
Microsoft buys Havok, the physics engine for pretty much every game ever - reimertz
http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/02/microsoft-buys-havok-from-intel-promises-to-keep-licensing-physics-tech/
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legitster
This doesn't bug me as much as it might of back in the days when Microsoft was
trying to build a closed system with all of their technologies. It very much
looks like they are trying to pivot into a platform agnostic services company.
Good for them.

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reimertz
Couldn't agree more. I think what really made me have a change of hearts was
when they started their investments in open-sourcing a bunch of their
products.

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uno7
I remember when I first saw Havok in action (Half-Life 2 tech demos). It
ushered in a new era in gaming. Things were expected to behave at least very
close to reality. The way the developers described it back then made it seem
like a revolution and I think it's easy for gamers these days to take that
stuff for granted, since it is indeed "in pretty much every game ever".

Integrating it into Azure seems like a natural step for MS. I hope this
ultimately means better environments for us to play in!

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gwern
> Integrating it into Azure seems like a natural step for MS. I hope this
> ultimately means better environments for us to play in!

Could you explain that some more? I have to admit I don't immediately see what
connection a physics library has with cloud hosting. How does some software
for making balls bounce much more realistically connect with virtualized Linux
& Windows OSes and hard drives?

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uno7
This is the type of stuff that I mean:
[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/08/how-
crackdown-3-uses-t...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/08/how-
crackdown-3-uses-the-cloud-to-make-whole-cities-destructible/)

[http://www.cloudgine.com/technology.html](http://www.cloudgine.com/technology.html)

