It's now general knowledge to any HL2 fan that the sequel will be based on Valve's own in-house engine named Source. It's not so well known that the game's physics engine is a modified version of Havok Game Dynamics, the same base SDK that many other developers have pounced onto to use in their projects (DeusEx 2 for example).
It has come to my attention that there are technology demos for Havok availible over their website, showing off some very nifty footage!

If you had to download any specifically before the others, it would definately be "Zombie", followed closely by "FallGuy". After much revision it's relatively easy to say that it looks as though its a step further ahead than even the rag-doll system implemented into the recently released UT2003... enjoy the short videos.

wasn't hitman the first to have IK stuff?

whoa, 1337 :P

oh god, is that a sig

Can these demo's get a GA hosting pls? (if not already; I checked but ya never know) Thanks.

Looks okkkk...
Probably looks worse cause all the models have chewing gum on their shoes, so they cant fall over

The big blast with ppl flying looked pretty decent though.

Havok looks better than MathEngine, IMO. However, I think DOOM 3's physics look more natural. If anything, the characters themselves can react to forces of the environment while alive, instead of the gimmicky death-cam physics of UT2k3. Imagine shooting your opponent's legs in MP, see him kneel down in pain, struggling to get up while spraying his weapons at you desperately. That would be incredibly cool!

Another reason I am excited about DOOM 3's physics engine is bcos it will be the only proprietary engine capable of rivalling professional licensed tech like Havok and MathEngine... id Software wasn't labelled as the industry's most technically reputable game developers for nothing, heh. How I wish Valve has made a truly great physics engine all by themselves; that would make up for its graphics (great but not revolutionary). i expected more from an engine 4 years in the making :|

I really dont think you can make much of a decision about the graphics in half life 2 when all we have seen is a scatter of low res magazine scans compared to some of the things we have seen of doom3 ;)

those demo's suck, how are you even supposed to look at the "physics" in that fallguy avi when the camara changes angle every 2 secconds.

they also looked like they were floating too much, and had some bounding box issues.

[Q],

Well, to me, the scanned DOOM 3 shots in last year's PC Gamer article looks much more impressive than those I've seen of HL2. And most every preview I've seen don't mention much about the awesomeness of the graphics from a technical point of view, which leads me to believe that HL2's graphics weren't up to par with DOOM 3. New, officially released screenshots might change my opinions, but I highly doubt it. All in all, I would rank HL2's graphics above Unreal 2, but below DOOM 3, STALKER and Far Cry.

Will the videos be mirrored locally on AusGamers?

Rec,

I understand that scalability plays an important role in the HL2 engine, but do you really think that you can play the game with a decent framerate with a 700MHz proc and TNT2 vidcard? I doubt so. Most probably, the graphics would only be of Quake 3 quality...

On the other hand, DOOM 3 will also be scalable down to a min. sys. requirements of a 1GHz proc and GeForce256 vidcard. Surely, the graphics would be impaired, but at least it can still run (not unlike HL2). However, I think DOOM 3 has an edge here over HL2, bcos Carmack is an optimising prodigy (sort of). I remember playing Quake 3 on a 233 MHz comp, while still averaging @ about 30 fps in a 1 vs 1 MP deathmatch. However, when I tried running HL, the game lagged even in SP. The game became unbearable during the Xen levels, so mcuh that I'm compelled to chug it aside.

Certainly, none of the games play well under min. requirements, so why bother comparing? IMO, DOOM 3 will come out with a better engine, cos id is a house for technical gurus, not to mention they have much more experience than the guys in Valve. However, an engine 4 years in the making should be at least as good as Deus Ex 2; don't tell me they spent 2 years optimising the engine to let it run on low-end computers...

I think Doom 4 looks far better than both Doom 3 and HL2 .. sif them

Guess I'm over-reacting... but the game magazines keep on saying about how HL2 graphics would trumple DOOM 3's, and HL fans started quoting their words and ranting about the "revolutionary" Source engine, and how it will kick the hell out of DOOM 3. I was like, meh... the screenshots aren't anything special. I ask a few of my friends who's really good and graphics and programming, but they say there's nothing groundbreaking about HL2's graphics (from the screenshots). I was quite disappointed, and just feel expressing my thoughts. Hope you won't think I'm whining and spamming.

I have this lingering feeling about DOOMIII that it will not be very long, I'm not sure why. It just seems that way to me.

i expected more from an engine 4 years in the making :

don't forget the technology they have to work with. Sure they could make a game with photorealistic images, but who the f*** could play it? even the latest hardware now wouldn't handle it with fluid movements, least I don't think so.