As it stands,Havok phsyics has been used for Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas. It allows the devs to drop items into the world easier than other physics engines, and implements modestly realistic physics for characters and actions. With games like GTA IV using Euphoria physics for animations, which would you prefer when playing a FUTURE elder scrolls game : be it ESV, a spinoff, or some type of future game in the series.

Note: I am not voting since in this case, I prefer to see what gamers are gearing towards when playing open world games, and whether or not they feel that animations are dated concerning the very old Havok engine physics.

I think Oblivion physics are pretty decent, although I absolutely hate how when you kill someone with a enchanted weapon they fly off and then "float" to the ground at an extremely unrealistic rate. It's like gravity was turned off for a second, it looks really stupid.

Euphoria looks pretty awesome.
I don't know how it works on items and things like that, but it would be really cool on NPCs... I think it could really make the game feel more alive.

I'm fine with Havok again, as long as two things happen: 1) make it possible to set things down in a predictable manner. I want to decorate the tables and shelves of my house, not the floor. And 2) Use a combination of prerecorded death animations and ragdoll. They figured this out in Shivering Isles, when So bring back Morrowind's death animations, but have them go limp afterward, because being able to move the bodies (or at the very least, not have them clipping halfway through the wall or floating in midair because of the pixel they were standing on when they died) is a really great touch (my favorite moment-- after I "tamed" the unicorn, I fast traveled to Cloud Ruler Temple, where the unicorn went on a rampage because of the two people sparring in the courtyard. I had to kill it, but I didn't want its rotting corpse spoiling the vista, so I spent five minutes dragging the damn thing over to the wall and throwing it over ).

I know this is possible, Demon Souls already uses it to great effect.

EDIT: @Betrayer of Humanity-- Oh god, the enchanted weapon physics led to some of the best moments in that game. When I killed Ruma and stole her fire staff, I couldn't stop laughing blasting those poor Mythic Dawn fools halfway to the moon

I hate it when I can drop a 35ib object in Oblivion, and then kick it across a room like it's a tennis ball.

I would be fine with Havok if they could find a way to make it so that items in the game-world react as if they were actually their stated weight.

I would also like it if the weapons weren't unrealistically heavy, but that's a completely different matter.

Euphoria looks like it's pretty cool, and I thought the physics in The Force Unleashed were quite fun to play around with; however, I really don't know enough about physics engines to make an educated vote.

Maybe I'll do some research on it tomorrow.

This. I'm fine with havok. It has some stupid moments, but nothing mods don't fix

Euphoria is an animation/physics engine for NPCs only right? Not regular items?

That's what I thought too.

Regardless, Havok is awfully outclassed by PhysX these days, so i'm hoping for a lot of PhysX support in the game for those of us with decent Nvidia cards. The current Havok physics in Oblivion are awful. For example, why does my character seem to have wings? I run down a mountain slope and I 'take-off' in to the air before floating back down to the ground. That just doesn't happen in real life. You STAY on the ground if you run down a slope, or fall face first and tumble down if you can't keep your balance.

Really never noticed a difference between the two, or was even aware that there are two. I was under the impression that there are several.

Considering the fact that, every now and then, an enemy you kill will go into mid-air convulsions like the Exorcist, a physics engine doesn't provide much more immersion than death animation. Then, again, it's cool to knock things off tables, but I don't want it to affect item placement anymore.

Definitely Euphoria, especially because it does NOT just cover ragdolls when creatures die but also control their animations when they're still alive.

My best example is from a video I saw from GTA4, a guy was shot, held the wound where he was hit, stumbled forward, propped himself up on a mailbox before stumbling on and then finally collapsing on the floor. All this was calculated real time, nothing there was tweened or scripted to happen, it was a random situation in the game.

Euphoria is pretty awesome. GTA IV is a great example of it's awesomeness.

I'm not saying that it's the best, but I think it's better than Havok.

Half-life 2 uses Havok and has the most realistic physics I have ever seen. So, I vote havok all the way.

And why specifically Euphoria? Not all of us have played GTA, personally I hate the series. You should've put PhysX instead.

It's because Euphoria is not just a "let something go and it falls down" physics engine but actually an animation engine as well.
Here is something I wrote just before that should illustrate what it does:

My best example is from a video I saw from GTA4, a guy was shot, held the wound where he was hit, stumbled forward, propped himself up on a mailbox before stumbling on and then finally collapsing on the floor. All this was calculated real time, nothing there was tweened or scripted to happen, it was a random situation in the game.

