prims - but the box can do the same thing if you start it as a sphere and then change the object type. odd, but that gives me hope for the final version. It’s amazing how much of a difference just that one change makes. The spheres really look as if they are rolling along the ground now - seems much more realistic to me.

I’ll be posting a video of my experiments later tonight.