The preview grid of Second Life now has Havok 7 physics enabled (the latest version of the industry standard physics engine), and an Italian coder known as Opensource Obscure has been having a lot of fun playing inside it. Last I heard, Havok 7 is scheduled to go live on the main grid next month, though I wouldn't be surprised if it debuted a bit later. Watch this upcoming version of Second Life, full of objects flying, colliding, and bouncing at a crisp frame rate:
"I think in the video you don't see more than 300-400 prims," Mr. Obscure tells me. "Those were temporary prims, and as far as I know the limit for temp prims in a region is 500. However, later I could without doubt count 950 prims rezzed at a time... In that scenario, physics performance was noticeably less good, but the sim didn't lag." And while framerate is excellent in this demo, "note that there were really few textures, no complex shapes, no avatars."
Can you get as as great a performance on your machine? That depends; here's Obscure's hardware specs, and an instructional for optimizing the Obscure way:
- Video card = Zotac GeForce GTX 260
- CPU = i5 660 @ 3.33GHz
- 4 gigs RAM
- Operating system: Ubuntu Linux. (Video recorded using GLC software.)
- "I'm currently using the official Linux viewer 2 -- see attached video for instructions about both Deferred Rendering and Global Illumination."
Opensource Obscure knows how to make a SWEET looking demo, that's for sure.
havok looks amazing. spot lights look amazing. global illumination looks amazing. and a silky smooth framerate. kudos.
Posted by: qarl | Tuesday, April 06, 2010 at 10:14 AM
Cry "Havok!" and let slip the builders of Second Life!
Posted by: Harper Ganesvoort | Tuesday, April 06, 2010 at 10:21 AM
If only LL would license Havok Cloth, Havok Behavior, Havok AI, and Havok Destruction too. SL would be seriously cool with all that.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | Tuesday, April 06, 2010 at 10:31 AM
Throw in some SpeedTree in there too!
Posted by: Roenik | Tuesday, April 06, 2010 at 11:47 AM
looks really nice - lets hope that LL wont muck this up - still remember what happened with the havoc 4 update
Posted by: Silverfox Rainbow | Wednesday, April 07, 2010 at 02:21 AM
damn, that's awesome!!
Posted by: Valentina Kendal | Wednesday, April 07, 2010 at 07:09 AM
Looking at his machine's spec doesn't seem like most sl residents will see anything like that :(
Posted by: Hitomi Tiponi | Friday, April 09, 2010 at 12:49 AM
Interesting demo but is this going to improve the experience of the average Second Life user in any way?
Posted by: Ric Mollor | Friday, April 09, 2010 at 05:47 AM