Half Life 2 had something similar, albiet Half Life 2 was older and didn't have the mailbox thing. HL2 was a great game that was easily beleivable.

Euphoria, because it's better in every conceivable way. It's really not much of a choice for me.

While the physics don't hold too much priority, games that have had the Euphoria engine add a whole new layer of depth, and entertainment that can be had, especially with how it alters the animations. (more natural animations would be a massive benefit to TES as well.

When something as simple as falling off a horse and rolling down a hill can become a hilarious and fun, yet still natural and realistic looking part of the game, I'm all there. God, I loved Red Dead Redemption.

Didn't HL2 use Source engine, a heavily modified version of Havok and some other engine?

Anyway, I wouldn't really mind if the next game would use Havok. As long as we get more Elder Scrolls, I'll be happy. I don't really care.

I was under the impression that Euphoria could be used together with Havok, or have I been drinking?
Anyway, I'm not sure which one would be best. Can Euphoria handle physical objects the same way that Havok can? Euphoria has great animations for dying or injured entities and such, but how does it handle items and such that are dropped on the ground?


I'm a big fan of Half-Life (and VALVe games in general), and I've played through Half-Life 2 several times (in fact I started a new playthrough a few days ago), and I am pretty sure that Half-Life 2 did not have anything similar to that. When an enemy dies, it simply collapses on the ground. Not that that isn't better than Oblivions ridiculous ragdoll physics...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Unleashed#Technology is using 3 physics technologies at the same time: Havok, DMM and Euphoria. Combining them kills my CPU though. Best way is Crytek's way, make everything in-house.

Valve has quality animators and software wizards for blending animations, that's it.

Havok

Ahaha yeah. Or when you grab an item and all of the other objects around it just fly away.

I think it was okay in Oblivion, but obviously just needs to be tweaked a bit.

The main thing to remember about these two is that, physics engines in genearl, decide the whole of animations for objects, characters, and environments. It isnt just for characters death sequences, but has much more in common with a Radiant AI. If implemented into a game like ES, it would control every aspect of the games interactions. Since Todd Howard stated that BGS was working hard on improving animations, it would make since to look at different Physics engines, since Havok has its limits, and most believe those limits have been reached.

To those of you who DONT know, games require both Graphics engines (for visual content) and Physics engines (for environment interaction). Some games have the Physics built in like those that use the Unreal Engine, or id Tech. Bethesda uses Gamebryo as a content creation engine, so using 1 physics engine would be the limit if bugs are to be avoided. Games that use multiple Phsyics engines require alterations, so combining them would essentially create a new Physics engine. Havok and Euphoria can be used together, but in a game like ES, the rammifications of bugs would be miserable. PhysX would likely not be compatable with Gamebryo, since dropping objects into the world is a big accessory of Bethesdas games.

They spent considerable time working on the engine this time around, so I expect to be pleased with whatever they've come up with. And if I had to choose between ease of adding items to the world (aka modding) and more realistic physics, I'd go with ease of modding.

The way npcs in gta4 react with the environment is amazing and other animations like the falling animations are incredible. Other than that, Euphoria is very similar to havok.

Yea, the thing is usually physics only take over upon death or when a character is not animated anymore, the animations are done beforehand and are unchanging usually. Euphoria influences those animations, when you bump into someone they will try to catch themselves so they don't fall over, and they don't just play the "bump into someone" animation, it will in fact every time look slightly different because they actually try to balance and prevent falling over. And even if they do they try to feather the fall. I saw a euphoria demo video that showed this perfectly, they had 2 models roll down a slope, one just ragdoll the other euphoria animated. They ragdoll pretty much just rolled a little, the euphoria animated one actually tried to capture it's fall and rolled down the slope in a protective pose.

This could actually flow greatly into combat, enemies actually physically dodging attacks without each requiring a separate animation, the game just calculates HOW they try to evade and IF they succeed at it. Hell a dodging enemy could lose his balance and fall over.

Well I have noticed when shooting combines with a pistol that their hands move to where they had been shot, then physics take over. I just started my new playthrough with cinematice mod full(without the character models).